Ingredients

• 20gbutter, softened
• 20gself-raising flour

• ½ cupcocoa
• ½ cupboiling water
• 185gbutter
• 1 ½ cupscaster sugar
• 3eggs
• 1 cupself-raising flour
• 1 cupplain flour
• ¼ teaspoonbicarb soda
• ¾ cupmilk
• 2 teaspoonsvanilla extract
• Chocolate dipped strawberries
• 200gmilk chocolate, melted
• 6strawberries

• ½ cupthickened cream
• 1 tablespoonicing sugar, sifted
• ½ teaspoonvanilla essence
• ½ punnet strawberries, sliced

• 200gdark cooking chocolate
• 200g milk cooking chocolate, plus extra for shaving
• 250gunsalted butter, softened to room temperature

• Crystallised violets
• 6strawberries dipped in ganache

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Method

• Preheat fan forced oven to 160°C.
• Grease two 20cm sandwich tins with butter, line the base and sides of each tin with baking paper, grease and dust with self-raising flour.
• For cake, mix cocoa and boiling water together in a cup and set aside to cool.
• Beat butter and sugar in an electric mixer until pale and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift flours with bicarb soda and stir into butter mixture. Add milk and vanilla and mix well.
• Gradually stir in cocoa mixture until just combined. The batter occasionally curdles at this stage, but will not spoil the finished cake.
• Pour into prepared cake tins and bake for 30-35 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Allow to stand for five minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.
• For chocolate dipped strawberries, dip strawberries halfway into melted chocolate and place on a baking tray to set until ready to decorate.
• For filling, whip cream with icing sugar and vanilla in the small bowl of an electric mixer until stiff peaks form.
• Take one cooled cake as the base, spread cream thickly on top and freeze for 10-15 minutes, until firm. Place a layer of sliced strawberries onto cream. Spread the top of the second cake with remaining cream and invert onto first cake layer. This gives you a level top layer.
• For chocolate ganache, heat about 3cm of water in a medium saucepan, place chocolate in a metal bowl over simmering water and gently melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally. Remove bowl from heat, add butter and stir through until combined and ganache starts to thicken.
• Spread over the cake immediately and decorate with crystallised violets and chocolate dipped strawberries.