The Best Chocolate Strawberry Cake Recipe 45 Min

Today we’re making the most amazing chocolate strawberry cake recipe. So let’s get started. First off, I’m going to bloom my cocoa powder. So I want half a cup, or 40 grams of cocoa powder into a medium bowl. And I’m gonna sift it out too, just in case there are any lumps. I’m using natural cocoa powder for this. If you wanted to, you could use the Dutch process, but this will work great.

Ingredients:

For the Cake:

1/2 cup (40 grams) cocoa powder
1 cup (240 mL) boiling water
3 cups (360 grams) all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2.5 teaspoons baking soda
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup (240 mL) buttermilk
1 cup (240 mL) vegetable oil
3 large eggs, room temperature
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

For the Buttercream:

1 1/2 cups (340 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
A pinch of salt
6 to 8 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup chopped strawberries

For the Chocolate Ganache:

3.5 ounces chocolate, finely chopped
Fresh strawberries for decoration

I also have my oven preheated to 350. This recipe comes together really quickly, there are three nine-inch pans with parchment rounds in the bottom, and they’ve been buttered and floured. Now we want one cup or 240 mL of boiling water. This is gonna bloom the cocoa powder and release a ton of chocolate flavor. Can whisk it up, or stir it together. I’m gonna set this aside for about 10 minutes while I get the rest of my ingredients together.

Table of Contents

Prepare Dry Ingredients

Now in a large bowl, I’m combining three cups of all-purpose flour. That’s 360 grams, two and a half cups of granulated sugar. One teaspoon of salt. This will give us a nice contrast. 2.5 teaspoons of baking soda. This is gonna react with an acid we’ll add later. And 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder. And we’re gonna give this a whisk. My dry ingredients are whisked, set this aside.

My mixture’s cooled down just a bit. I’m gonna add one cup of buttermilk. That’s 240 MLS. This has the acid that will react with the baking soda in case you were wondering. One cup, or 240 mL of veggie oil, and here’s the deal. This chocolate strawberry cake is gonna be refrigerated. It has tons of fresh strawberries in it. And I just think it’s a shame if you have a cake out of the amazingly fresh fridge, but now it’s all hard. And like, just like not great.

Combine Wet Ingredients

So using veggie oil gives you a moist, amazing soft strawberry cake. And if you don’t want to use this, you could use any other oil, like avocado oil would work. Anything super mild with not a lot of flavor. I love this chocolate strawberry cake so much. Three room-temperature eggs. I’m also adding a tablespoon of vanilla extract. That’s 15 MLS. We’re gonna give this a whisk and get it nice and smooth.

Now we’re gonna pour our amazing chocolate mixture into the flour. Some strawberry cake are so delicious, but they have a lot of steps in them. This is just like a stir-together batter. And it’s just so good. This is nice and smooth, fully incorporated. We’re gonna get this into our pans. Alright, pour this into your buttered and floured nine-inch pans. This is a big chocolate strawberry cake, but no one’s gonna be upset about it.

Bake Chocolate Strawberry cake

These go into the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes. And here is a warning for you. This is like a lot of strawberry cake for your ovens. So you’re probably gonna have it in multiple layers. You might be tempted to swap them around halfway through. I would wait until the last 10 minutes of baking because if you disturb this delicate batter too soon, the cake will collapse a little bit in the middle.

It’ll be fine if it does, so don’t worry. But for best results, just don’t move the cakes, or open the oven for at least 20 minutes. I wanna talk to you about strawberries for a minute. You want about two pounds of strawberries. You don’t need that much, but I’ve made a ring of strawberries that’s nine inches in diameter. So I have it all planned out. The pretty strawberries that are in uniform shape and size go in a ring on top. So set those aside. They make the chocolate strawberry cake beautiful, very important.

Make Buttercream

Then you want like six to eight strawberries to mix into the buttercream. And these are all for snacking later. That’s the deal. So for the buttercream, I want about half a cup of strawberries. And we’re gonna give these a nice chop. The thing is that these get mixed into the buttercream, and some of them get beaten a bit, and they lose their juice, and they give it a beautiful soft pink color and wonderful strawberry taste.

And some of them stay kind of intact in their little chunks of strawberry that look beautiful. You have those two things going on, and you want pieces that are about this big. I’m just popping those right into my measuring cup as I cut them. This is much more fun than chopping onions or garlic, I’ll tell you that much. My strawberries are chopped.

Chocolate Strawberry Cake Recipe

It’s time to make that amazing buttercream. So grab a mixer. If you want, you could do this with a hand mixer. I’m using a stand mixer though. We’re starting by adding one and a half cups, or 340 grams of room temperature unsalted butter into our bowl. And we’re also gonna add a nice pinch of salt too. We’re gonna beat this up on high for five minutes until the butter is light and fluffy. Take note of the color now, it’s kind of yellow. It’s gonna be a wonderful pale off-white color. Five minutes.

