Strawberry Chocolate Cake with Rose Ganache

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If you like Turkish delight you’ll love this Strawberry Chocolate Cake smothered in thick milk chocolate ganache and fragrant rose flavour!

Pairing traditional English flavours with something more exotic: tea, strawberries, milk chocolate, English rose and a Turkish Delight twist!

Although I originally infused the ganache with rose tea bags, I have amended the ingredients and directions to use rose water essence or extract – as I used in my book’s ganache recipe – since this will be easier to find. You can buy rose water essence in Turkish or Middle Eastern stores, usually next to orange flower water. Larger supermarkets will likely stock it in their baking aisle.

Not all English people drink tea

Tea, sacred revitaliser of the nation. Putting the kettle on for a cuppa forms no part of my own relaxation, the snap of a diet coke tin or popping of a prosecco cork being more likely. Throw chocolate into the mix however and you’ve got my attention.

I realised lately that it was not necessarily tea I didn’t like, but it’s opaqueness (or should that be opacity? Answers below please).  Furthermore, it’s full fat milk with swirly stuff happening on the surface that worries me. A hangover from forced drinking of third pint bottles with thin green straws at school.

Nasty milk, ick. Slurped brown stuff with steam coming off it, double ick. Crisp clear green tea or a lapsang souchong? Much nicer.  I like tea that is fragrant and light, not that horrid builder’s stuff that spoons stand up in.

Tea and strawberries. Quintessentially British, I associate both with my grandparents. During a morning snuggle in grandma’s bed, I’d ask why on earth grandad took so long to make the tea downstairs. “Because,” my grandma would reply convincingly, “he goes all the way to China to fetch it.”  They tried in vain for years to make me drink it.

Fresh strawberry picking – a very English ritual

Strawberry picking too was a regular event each summer. Cardboard “pick your own” boxes with metal handles that today I only ever see at farmers’ markets always make me nostalgic for those carefree afternoons, a picnic in the back of an Austin Maxi and a ride on the slide made out of a giant fibre glass teddy bear.

Nigella Lawson’s chocolate cake using marmalade is a firm favourite of mine, not least because you can make it all in one pan and there’s barely any washing up. She suggests using other flavours of jam although I’ve taken this a bit further with some Turkish delight too – chocolate or sugar coated, either would work.  If you don’t have a double boiler to mix it in one go you could substitute using a small sauce to melt the butter and chocolate and then tip these into a large mixing bowl before adding the remaining ingredients.

The ganache I confess was a problem. I blame my own impatience before holiday. Lack of time to refrigerate meant mine was more of a sauce. I like it that way but you can decide whether you want sauce or chilled ganache. Incidentally, Nigella advocates serving the cake straight from the oven with creme fraiche so maybe my warm sauce is not so far off the mark.

A quick word about two ingredients; I used chocolate coated Turkish delight, discovered After Eight style in Morrison’s and some Baxter’s strawberry jam. The chocolate was Green and Blacks.  I received the jam at an afternoon tea event run by Baxter’s from which I have several other recipes to share with you very soon.

I am sending this cake post to Meeta of What’s for Lunch Honey‘s Monthly Mingle which this month is hosted by Erin of The Apartment Kitchen with the theme “Sweet Treats”.

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For a more conventional strawberry cake, take a look at my strawberry sandwich cake smothered in real fresh fruit. Perfect for getting through a giant punnet of pick your own strawberries! Another luxury ganache cake is this Chocolate Ganache Dessert which I made during a masterclass with expert chocolatier Paul A Young.  If the strawberry rose flavour combination in this cake is what you liked, you’ve got these Strawberry Muffins with Rose Water Icing.