Chocolate Strawberry Cake

Combine fresh, juicy strawberries from Cameron Highlands with a huge craving for chocolate cake and what do you get?

Baking choc, cocoa powder? Check.

Flour, sugar? Check

Patience and determination? Check

Now its time to get the crusty oven working. Sometimes, only home baked cakes will satisfy my sweet tooth. :)

As usual, Simply Recipes is my go to website. For the chocolate cake recipe I used, please click here. I made only half of the recipe. It came out good - very moist, rich and dense. (I used Van Houten baking chocolate instead of cocoa for the frosting)

For the strawberry topping, cut strawberries to about 2mm thick slices. Add a little sugar (depends on how sweet/sour your strawberries are) and mix it well. Set aside to macerate for about 20 mins. Macerating is the process of softening the strawberries and in here, it will also sweeten any rebelliously sour strawberries.

Once you've frosted your cake, spread the strawberries on top as you like. I went for free style haha, just dump as much as possible on the cake.

I also chose a loaf tin rather than the 9" round tin recommended because I always feel loaf shaped cakes have a very 'homebaked' look about them, don't you? And the free style arrangement of strawberries are more honest looking ( read: unprofessional :P) .

Anyway, I loved the cake very much! Yum Yum. And it was ages before I could take a bite as getting a good pix was tougher than I thought. My camera has a problem adjusting to the bright red colour of the strawberries...