It’s school holidays here in Australia and you know what that means, The Mother Daughter Baking Team is back in the kitchen in full force!
Demi is very much into Masterchef, so I record it and we watch it the next day together. Last week we watched them make a completely fabulous stripy cake. We set out with the intention of attempting one ourselves. However, I completely misjudged the amount of icing sugar we needed to create the effect, not surprising really since I never make icing. But thankfully Demi was happy with the small amount we had as long as we made it pink. So while this is in no way a stripy cake, it’s still an incredibly moist, delicious and healthy one.
I was planning on the sweetness to come from the icing that was meant to surround the entire cake, oops, so it’s not overly sweet. Demi suggested we layer it using strawberries because they go so beautifully with chocolate. And why not? While layer cakes always have a cream or icing of some kind between the layers, we are the Mother Daughter Baking Team and are known for our healthier alternatives. So as long as your cake is soft and moist, there’s nothing wrong with seperating your layers with strawberries, you’ll still get the height and pretty colours when you slice.

So yes, we are very aware this isn’t your traditional layer cake, but we love it this way and hope you do too!
Demi insisted on making this a chocolate cake, I tried to pioneer vanilla but the five year old Miss Stubborn wanted chocolate, so we pulled out the cacao powder, and along with it the coconut and stevia, our fall back way to sweeten anything. I recently bought some liquid stevia, a first for me, and we were still trying to work out quantities. We finally got it in this cake. Sweet without being too sweet, with a hum of coconut in the background this turned out a deliciously chocolatey healthier cake. The kids are loving it, and despite my low carb lifestyle I ate a bit too much of it myself. We used mini cake tins so it’s still small when it comes to a slice, but definitely big enough to satisfy a craving.
For the sake of full disclosure, we layered only three cakes, our fourth broke while we cut it. That was the one I’ve been eating, so no real harm done.

Demi’s Healthy Chocolate Strawberry Layer Cake
Ingredients
For the cake
1 1/2 cups of wholemeal self raising flour
1 tsp of baking powder
1 heaped tbls of cacao powder
1/4 of a cup of desicated coconut
A pinch of coffee
2 eggs
8 drops of liquid stevia *see notes
3/4 of a cup of full cream milk
1/3 of a cup of softened unsalted butter

For the icing
15 grams of room temperature unsalted butter
3/4 of a cup of icing sugar
2 tbls of full cream milk
Pink food colouring
4 strawberries sliced for decoration

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200°c.
2. In a large mixing bowl add all the cake ingredients and stir with a rubber spatula until a smooth, wet batter forms.

3. Grease and line your cake tins, we used two 15cm round springform pans **see notes. Spoon the mixture into the tins so they’re roughly 3/4 of the way full.
4. Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cakes comes out clean.
5. Allow the cakes to cool fully on a wire rack before icing and slicing.

To make the icing
6. Add the softened butter and sifted icing sugar into the bowl of your electric mixer and beat until they start to combine. Add the milk a little bit at a time until a smooth, glossy consistency forms. It will end up being around that 2 tbls mark.
7. Carefully drop in your food colouring, 2 or 3 drops will be fine. Demi insisted on mixing the pink through herself but the mixer will do the job just fine.

8. Carefully slice your cakes straight through the centre to split them in half long ways with a serated knife.
9. Cut up your strawberries how you’d like to present them and layer them on top of each cake and stack them one on top of the other.

10. Spread the icing over the top of the cake until you’re happy with the way it looks.

Yes, the icing sugar strays from our usual kind of recipe, but hey, it’s the school holidays and really, how much do you get per slice when it’s a layer cake anyway! This was a true Demi special, chocolate and pink are her two favourite things. She says, “I hopes you enjoy my cake as much as I loved making it!”

Nutrition facts based on one piece of cake.

Notes
* Liquid stevia isn’t something found in a lot of kitchens, so sub it out for about 2 tablespoons of another liquid sweetner like honey or rice malt syrup. That will achieve a similar sweetness level.
** This mixture would need to be doubled to make a standard sized 24cm 4 tier layer cake.