Gonna mix up for one more minute. Just so we scrape the bowl in. My butter’s all mixed up. I have my strawberries chopped. It’s time to make some magic happen. So with the mixer running on low, I’m adding in six to eight cups of sugar, powdered, half a cup at a time. And we’re gonna alternate with a tablespoon of strawberries.

Alternate with Strawberries

So instead of cream or milk to soften this up, the strawberries will release some of their juice and make it delicious, soft pink, and nice and smooth. It’s a process. You might have to speed it up for just a second, like this, to get some of the stuff out of the mixer. If you’re using a lot of strawberries, like I am by the way, you’re gonna have to go eight cups.

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Six cups give you a very soft buttercream, which is not the best for building a cake up. Taking a break to scrape the bowl down. This recipe uses American buttercream, which some people think can be kind of sweet. But when you add fresh fruit to it, make sure to whip the butter for five minutes. It is perfection. Sugar’s all incorporated. I’m gonna mix this on medium for one minute just to get it fluffed up. And then our chocolate strawberry cake is ready to assemble.

Assemble Strawberry Cake

Now for the assembly. I will say there’s one more thing to make, which is the chocolate ganache. But I want my cake to chill while I’m making it. These layers are so soft so be careful with them. They’re to be treated gently. We’re gonna add about a cup of frosting in between the two layers. Now we’re going to spread our frosting over our delicate chocolate strawberry cake.

The next layer goes right on. We’ll fill that in. The last layer goes right on top. Add a thinner layer for this. And the remaining frosting is gonna go on the side and get smoothed out. You don’t need a piping bag and a turntable. we’re gonna fix that using our offset spatula. We’re just gonna swoop it up and down like this. And we’ll cover and make everything right. ‘Cause the frosting is sweet.

Make Chocolate Ganache

You don’t wanna have a giant thick layer of frosting because then you couldn’t taste the cake. Use an offset spatula, and swipe the top while you turn. So you’re pulling in and turning at the same time to get a nice edge. Every drop of frosting was used. Perfect coverage, no waste. This goes into the fridge to set up. And while it’s chilling, we’ll make our chocolate ganache, and crown the cake with strawberries.

So for the ganache. I have some water coming to a simmer. I want three and a half ounces of chocolate. Give this a nice, fine chop. You want to make a melted, creamy, amazing ganache. But you don’t want to have big chunks of chocolate to melt. That’ll take too much time. It’ll get a little bit too hot. It could burn. It could just be annoying for the drip situation. So fine chop is the best bet.

Strawberry Cake

Grab a bowl that will not touch the water when you add it to the pot. Drip cakes can be kind of intimidating. Even though they’re one of the easiest things to do the drip should be like just right. We’re gonna pop this onto our simmering water to melt now. Your chocolate’s gonna start melting pretty quickly. I’m gonna give it frequent stirs.

But while I do that, I’m also going to haul my strawberries. ‘Cause I want them to sit up perfectly straight on my cake. Take a break and stir. Back to hauling your strawberries. And then by the by, this is already done. So you don’t wanna melt all the chocolate. Any tiny little pieces that are left will melt with the residual heat. What I do wanna do is start cooling this down because if it’s too hot.

Conduct a Vertical Drip Test

No matter how thick your ganache is, if it’s too hot, it’ll just go straight down. And it could even like melt your cake a little bit, and create some problems. So let’s start cooling. It’ll finish melting on its own. Okay, I wanna tell you one trick for understanding whether or not your ganache is ready for a drip. So you get some ganache, a vertical surface, and you apply it.

And if it runs down super hard, you might wanna let it cool down for just a minute or two. If it doesn’t run down enough, you might wanna heat it, or even like go back and add more cream. But a vertical test will let you know if your drip’s gonna be pretty, or just like straight lines going down. We’re gonna pour almost all of our ganache on top of the cake. Now use an offset spatula, and just smooth it out to the edge. I love the contrast of brown and pink.

Decorate with Ganache and Strawberries

Now we’re gonna coax some drips out by pushing more ganache to the edge. If you go and like wait too long at this step, the ganache sets up and it’s too thick. So you end up trying to fix it and cheat it, and it’s just not fun. And now we are gonna crown this with our strawberries. Just really plant them in there. Because what can happen is they kinda slide off if things are not set up. And if you’re not secure about this, let the ganache set for a bit before you add them on.

This cake will last in the fridge for a while, but for the strawberries on top, if you’re not serving this immediately, give them a brush with some watered-down strawberry jam. It’ll make them shiny, and keep all the moisture inside. Look at this chocolate strawberry cake. You gotta make this chocolate strawberry cake. I gotta cut this cake. That might be a perfect cake. I’m tingling from all the flavors. It melts in your mouth. It’s creamy, strawberries, chocolate amazingness. I hope you get a chance to try this Chocolate Strawberry Cake Recipe.