Strawberries & Cream Cake

Ah! January.

Another Year, Another month another long line of birthdays.

Firstly there's my birthday on the 12th and my wee poppets on the 22nd (and yes it's killing me konwing the bakery I bought her is upstairs in the spare room, I'm desperate to crack it open and have a go)

But also in the last month or so I've got to know a very lovely lady who is celebrating her birthday today and I was called upon again to make a cake.

And as some sort of sick joke from the imagination gods I couldn't for the life of me decide on what I wanted to make. Especially since I was told 'Nothing too rich'.

OMG! No chocolate . . .

But inspiration hit me yesterday morning and I decided on a Strawberries and Cream Cake because you know putting strawberries in a cake makes it totally healthy.

Am I right, or am I right?

This cake uses the same vanilla madeira cake that I used in my Cookie Dough Cake. The only difference was that towards the end of the mixing process I split the batter between two different bowls and added strawberry flavouring to one of the bowls.

So we have a vanilla cake layer and a strawberry layer of scrummy madeira cake filled with sweet vanilla buttercream. Then smothered in a generous helping of strawberry buttercream and then, just to make sure we have enough frosting I decorated it with some more vanilla buttercream.

Ok, so I may have fluffed up the decorating of this cake just a little bit. Why is it that it's so easy to decorate a cupcake but just a tad more difficult to decorate a large cake??

Someone buy me cake decorating classes for my birthday, I sorely need them.

The cake is soft and moist and ever so pretty with the pink and white marbled effect.

And after sampling copious amounts of the frosting as I made it last night, I must say both a pretty divine aswell.

So the cake is all boxed up and ready to go and I'm definitely looking forward to having a slap up meal in the Italian restaurant the birthday girl chose.

Happy Birthday Demi!

Also if you check back on this here blog on Saturday as I am now Co-Hosting my very first Linky Party with the lovely Nikki from The Crafty Side of Sarcasm.

I am very excited and hope to see you linking up your gorgeous posts from the last week. Everyone is welcome.

Ingredients:

225g / 1 Cup Butter
225g / 1 Cup + 2 Tbsp Caster Sugar
4 Eggs
2 Tsp Vanilla Extract
225g / 1 3/4 Cup Plain Flour
2 Tsp Baking Powder
30ml / 2 Tbsp Milk
1 Tsp Strawberry Falvouring
A few drops of red food colouring (optional)

For the Vanilla Buttercream:

227g / 1 Cup Butter
400g / 3 1/4 Cup Icing Sugar
2 Tsp Vanilla Extract

For the Strawberry Buttercream:

 85g / 1/3 Cup Butter
85g / 1/3 Cup Cream Cheese
400g / 3 1/4 Cup Icing Sugar
1/2 Tsp Strawberry Flavouring
2 Tbsp Pureed Strawberries
A few drops of food colouring (optional)

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180c and then grease, flour and line the base of a 9 inch round cake tin.

In a large mixing bowl beat the butter and the sugar till light and fluffy. Then add the vanilla extract and add the eggs one at a time.

Sift in the flour and the baking powder and gently fold it into the egg and butter mixture.

Once just combined pour half of the batter into a separate bowl and add the strawberry flavouring (and food dye if wanted). Mix very gently for a few seconds. Also add the milk to vanilla batter.

Now you can either bake the flavours as separate layers or you can marble them by placing a few tablespoons of each mixtures into the same tin and swirling with a knife.

Pop into your oven and bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Remove the cake from the tin and place on a  wire rack to cool fully, then pourthe remaining batter into your tin and bake the second half the same way.

To make your vanilla buttercream beat your butter till light and fluffy.

Then mix in the vanilla, followed by the icing sugar.

Keep mixing until the buttercream is completely combined and has a light texture.

For the strawberry buttercream, in a mixing bowl, beat the butter till light and fluffy.

Then beat in the strawberry flavouring and the strawberry puree.

Then slowly add the icing sugar. Once fully mixed you can add a little red food dye if you would like a stronger colour.

Once the cake has cooled place the first layer on your plate/board and spread so vanilla buttercream on top of it, then place the second cake layer on top of that and 'dirty ice' / 'crumb coat' your cake. This is basically a very thin layer of icing that seals in the crumbs so when it comes to the second layer of icing it'll look neater. This step isn't necessary though.

The, taking your strawberry buttercream, slather it over the top of your cake. Make sure all sides are covered and smoothed.

The you can finish the decoration how you like. If you have vanilla buttercream left over you can do the same decoration that I did using a piping bag and a Wilton 1M tip. Let your imagination go wild.