Celebration Cake with Chocolate Covered Strawberries

An early Father’s Day, a birthday, a day to celebrate family and friends, what other great reasons do we need to eat cake?!   As with most cakes, this cake was fun to make and fairly easy to assemble.

This Strawberry Celebration Cake is two 10″ round dark chocolate cakes. They are washed with a vanilla wash, a thin layer of buttercream, a thin layer of strawberry preserves, a thick layer of strawberry marscapone filling topped with fresh strawberries.   The 2nd chocolate round was put on top and frosted with delicate buttercream frosting. 

The strawberries were dipped in Ghirardelli chocolate. Some were drizzled with Callebaut white chocolate, some were sprinkled with unsweetend organic coconut and some were left plain chocolate.

The filagree are made from chocolate and red candy melts.

Make your favorite chocolate cake recipe.
Make the wash: simply boil 1 cup sugar with 1 cup of water for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and add 1/4 cup vanilla or other flavoring.
Make the filling: 16 oz Marscapone cheese + 1/4 cup confectioners sugar + 1/3 cup small chopped strawberries (sprinkled with confectioners sugar and left to sit 1/2 an hour) + 1 tsp vanilla extract + 1/2 cup heavy cream.  After the strawberries have sat 30 minutes in sugar, whip the marscapone, sugar, heavy cream and vanilla then stir in the strawberries and juices.
Make the buttercream frosting:  For this cake, you will need …2 cups butter + 1 pkt. of dream whip (4 TBS) + 1/2 tsp salt = whip for 2 minutes.  Add 4 TBS vanilla and whip another 2 minutes.  Add 4 lb confectioners sugar with about 1 cup or so of water(to desired consistency).  You will add the sugar at about 2 cups at a time plus a little water with each sugar addition.  Continue whipping for 3 minutes after all ingredients have been added.

Assemble cake as described above.

 

Sunday Schedule:  Ted and I are going to play 9 holes of golf (I’m doing it for him).  We hope to go strawberry picking following golf (he’s doing that for me), then Teddy should be joining us for dinner.  I have a couple of interesting menu items planned, that is if the day doesn’t get away from me like yesterday.  I had SO much I wanted to accomplish yesterday but the day flew past. 

Have a super Sunday!

Posted in Baking Cakes, Food Tagged: Callebaut chocolate, Celebration Strawberry Cake, Ghirardelli chocolate