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a slice of 3 layer strawberry chocolate cake with pink strawberry frosting and a piece of heart-shape strawberry slice on top of chocolate ganache.

Strawberry Chocolate Cake with Stawberry Cream Cheese Frosting

No food coloring or dried strawberry required. Tender, not-too-sweet chocolate cake paired with fruity tangy strawberry cream cheese frosting and drizzled with chocolate ganache.
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Prep Time 6 hours
Course Dessert
Servings 1 6-inch cake (for 8 small slices))

Equipment

  • 1 stand mixer with a paddle attachment optional, the cake batter can easily be done by hand with a whisk. Use a hand mixer for the frosting.
  • 3 6-inch round cake pans
  • 1 immersion blender
  • 1 cake decoration tool set (cake spinner, offset spetula, bench scraper ) optional

Ingredients
  

Chocolate Cake (halved from Claire Saffitz's NYT Chocolate Cake)

  • 130 g Cake Flour (Weizenmehl 405 in Germany)
  • 225 g Sugar
  • ½ tsp Salt (regular table salt or fine sea salt)
  • ¾ tsp Baking Powder
  • ¾ tsp Baking Soda
  • 40 g Cocoa Powder
  • 90 g Hot Coffee
  • 120 g Creme Fraiche or sour cream
  • ½ tsp Vanilla Paste
  • 3 Eggs The original recipe would be 2.5 whole eggs and 1 egg yolk but I just don't wanna have leftover eggs.
  • 90 g Oil

Strawberry Jam

  • 150 g Strawberries (fresh or frozen)
  • 60 g Sugar
  • 1.5 Tbsp Lemon Juice

Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting (just enough to cover the cake)

  • 200 g Softened Butter
  • 100 g Powder Sugar sifted, could add more if you like sweet
  • 175 g Cream Cheese could add a bit more or less. The philadelphia cream cheese just so happens to be 175g per box
  • 70 g Strawberry Jam about half of the jam made above

Chocolate Ganach

  • 35 g Chocolate Chip or Finely Chopped Chocolate (semi-sweet or milk chocolate)
  • 35 g Heavy Cream

Deocration

  • Stawberries

Instructions
 

Chocolate Cake (Claire's video linked in note below)

  • Line the 3 cake pans with baking paper at the bottom by smearing some butter on the pan first and stick the cut pieces of paper on. Preheat the oven at 175 ℃
  • Mix 130 g Cake Flour, 225 g Sugar, ½ tsp Salt, ¾ tsp Baking Powder, ¾ tsp Baking Soda in the stand mixer bowl until combined. If you don't have a stand mixer, just use a big bowl and mix everything by hand.
  • In a separate bowl, bloom the cocoa by combining 90 g Hot Coffee and 40 g Cocoa Powder and mix. It should smell nice like hot chocolate. Then, add 120 g Creme Fraiche and ½ tsp Vanilla Paste to the bowl and mix well to combine.
  • In another separate bowl, whisk 3 Eggs together.
  • In the stand mixer bowl with the mixed dry ingredients, add 90 g Oil and half of the cocoa coffee mixture at low speed until the flour is well coated in liquid. Then increase the speed to medium to mix until smooth and pasty. (~30 secs)
  • Add in the eggs and the other half of the cocoa coffee mixture. Continue to mix at medium speed until it looks glossy and silky. (~1 min)
  • Pour the batter into the 3 lined pans. (275~290 g each)
  • Bake for 20 to 25 mins. Start checking at 20 by inserting a toothpick or cake tester in the center, and if the toothpick comes out clean with no batter sticking to it, it's ready.
  • Remove the cake from the oven and let cool in the pan.

Strawberry Jam

  • In a small sauce pan, combine 150 g Strawberries, 60 g Sugar, and 1.5 Tbsp Lemon Juice together and cook on medium high heat. It will start getting very liquity and then foamy. Stir frequently during this process.
  • After the bubbles disppappear, turn the heat down to medium low and cook until the jam is so sticky that if you coat the back of a spoon with the jam and run your finger though it, the jam doesn't coat the spoon back and a bit stickier than that.
    If unsure, just cook until you think it's the thickest it can be. Twe want to make a super thick strawberry concentrate so the frosting does not get watery once we add the jam.
  • Use an immersion blender to puree the jam until smooth and transfer to the fridge to let cool.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting

  • In a stand mixer bowl, combine 200 g Softened Butter and 100 g Powder Sugar and mix with a paddle on high speed until it's buttercream consistency, which is glossy, creamy, fluffy and pale. (~15 mins)
  • Add 70 g Strawberry Jam (a bit more than half of the jam made earlier) to the mixture and mix until evenly combined.
  • Add in 175 g Cream Cheese bits by bits and mix until the whole mixture is very well combined. You can add more jam to reach your desired color.
    The forsting will look kinda curdled at this stage. It will become smoother when it's sitting in room temp for about 20 mins, but you don't need to wait to crumb coat because it's hidden underneath the top coat anyways.
    If your cream cheese has some water floating in the box, make sure to get rid of it and tap dry with paper towel or even squeeze it dry if you get a very watery one.

