Strawberry Cake.

Strawberries are in season and oh! How happy it makes me. It ‘s one of my favourite fruits when it comes to dessert. Just the sound of them makes a dessert seem lovely. Sadly, everything that apparently is of strawberry flavour tastes nothing close to the actual taste of strawberries. Strawberry  essence, custard, ice cream,  are all usually a let down.

So I can’t wait to go overboard with strawberries. Strawberry ice cream, strawberry cake, strawberry tart. . Endless. .  So I’ll start off with this strawberry cake, the recipe adapted from Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros  Its a wonderful book, with so many lovely recipes. Im so thankful I have a copy of it,

This was, as a rule for me, easy to make, and I didn’t take any trouble to make the cake look pretty. Sort of left it to have it rustic look and of course, the strawberries were there to make the cake look good.

You will need:

For the cake

1 ¾ cups flour plus flour for dusting

¾ cups powdered sugar

3 tsps baking powder

170 gms butter , melted and cooled.

¾ cup warm milk

4 eggs, separated

1 tsp vanilla extract

For the filling and icing.

400 gms strawberries

1 tsp lemon juice

4 tbsps icing sugar

2 cups cream

¾ cup orange juice (optional)

Ok. So lets start with preheating the oven to 175 C and greasing a 8 inch cake pan. Dust it with flour and tap out the excess flour. 

Mix the flour, sugar, 1 tsp of the baking powder. Mix it around Add the melted butter and stir in the milk. Next to go in are the egg yolks, which I added one by one, followed by the vanilla icing.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites, with the rest of the baking powder and gently fold in the whites in the cake mixture. You start by stirring in a bit of the egg whites into the cake mixture and then folding in the rest of the egg whites.

Pour the batter into a cake pan and bake till the cake is done. The recipe said to bake for an hour, but I baked for about 40 mins, as the cake was well baked then.

I told you it was going to be easy now, didn't I?

To get on to the icing and the filling; clean the strawberries and slice them into half, or dice them if they are larger. Keep a few whole if you want to use to decorate the cake. Mix the strawberries with the lemon juice and 1 tbsp of the icing sugar.

Make sure the cream is chilled and whip it with 3 tbsp of the icing sugar, till it thickens and forms stiff peaks. You need to use cream with high fat content and also take care not to split the cream by over whipping it.

                                                                    ' Baked'

Let the cake cool completely before you slice it into half horizontally. Put the bottom half of the cake on a cake board or serving plate. Use a serrated knife to cut the cake.

Though it wasn’t in the recipe I sprinkled some orange juice on the cake  to keep it extra moist. Then, I spread a generous layer of the whipped cream and placed half of the cut strawberries on it.

One layer down, place the other layer on top and repeat the process, soak with juice, spread the cream and place the strawberries. Voila, the cake is ready!!!!!!

Now what do you think could be the perfect occasion for this cake? Valentine’s Day of course.  Bakers, non bakers, beginners, this is something everyone can try. How about ditching those cupcakes, chocolate cakes and chocloates you buy at the store and surprising your loved one with this strawberry cake. Seems like a good idea to me. . Let me know..........