Chocolate strawberry Bisquick cake is a surprisingly moist flavorful cake that starts with baking mix.
I saw some Bisquick in the store recently. For those of you outside the US, Bisquick is a baking mix that you can use to make pancakes or biscuits.
When I was young, my mother didn’t cook. The only baked goods we had, came from box mixes. My sister and I were grateful for our box-mix baked goods.
I know many people scoff at box mixes but they have their place. For those who lack confidence or skill, box mixes provide relatively foolproof alternatives to from scratch recipes. I read some time ago that kids today no longer learn how to cook so what we consider “simple” may not seem so to millennials.
If you’re a busy mom who is pressed for time, throwing a few ingredients into a mix speeds up the process. I started making biscotti when my kids were young because you could over bake them with little consequences. So no judgement here.
I haven’t used Bisquick since I left home so I picked up a box for old time’s sake. Then came the question of what to do with this box of mix. I wasn’t in the mood for pancakes and home-made biscuits are sooooo much better than Bisquick.
I have to say though that Jiffy makes seriously good, cheap biscuit and corn bread mixes. They were staples in my college years. Hard to beat $0.25, an egg and some water for 6 cornbread muffins. Just as cheap as Ramen but better!
Valentine’s Day is coming up and I wanted to make a chocolate strawberry cake for my heart cake pan.
I revised a recipe I found on King Arthur flour for gluten-free baking mix vanilla cake. The result was a surprisingly moist chocolate cake with a hint of strawberry flavor.
I only added a cup of chopped strawberries because I worried about making the moisture content too high. I think you could add another half cup and be fine. If you want more strawberry flavor, you could add a teaspoon of strawberry extract or add a tablespoon of strawberry jam to the batter.
The texture of this chocolate strawberry Bisquick cake is also a little different from a typical cake. It’s more biscuit like (scones for you non-Americans). So it’s dense and a little coarse for a cake. Even so, my colleagues gobbled it up.
I baked my cake in a Wilton heart pan. The decorative pattern was so pretty I could have just dusted my chocolate strawberry bisquick cake with powdered sugar and served it with strawberry sauce and maybe some fresh strawberries.
I didn’t have any fresh strawberries to dress this up so I topped it with a dark chocolate ganache. I tried to make the heart out of white chocolate strawberry ganache but my decorating skills are limited. So I used whipped cream (from a can) to cover up my rough edges.
If you don’t have Bisquick, you can make your own biscuit mix with this recipe.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup oil
- 4 medium eggs (3 large eggs)
- 1 cup sour cream
- 2 1/2 cups Bisquik (baking mix)
- 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 cup chopped strawberries
- 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
- 2 bars of dark chocolate (200 grams) broken into small pieces
- 1/2 cup heavy cream, room temperature
- 1/3 cup white chocolate chips
- 1/3 cup heavy cream, room temperature
- 1 1/2 tablespoons strawberry jam
- powdered food coloring (if more pink is desired)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 13 x 9 inch baking pan or a 10" bundt pan.
- Cream butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, mixing until smooth.
- Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until just combined.
- Pour into the baking pan and bake for 35-40 minutes for a 9x13 inch pan or 45-55 minutes for the bundt pan.
- Let cool to luke-warm before removing from the pan.
- Cover the cake with chocolate ganache or dust with powdered sugar.
- Put ingredients into a heat-proof bowl that fits on top of a large pot without touching the bottom of the pot.
- Boil a small amount of water in the bottom of the large pot.
- Turn the heat off and set the bowl on top. Let sit for 5 minutes. Then stir the chocolate and cream together until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth.
- Put chocolate chips and cream in a heat proof bowl. Set the bowl on top of a pan of boiling water and turn off the heat. Let sit for 3-5 minutes and stir until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth.
- Mix in the strawberry jam until smooth.
- You can add a little powdered food coloring if you want more pink color (liquid food coloring has too much water and may cause the chocolate to seize up).