Assemble

  • Remove the cakes from the pans and peel the baking paper off. Then trim the top flat.
  • Put a slice of cake (bottom side down) on a cake board or a piece of baking paper on top of the cake spinner. Cover the top with a thin layer of frosting and put half of the remaining jam and optionally some fresh strawberry chunks in the center.
    a chocolate cake layer with
  • Layer with another slice and repeat. Then cover with the last slice bottom-side up so the top is nice and even.
  • Crumb Coat
    Then crumb coat the cake by applying a thin layer of frosting on the top and fill the gaps between the layer using an offset or flat icing spetula.
    Then use the spetula to pick up dollops of frosting to smear and smooth it on the cake thinly with a "back and forth" kinda motion.
    Once everything is covered thinly, smooth the side by lightly attaching and holding a bench scraper straight and still AND turn the cake spinner smoothly for a whole 360° in one go. It can be slow. You just need to turn the spinner smoothly ideally without pausing. But it's still forgiving in this step if it's not smooth.
    Then, smooth the top side by holding you spetula horizontally and pulling from the edge to the center.
    At his step, you don't need to cover the cake perfectly with the frosting. It just needs to be enough to seal the crumbs of the cake so just a thin layer will do.
    Move the cake to the fridge to chill for 20-30 mins or until the frosting is cold and set on the cake.
  • Top Coat
    Take the cake out from the fridge and apply a thin layer of frosting on the top again surface. It doesn't need to be perfect because we will put chocolate drizzle on top of it in the end.
    Then, repeat the smearing and smoothing frosting on the side of the cake with a icing spetula and make sure the whole cake is covered and no chocolate cake color is exposed. Use more frosting than you think as it's easier to remove than add the frosting. You will most likely need to use all the frosting for this recipe because I made it specifically to not have much leftover.
    Now again, hold up the bench scraper and spin the spinner to smooth out the side. Fill any exposed cake or uneven surface with frosting and repeat until you are almost happy with how it looks. Then run your bench scraper under hot water, dry it, and do one last smoothing to make it extra pretty.
    Transfer the cake back to the fridge and let chill for another 20-30 mins. Or you can go to bed at this point and continue the next day.

Chcolate Ganache Drip

  • Heat up 35 g Heavy Cream and 35 g Chocolate Chip or Finely Chopped Chocolate together in the microwave to melt them together. Do 10-20 second intervals, pause and stir in between.
    If you don't have a microwave, heat the heavy cream in a small pot and pour it to the chocolate.
  • Take out the cake from the fridge and use a teaspoon to drip the ganache on the edge of the top surface and gently push it towards the side. Repeat until you cover all sides.
  • Pour the rest of the genache on the center of the top surface and smooth it out with an offset spetula to cover the whole surface. Optionally, make a swirl with your spoon by placing it flat on the edge and slowly move it towards the center while spinning the cake at the same time to make it pretty. If you are going to cover it completely later, then skip the swirl.
    Then transfer it to the fridge until it sets.
  • (Optional) Put some strawberries or anything you like on the cake and before serving. Don't put the strawberries on top beforehand unless you just wanna use a few because they release the juice over time. If there's too much juice, the chocolate genache absorbs the liquid and sweat down the cake.
    My friend said she wanted it filled with strawberries so I gave her the strawberries to put on top before she serves. It looks magificent lol.

Serve!

  • Let the cake come back to almost room temp (~15 mins) before serving so the frosting is creamy and just melts in your mouth.

Notes

The step-by-step pictures above are for a 8-inch cake, your frosting should be half the quantity if you follow the quantity in the recipe.
To make an 8-inch (20cm) cake, You can double the ingredients and adjust the bake time to 25-30 mins. The oven may not fit all three pans on the middle rack, so put them on the upper- and lower-middle racks. Switch racks after 20 mins. This is the original recipe from Claire's NYT video.
Here are super helpful videos where I learn how to decorate a cake: 
Crumb Coat
Top Coat
Chocolate Drip
Keyword cake, not too sweet, vegetarian