Monday 31 December 2012

Fresh Strawberry Cream Cake

 The same strawberry cake again? Yes, I'm afraid so. I've been a pretty selfish baker these days where I've been baking the same things over and over again. The point of this blog is to push me to try something new each time but my selfish desires were stronger this time round. I crave for more strawberry cake and I thought I must let my friends try some of this cake before I move on. This is basically a cake version of the Christmas Hat Strawberry Cupcakes that I've made on my last post.
At the KK christmas party, my friends were a little bit fooled by the appearance of the cake when I told them that this was a strawberry cake. The assumption was mainly based on the strawberry on top of the cake and hence called strawberry cake. And also because the crust on the outside doesn't show its' natural pink hue and so they assumed it was a plain cake base. Well, surprise surprise...it's full of strawberry flavour. Strawberry bang all over. Apparently it's the best cake I've made that they've tasted to date. Selfish baking desires justified right here!

I had plans on making fresh strawberry frosting to accompany the cake but then decided to fall back on using whipped cream. I guess I didn't want to go overboard with the strawberries just in case some people in the group find it a bit too much.
Now you can see the pinkiness of the strawberry cake :)
This cake is quite dense, crumbly and moist. You can have up to four layers of cake from this recipe by dividing the cake batch into 2 to hasten the baking time. As you can only see two layers here and that's because I decorated each cake separately. I know not everyone is a cake monster like me, hehe.

Fresh Strawberry Cream Cake

(adapted from An Edible Mosaic)

2½ cups plain flour
2 ⅛ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
⅛ tsp bicarb soda
9 oz hulled fresh strawberries, coarsely chopped (about 2 cups chopped strawberries, lightly packed)
112.5g (½ cup/1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1½ cups caster sugar
2 large eggs
¼ cup milk (any kind)
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 tsp strawberry extract (if available)

1. Preheat oven to 180° C/160°C fan-forced. Grease 2 x 20cm cake tins; line base with baking paper.

2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl and set aside. Puree the strawberries in a blender or food processor (you will get about 1 1/4 cups of strawberry liquid); set aside.

3. Cream together butter and sugar, then cream in the eggs; mix in the milk, vanilla extract, strawberry extract, and pureed strawberries. Use a wooden spoon to stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients all at once, stirring just enough to combine and being careful not to over-mix.

4. Divide and pour the batter into the greased cake tins evenly and bake until a toothpick inserted inside comes out clean, approximately 35 minutes. Cool completely before frosting.

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