Strawberry quark cake & chocolate leaves

I have lots of interests, one of them is flowers and plants. I'm so happy we have a garden, I can't wait to get my hands in it as the weather gets warmer. My dream is to have an English style garden - not too structured,  with colours of pink, purple, lilac, white and blues. At least to start with. We don't even have a grass yet. 

So I like to combine plant and flower features into my cakes too. These chocolate leaves are very easy to make.

The cake has the most delicious chocolate cake as the base. I used Mary Berry's recipe, she is one of the most famous bakers in the UK, and after tasting the cake, you'll understand why.

Chocolate cake

16 g pure cocoa powder

2 tbsp boiling water

1 egg

1,5 tbsp milk

58 g flour

1 tsp baking powder

30 g butter

100 g caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease a 20-22 cm springform tin and line with baking parchment.

Put the cocoa powder and boiling water into a large bowl and mix well to make a smooth paste.

Add rest of the ingredients and mix until just combined. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake until well risen and shrinking from the sides, about 15 minutes.

Cool the cake on a cake rack. When completely cooled down, even out the top with a serrated knife, and put back in the same, cleaned springform tin.

Strawberry filling

4 gelatine leaves

2 dl whipping cream

400 g sweet strawberry quark

1 tbsp sugar

2 tsp vanilla sugar

1-2 dl strawberries as puree

Put the gelatine leaves into large bowl with cold water for 5-10 minutes. Whip the cream with the sugars. Squeeze excess water out from the gelatin leaves and put in boiling hot water and mix until dissolved completely. Combine pureed strawberries and quark. Pour the gelatine + water mixture slowly into the strawberry quark , stirring at the same time.

Carefully add the whipped cream by folding it in with a cake spatula, until everything looks even and smooth.

Pour the mixture over the cake, and put it in the fridge for at least 4 hours, or over night. Put a small sharp knife under hot running water, and carefully 'loosen' the edges of the cake from the springform tin. Open the tin slowly, this helps the cake not to split.

Chocolate leaves

50 g plain dark chocolate

real rose leaves (you can use any leaves you like, but be careful not to use poisonous plants) mint leaves are nice to use as well.

Put the chocolate in a microwave proof bowl. Give the chocolate 30 second blasts, stirring after each  one. Be careful not to over heat, if you do, the chocolate wont set properly anymore.

Brush your chosen leaves with the melted chocolate, and let them cool until set. Carefully peel the leaf off the chocolate. Done!