White Chocolate and Strawberry Cake

I had the difficult task of making a birthday cake for my housemate recently, made harder when she requested I use white chocolate and strawberries. I felt like I was a contestant on Ready, Steady, Cook! Although it's a nice change to make something different to the usual boring chocolate cake.

So with my ingredients set, I decided to keep it simple and make a plain sponge, with a few additions...

Cake Ingredients

• 225g self-raising flour
• 225g soft butter
• 225g caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 100g white chocolate chips

First preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line two sandwich tins with butter and baking parchment. Next measure the butter, sugar, eggs and baking powder into a large bowl and mix. Now sieve the flour into the mixture and fold in. This will keep the cake light and fluffy! Finally add the chocolate chips. Only stir enough for the chips to be mixed in, keeping the air in your cake.

It's now ready to bake. Split the mixture between the two cake tins and put on the middle shelf of the oven. Bake for 20 minutes, then test by putting a knife in the middle of each cake. If it comes out clean it's ready, if not put the cakes back in until done. (Keep testing the cakes regularly to make sure that they don't burn)

When ready, leave the cakes to cool on a wire rack (or chopping board if you don't have one) before icing.

Icing Ingredients

• 300g soft butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 750g icing sugar
• 150g white chocolate

Now you're ready to literally put the icing on the cake! Start by creaming (or mixing) the butter, then add the vanilla and icing sugar. I always sieve the icing sugar first, to make sure there are no lumps in the buttercream! Stir well to ensure that it's all mixed together nicely.

Now for the tricky bit. Carefully melt the chocolate (either in short bursts in the microwave or in a glass bowl over boiling water) then stir it into the buttercream. Now immediately spread the chocolate buttercream on the cake, smoothing half over each cake and then assembling them. You have to be fast as the melted chocolate sets very fast, making it harder to spread! For decoration, I sliced strawberries and covered the top of the cake with them. 

Keep the cake covered in the fridge and try to eat within a few days or it'll start going soggy (although I'm sure that won't be a problem!)

Let me know how you get on!