This recipe makes for 4-6” round cakes.

Pre-heat oven to 350F.

Butter 4-6" cake pans and place a parchment paper circle in the bottom of pans. Butter parchment. Set aside.

Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and espresso powder, if using it instead of coffee. Set aside.

Cream butter at medium-high speed for 1 minute.

Add sugar slowly, cream for another 2 minutes.

Add eggs to the mixture, one at a time, scraping the bowl in between and making sure the first egg is incorporated before adding the second one.

Add vanilla extract and mix.

Slowly add milk, mix to combine.

Pour dry ingredients over wet mixture.

Fold with a spatula slowly, until ingredients are just combined.

If you see big clumps of cocoa powder, you can use the whisk to try to gently smooth the batter out.

Once batter is incorporated, pour hot coffee in the bowl. Whisk until combined.

Pour batter evenly onto baking pans.

Bake in pre-heated oven for 10-20 min. After the 10 minute mark, keep checking regularly, because you don’t want to burn your cakes or overbake them. Remove them from the oven once a toothpick comes our clean once inserted in the cake.

Once you remove it from the oven, wait 10 minutes, flip cakes onto a cookie cooling rack and let cakes cool.

Once cool, wrap each layer individually in plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use. I like to leave my layers in the fridge for quite a bit so they can firm up and make it easier to assemble and decorate the cake. Specially an oil based cake such as this one, which is a super moist and fluffy cake.

Start by buttering the bottom and sides of a heat-proof bowl. Set aside.

Place all ingredients in a small saucepan.

Bring it to a boil over medium-high heat, while stirring non-stop. You will stir for the entire time, so your fudge doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan and burn. And that will happen in a split second if you don’t watch it.

Once mixture comes to a boil, reduce heat to medium.

Basically you will cook this mixture for 10-15 minutes, until it gets very thick and fudgy.

To know when it’s done cooking, there’s a simple test, scrape the bottom of the pan right down the middle with your spatula or spoon, if you are able to see the bottom of the pan and mixture takes several seconds to cover the whole bottom of the pan again, you are probably done.

Also, you can tilt your pan to the side, and if the whole mixture starts to slide down together, you are all set to turn the heat off.

Instantly remove mixture to the prepared bowl.

Let it cool completely, on the counter.

You can refrigerate it and finish later if you want to, but you will have to let the mixture come back to room temperature to be able to spread it on the cake.

While the White Fudge Filling comes to room temperature, you can start to get ready all the ingredients to make the Chocolate Frosting.

Start by melting the chopped chocolate in the microwave, or over a double boiler. I usually just microwave the chocolate for 15-30 seconds at a time, always stirring in between to help the chocolate melt evenly and faster, without having to overheat it. You never want to overheat chocolate. Set chocolate aside to cool down.

Now, sift the cocoa powder and powdered sugar together. Set aside.

In the bowl of a mixer, combine cream cheese and butter. Cream for 2 minutes, until creamy and fluffy.

Pour melted and cooled chocolate in the bowl of the mixer. Mix on slow until combined. Scrape the bowl to ensure everything is getting incorporated.

With the mixer off, add sifted powdered sugar and cocoa powder.

Mix on low until combined. Raise speed to high and cream for one minute.

Add vanilla.

If frosting seems too thick, add 1-2 tablespoons of heavy cream, or as necessary. If frosting is too runny, it might need some more powdered sugar, so sift some and throw in there. Read the post above for some more troubleshooting.

Place one layer of the cake over your cake board or plate.

On top of the cake, pipe a circle of chocolate frosting around the edges.

Fill the middle with the cooled down White Fudge Frosting. Add half of the chopped strawberries.

Top with another cake layer.

Repeat the same procedure as before.

Top with the final cake layer.

Frost cake with a thin layer of frosting. This is called crumb coating, and it helps your cake not have any crumbs in the frosting, which makes the cake more visually appealing, not that there’s anything wrong with cake crumbs.

After applying a thin layer of frosting to your cake, refrigerate the cake for at least 40 minutes. I like to do this because it will make the final frosting so much easier, the cake will be sturdier and firmer since it will have had time to chill.

Apply final layer of frosting, make it a thick one.

Pipe decorations on top of the cake.

I melted some dark chocolate and dipped my strawberries in, and then drizzled melted white chocolate on top. Nothing too fancy. Super easy. You can use those chocolate coatings too if you want to preserve a nice shine to your strawberry covered chocolate, but don’t want to temper the chocolate.