Death By Chocolate Cake

Ingredients for the cake:
1 3/4 cups cake flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup warm water or coffee
2 large eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Ingredients for the frosting:
1 pack cream cheese
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1 tub mascarpone cheese (optional)
1 cup heavy cream
3 cups icing sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
Sift all the dry ingredients for the cake (flour, cocoa, baking powder, soda, sugar and salt) in a mixing bowl and set aside. Mix the wet ingredients (buttermilk, water/coffee, eggs, oil, vanilla) in a separate bowl. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients.

Mix well and divide the batter evenly between two 9inch round baking pans (spray the pans with oil and line with parchment paper). Bake the cake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Allow cool completely then carefully take the cakes out of the pan and peel off the parchment paper.

For the frosting:
Using a hand mixer, beat the mascarpone, cream cheese, butter and vanilla till it's well combined.

Sift in the sugar and cocoa powder (to avoid lumps - see pic)

Whip the heavy cream in a different bowl till stiff peaks form. Note: You can add the heavy cream to the cream cheese/sugar mixture and beat everything on high speed till the cream whips...but because I was using a brand of heavy cream I hadn't tried before, I beat it in a different bowl just to make sure it whips. Then I folded the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture.

After folding in the whipped cream, cover tightly with cling film and refrigerate for about 10 - 15 minutes. I use that time to clean up my work space before I begin assembling the cake.

Assemble the cakes on a board. I like to line the board with strips of parchment paper and then pull them off at the end so that the cake board stays clean (see pic)

Cover the entire cake with the frosting and refrigerate while you make the chocolate ganache (recipe here).

Let the ganache cool completely then drizzle on top of the cake and refrigerate.

Make some chocolate covered strawberries (recipe coming soon) and top off the cake.

Pardon my lil cerebellar ataxia (medical joke) on some of those strawberries. Haha.

This is such a sinful cake so don't take too huge a slice ;) I wish I could cut into the cake but it was a gift to someone.