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 also 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.

Chocolate Strawberry Bisquick Cake

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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

Chocolate Ganache

• 2 bars of dark chocolate (200 grams) broken into small pieces
• 1/2 cup heavy cream, room temperature

White Chocolate Strawberry ganache

• 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

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 13 x 9 inch baking pan or a 10" bundt pan.
2. Cream butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, mixing until smooth.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until just combined.
4. Pour into the baking pan and bake for 35-40 minutes for a 9x13 inch pan or 45-55 minutes for the bundt pan.
5. Let cool to luke-warm before removing from the pan.
6. Cover the cake with chocolate ganache or dust with powdered sugar.

Chocolate ganache

1. Put ingredients into a heat-proof bowl that fits on top of a large pot without touching the bottom of the pot.
2. Boil a small amount of water in the bottom of the large pot.
3. 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.

White chocolate strawberry ganache

1. 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.
2. Mix in the strawberry jam until smooth.
3. 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).

Looking for more Bisquick recipes? Try these

Nutty Toffee Bars

Recipe Lion’s 10 Bisquick Dessert Recipes