Receta Fresh Strawberry Cake
BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 21
Bake of the Day: Celebration Cakes -- Fresh Strawberry Cake
I first saw this strawberry cake on Siri's blog. This cake recipe was making rounds in Facebook couple of months ago. A Strawberry Winter Cake movement was also started because it was strawberry season in India. All the cakes shared looked so amazing that I had to jump on the bandwagon and make this cake right away. This cake celebrates Summer in a delicious way!!
Even though it wasn't really strawberry season then (I still remember the super cold winter -- brrrrr), I found some decent strawberries and made this cake. It is a very pretty cake with whole strawberries beautifully arranged on top. I should have put the strawberries a little closer on top -- they seemed to have drifted apart after baking.
I followed Deb @ Smitten Kitchen's recipe almost to the T. She used barley flour in the cake and being a resourceful food blogger (read -- a hoarder and an impulse buyer), I had a bag of barley flour in the pantry and used it in here. Barley flour doesn't have a tell tale taste and blends beautifully into the cake.
All in all this is a colorful and show stopping cake that tastes moist & delicious. I brought it to a dinner party and everyone loved it. It is best to eat the cake in a day or two.
Ingredients:
- All purpose flour - 1cup (or use 1½cups of all purpose flour)
- Barley flour - ½cup
- Baking powder - 1½tsp
- Salt - ½tsp
- Fresh Strawberries - 15~16, hulled and halved
- Unsalted butter - 6tbsp, at room temperature
- Sugar - 1cup+2tbsp, divided
- Egg - 1 large (or use 1tbsp egg replacer or flaxseed meal whisked in 3tbsp of water)
- Milk - ½cup
- Vanilla extract - 1tsp
Method:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9" spring form pan with butter.
Sift the flours, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl. Set aside.
Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes, in an electric mixture. Add egg (or egg replacer mixture) and mix well until combined.
Add the milk and mix well.
Stir in the dry ingredients and mix on low speed until combined.
Pour the mixture into the prepared baking pan, smooth the top. Arrange the strawberries cut side down on the cake. Bake for 10 minutes. Lower the heat to 325°F and bake for another 25~35 minutes or until the cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean.