Happy 1st Birthday - Chocolate and Strawberry Cake

Hi all,

I hope your having a lovely weekend! I went to a friends wedding yesterday and it was such a beautiful day. The rain also stayed away which was great!

The most important part of the day, the dessert (!), was a scrumptious chewy pavlova with strawberries. I don't know how they got it so chewy!

I have now been blogging for 1 whole year so this is birthday post just for me.

Happy 1st Birthday Cake Fairy Blog!

I've written 47 posts which is about 3-4 cakes a month and I've loved writing them.

What better way to celebrate my blogs birthday than with my favourite combination - Chocolate and strawberry!

I found some freeze dried strawberry sprinkles in the supermarket on Friday and thought I had to use them. I'm not the only one who picks out the freeze dried strawberries from cereal boxes, right?! I just love freeze dried strawberries. I especially like the chocolate covered ones.

Vanilla Savoy Cake


This is such a great recipe, my new favourite. The cake is so fluffy and delicious. It has no butter in it which I actually like as I find getting butter to room temp so difficult in my flat and I hate butter lumps. The air that is whipped in to the eggs makes the cake rise.

4 egg whites
4 eggs yolks
200g caster sugar
100g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and put a shelf in the middle of the oven.
2. Grease and line two 8in tins with greaseproof paper. I can never be bothered to fully line the tin (oops) but I find just putting in a circle at the bottom is enough the get the cake out with no problem.
3. Using an electric whisk, whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until pale yellow and very fluffy. This takes about 6 minutes. Don't skip on this step because it is key.
4. Add the two vanillas and whisk in until fully combined into the yolk mixture.
5. Whisk the eggs whites until you have firm peaks. This is where having two electric whisks is very handy!
6. Sift the flour in to the yolk mixture and fold in.
7. Fold in the egg whites. As you can tell I'm quite impatient but you do have to make sure your folding delicately to keep the air in the batter.
8. Pour the batter in to the two tins and put in the oven to bake for 20 minutes.
9. Make the buttercream and strawberry puree while the cakes are baking.

Chocolate buttercream

As usual my buttercream recipe is from Cupcake Crazy Gem's trusted top 10 frostings.

Strawberry purée

You can find the recipe here. Just substitute the Martini for water. I don't sieve my purée just because I quite like the texture and pieces of strawberries but you can if you like it that way. You can also just use your favourite strawberry jam.

Assembling

1. Take the cakes out of the oven and leave to cool.
2. The cakes usually come out fairly flat but level the cakes out with a bread knife if you need to.
3. Cover one cake with the strawberry puree and sandwich the other cake on top.
4. Cover the cakes in chocolate buttercream, smoothing out with a palette knife.
5. Scatter over the freeze dried strawberries.

Enjoy with friends!

Happy Baking.