Strawberry Dream Cake

Long time no blog! I've been a poorly thing this week, and I feel as if I'm not 100% here so all my commitments have gone out the window while I try and get myself back to normal. Before I began to feel a million miles away, however, I made this cake which I wanted to tell you about because it was one of my favourite creations ever (with the help of my sister, Sarah).

It's pretty simple, and only lovers of the strawberry creams in Quality Street will fully appreciate a cake like this, but I am most definitely one of them, and my friend Drew is too. It was his birthday a couple of weeks ago so I decided to make him a cake version of his favourite sweet - the strawberry dream.

I baked a chocolate cake from a recipe in a Sainsbury's book I have – can someone please tell me why it's so difficult to find a simple recipe for a chocolate cake online?!

Once cooled, I sandwiched the two sponges together with a thick layer of strawberry jam. I got this jam from Aldi and it's really good – it has lots of strawberries and seeds in it and because it's 50% fruit it's not too sweet or jelly-like.

For the icing I made a simple ganache (cream, brown sugar and dark chocolate) and spread it all over the top of the cake. If I was any good at presentation, I would have covered the sides of the cake, too.

To finish, I topped the cake with all the strawberry creams in one of the boxes of fruit cremes I bought - they're two for £4 in Tesco which is bad news for me as I'm addicted to them. Except for the lemon ones of course (who thought they would be a good idea?)

You see, pretty easy and pretty cool. I think chocolate and fruit work so well together, especially berries. Will you have a go at making a strawberry dream cake? Quality Street fruit cremes are back but only for Christmas! I'm gonna have to stock up...