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Description
The birthday cake I made for my best friend, Jessica!

This is a three layered cake, with whipped dark chocolate ganache in the centre layered with sliced strawberries. On top, I poured over dark chocolate ganache, piped some whipped chocolate ganache to hold the ganache dipped strawberries... and I diced up a few strawberries to throw around the base and the centre

!!Update!!

I've been getting a few requests for recipes, so here goes some pretty basic instruction on how to do it...

Bake your favourite chocolate cake, enough to make 3 layers in a 9 inch, round cake pan. You can make it 2 layers if you like
Slice up a lot of strawberries... I don't know exactly how many I used because it was such a long time ago, but too many strawberries is never a problem, since they're very nice for snacking!
The outer layer of chocolate is simply ganache. Ganache is melted chocolate mixed with whipping cream. The inner layer of the cake is also made of the ganache, but I divided my recipe of ganache into two bowls. I whipped one of the portions, and used that to pipe around the cake as well as layer the strawberries on inside the layers.
Assemble! You can see from the bottom right picture what I've done. Cake, whipped ganache, strawberries, repeat!
I filled in the sides that were exposed strawberry with some more whipped ganache so that the ganache can pour over and spread evenly (or helped along with a spatula!) any left over regular ganache was used to dip the strawberries in. Note that the chocolate won't fully set up and harden, since it is not tempered chocolate. I piped some whipped ganache as a border along the bottom of the cake and diced some strawberries to garnish.

and that's the general gist of what I did... you can find pretty good chocolate cake recipes in books, online, etc... and a recipe for ganache can be easily found online. But if you want to whip the ganache, you're going to have to suck it up and use whipping cream! NO CUTTING CALORIES ON THIS ONE!!! haha

Description
The birthday cake I made for my best friend, Jessica!

This is a three layered cake, with whipped dark chocolate ganache in the centre layered with sliced strawberries. On top, I poured over dark chocolate ganache, piped some whipped chocolate ganache to hold the ganache dipped strawberries... and I diced up a few strawberries to throw around the base and the centre

!!Update!!

I've been getting a few requests for recipes, so here goes some pretty basic instruction on how to do it...

Bake your favourite chocolate cake, enough to make 3 layers in a 9 inch, round cake pan. You can make it 2 layers if you like
Slice up a lot of strawberries... I don't know exactly how many I used because it was such a long time ago, but too many strawberries is never a problem, since they're very nice for snacking!
The outer layer of chocolate is simply ganache. Ganache is melted chocolate mixed with whipping cream. The inner layer of the cake is also made of the ganache, but I divided my recipe of ganache into two bowls. I whipped one of the portions, and used that to pipe around the cake as well as layer the strawberries on inside the layers.
Assemble! You can see from the bottom right picture what I've done. Cake, whipped ganache, strawberries, repeat!
I filled in the sides that were exposed strawberry with some more whipped ganache so that the ganache can pour over and spread evenly (or helped along with a spatula!) any left over regular ganache was used to dip the strawberries in. Note that the chocolate won't fully set up and harden, since it is not tempered chocolate. I piped some whipped ganache as a border along the bottom of the cake and diced some strawberries to garnish.

and that's the general gist of what I did... you can find pretty good chocolate cake recipes in books, online, etc... and a recipe for ganache can be easily found online. But if you want to whip the ganache, you're going to have to suck it up and use whipping cream! NO CUTTING CALORIES ON THIS ONE!!! haha