Festive chocolate cake

This is the perfect cake for celebrating special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. Decorated with strawberries and vegan marshmallows, it looks beautiful and is rich in flavor but it is very simple to prepare. 

Ingredients:

Cake:

Wet Ingredients: 

• ⅓ + ⅙ cup water
• ⅙ cup melted coconut oil
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 2 ripe bananas

Dry Ingredients:

• Simple Mills Chocolate Cake Mix

Decorations:

Syrup-soaked strawberries:

• 7-9 chopped strawberries
• 3 tbsp maple syrup
• ½ tsp vanilla extract

Marshmallows:

• Dandies vanilla mini marshmallows

Chocolate Drizzle:

• ½ cup Hu chocolate gems
• 1 tsp coconut butter

Instructions:

Cake:

• Preheat the oven to 350 F.
• Blend the wet ingredients using a stand blender or an immersion blender till smooth (I use an immersion blender).
• Pour in the dry ingredients and whisk using an electric or manual whisk.
• Line your springform cake pan with parchment paper and grease the edges with coconut oil
• Add the batter to the pan and bake the cake for 40-50 minutes or until fully cooked.
• Enjoy!

Decoration Preparation

• Mix the ingredients for the syrup-soaked strawberries and rest in the fridge for 10-15 minutes.
• Heat water in an electric kettle and pour the boiling water in a large bowl. Add the chocolate gems and coconut butter to a small bowl and place the small bowl in the boiling water to melt the chocolate and coconut butter. Once it is melted, you can drizzle the melted chocolate onto the cake and/or make designs with it on parchment paper and set them in the freezer to later add to the cake.

Assembly:

• Cool the cake and drizzle with melted chocolate on the edges of the cake (if you haven’t already) and top with frozen chocolate designs that you set on parchment paper.
• Stick mini marshmallows to the part of the cake that is topped with melted chocolate.
• Top the sides or middle of the cake with strawberries.