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. 

Recipe from Smitten Kitchen:

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. 

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 51.

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