Cake Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F. Butter and coat two 8” round cake pans with cocoa powder or coat them with baking release spray. I use damp cake strips on my pans for more evenly baked layers.
2. To a large bowl, add and whisk together all-purpose flour, brown and granulated sugar, dutch processed cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, espresso powder, and kosher salt. Set aside.  
3. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together your vanilla extract, eggs, greek yogurt or sour cream, buttermilk, and oil.
4. Pour your hot water into the bowl of dry ingredients so your cocoa powder can bloom. Mix until fully combined, and then pour bowl of other ingredients to this one and mix again until all ingredients are fully incorporated.
5. Pour and evenly spread the batter into your prepared cake pans (about 515 grams in each pan). Bake for 35-40 minutes or until layers bounce back at the touch of your finger.
6. Let cakes cool in pans for about 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.

Roasted Strawberry Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. Toss berries, lemon juice, sugar, and salt in a bowl before spreading them out into an aluminum or metal pan to bake for about 20 minutes, flipping berries halfway through.  
3. Once they’re softened and have a syrupy consistency, remove from oven and transfer to a heatproof bowl. Let cool in refrigerator. 

Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting & Cake Assembly

1. Create a double boiler on your stovetop, using a medium-sized heatproof bowl on top of a similarly sized pot full of gently boiling water. Pour your heavy cream and chocolate pieces into the heatproof bowl and whisk occasionally until smooth.
2. Then pour that into your mixing bowl, along with room temperature cream cheese and vanilla extract. Mix everything together for about 1 minute. It will look initially lumpy.
3. Lastly, beat in powdered sugar. The final texture will look like a thick pudding.
4. Put frosting into piping bag fitted with round tip.
5. Pipe or spread a dollop of cream cheese frosting onto a cake circle to act as glue to hold the layer in place. Set first cake layer on top of that.
6. Pipe about a third of your frosting on top of the bottom layer and spread evenly with a cake spatula or large metal spoon. Create thick piping border to hold in filling and spread all of your roasted strawberry filling inside the border. The border should be the height of the strawberries so that they don’t leak out!
7. Place second cake layer on top of the first. Then, starting from the base of the cake and moving to the top, pipe a thick layer of frosting all around your cake’s sides and top.
8. Use a cake spatula to smooth out the ganache on the cake's top. Alternate using this and a cake scraper against the side of the cake to gently pull the cake around to smooth out bubbles in the frosting.
9. Use an open star tip on a piping bag to decorate any sections you'd like with remaining ganache. Top with sliced strawberries if desired.