Happy Tuesday! After a fun weekend, I am back in the kitchen with some fun Valentine’s recipes! If you need some ideas for other great Valentine’s desserts to make, my red velvet Oreo brownie bars are amazing.
So let’s start off with some tips on how to make the best chocolate cake
- Use room temperature ingredients
- Separate your dry ingredients from your wet ingredients
- Sift your dry ingredients to prevent chunks
- Weigh out the batter in your pans.
- Use high quality cake pans, like fat dadios.
- Use a good quality cocoa powder
Best strawberry buttercream
It’s true, I have perfected my strawberry buttercream. I promise, you will love it! What do I do that is different? I add blended freeze dried strawberries to it. I just find mine at target, but there are so many options on Amazon. Amazon is also the place to get my favorite strawberry emulsion by LorAnn’s. This emulsion is what creates the beautiful pink strawberry color without using any dye and it tastes just like a perfectly ripe strawberry. You’ll definitely want to come back for more. Here are some tips for the creamiest buttercream
- Beat cold butter in the mixer. This helps loosen stiff butter without making it too soft.
- Sift your powdered sugar. This helps prevent chunks in your buttercream.
- Blend or pulverize your freeze dried strawberries.
- After mixing your buttercream, add a little heavy cream and stir it with a rubber spatula. This helps to get the air bubbles out.
What is an emulsion?
An emulsion is when you force two things together that don’t normally want to go together. Kind of like my diet and cake. They don’t ever want to go together, yet here I am forcing them together.
So, in baking, an emulsion is when you take a water base and combine it with oil. This is one of the things that helps keep that delicious flavor in your baked dessert.
How to make chocolate dipped strawberries
If you think it’s actually pretty easy to make them, you aren’t wrong. Although… I want to teach you some easy tips on how to make sure you get the chocolate to harden without tempering it.
I like to use a high quality chocolate. My favorite is Ghirardelli’s dark chocolate wafers, but you can use whatever chocolate you prefer. To melt the chocolate, I always use a double boiler instead of the microwave. Make sure to add a teaspoon of melted coconut oil to help give it a nice crunch! Remember, use FRESH strawberries.
That’s all that you need to know!
Happy baking!
Recipe
Chocolate Dipped Strawberry Cake
Ingredients
For the chocolate cake
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup buttermilk room temp
- 1 cup hot water
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 ¾ cups granulated sugar
- ¾ cup special dark cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
For the strawberry frosting
- 2 cups unsalted butter room temperature
- 5 cups powdered sugar measured and then sifted
- ¼ cup heavy whipping cream
- ½ cup pulverized or finely blended freeze dried strawberries
- 1 teaspoon LorAnns’s strawberry emulsion
- Pinch of salt
- Fresh strawberries optional
Instructions
For the chocolate cake
- Preheat your oven to 325 F. With cooking spray, spray 3 8-inch pans or 4 6-inch pans, by spraying the bottom, lining them with parchment paper, and then spraying again. Set aside.
- In a stand sized mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Mix on low until evenly combined.
- In a small bowl, whisk the eggs, buttermilk, hot water, vanilla extract, and vegetable oil until evenly combined.
- With the mixer on the lowest speed, pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix just until combined. There should be no flour streaks. With a rubber spatula, scrape the bottom of the bowl to make sure the batter is evenly combined.
- Divide the batter evenly between the pans (about 15 ounces in each 8 inch pans), and bake for 30-33 minutes. After they are done baking, let them cool for 15 minutes and then transfer them to a cooling rack and let them finishing cooling there.
- After the cakes have come to room temperature, level the top of the cakes, if needed, and then wrap them in plastic wrap and freeze them in preparation for frosting the cake.
For the strawberry frosting
- In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter for about 2 minutes on medium-high speed.
- With the mixer on low speed, add the sifted powdered sugar and mix until combined. Add the finely blended freeze dried strawberries, strawberry emulsion, heavy cream and salt. Mix on medium-low speed until combined.
- Turn the mixer to medium high speed and beat the frosting for about 3 to 4 minutes, until light and fluffy. Scrape down the bowl and beat for 1 more minute
- Use a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to stir the frosting by hand to push out any air bubbles.
- For the chocolate dipped strawberries
- In a medium sized bowl, combine the coconut oil and melted chocolate and stir with a rubber spatula.
- Dip the strawberries and place them on a sheet of parchment paper. Let them harden before putting them on the cake.
Assembly
- Spread a small amount of frosting on a cake board to help “glue” the cake in place.
- Place the first cake layer, bottom-side down, in the center of the cake board. Using an offset spatula, spread about ½ to ⅔ cup frosting evenly across the cake layer. If using fresh strawberries, layer ½ cup fresh strawberries on the frosting and gently push them into the frosting.
- Place the second cake layer on top of the strawberry frosting layer and repeat step 2.
- Place the final cake layer, bottom-side up, on top of the second strawberry frosting layer and apply a thin coat of the strawberry buttercream around the cake. This is a crumb coat. This helps “set” the crumbs onto the cake
- Freeze the cake for 10 minutes to set the crumb coat.
- Continue to frost the cake with the rest of the strawberry buttercream and garnish with the chocolate dipped strawberries.