strawberry lemonade cake

I was already planning on making a chocolate cake for Mupma's birthday, so I wanted the second cake I made to be the total opposite.  Light and fruity.  What could be better than a strawberry lemonade cake?  Sweet, tart, light, fluffy.  Total heaven.

Have I mentioned already that I'm POSITIVE there is nothing scarier in the entire world then transporting cakes?  Just imagine trying to drive somewhere with a big gift, two wiggly boys, and TWO cakes?  One of which was on a pedestal?  Completely terrifying.  Luckily Jeff is awesome.  He put one cake at his feet (with a cover over it just in case!) and held onto the pedestal cake while I drove like two miles an hour.  Or, at least it felt like it.  It was the biggest relief ever to get to my parent's house and set the cakes down.

Once the cake has been made and cooled completely, frost the bottom layer and lay thinly sliced strawberries over the top and tightly as possible.  You want to get a good strawberry chunk in every bite.  Make sure the strawberry slices have been washed and dried thoroughly before slicing.

There is nothing better than a nice fresh strawberry!

Place the second layer of cake over the strawberry slices and finish frosting the cake.  This cake came out of the oven with fairly flat tops so I didn't need to slice off any puffy tops.  I just left them as-is.  If you want to place strawberries like this around the edges of the cake, just make sure they have been stemmed and thoroughly rinsed and dried.  Also, you might want to do this part as close to serving as possible.  You really don't want to deal with the possibility of them dripping juice down the side of the cake, or sliding around on top.  No thank you!  Also, this cake should be refrigerated as soon as you finish frosting.

I just love a nice fluffy fruity cake.  It is just such a classic look.

The worst part about there being two cakes at a party is that you feel like you need to try both of them!  I love my chocolate cake, so I needed a sliver, but I was trying out new recipes with this strawberry lemonade cake, so OF COURSE I needed a little piece of it too.  *sigh*  I suppose this is a great example of first world problems?  :)

If you saw my previous post you've already seen this photo.  I made both cakes for my Mupma's birthday party.  Because you need options when it comes to cakes.

Also, I don't believe there is a four year old alive who doesn't try to help blow out birthday candles when the chance presents itself.  Am I right?

Lemon Velvet Cake
recipe from Rock Recipes
http://www.rockrecipes.com/lemon-velvet-cake/

Print

Prep time

20 mins

Cook time

35 mins

Total time

55 mins

Developed from an outstanding Red Velvet Cake recipe, this lemon cake is a perfectly moist and tender crumbed cake with a lemony buttercream frosting. An ideal birthday cake for the lemon lover in your life.

Ingredients

• 1¼ cups sifted all purpose flour
• 1½ cups sifted cake flour
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1½ cups sugar
• ⅔ cup vegetable oil
• ⅓ cup vegetable shortening at room temperature
• 1 tsp good quality vanilla extract
• 2 tsp pure lemon extract
• 3 large eggs
• 1½ cups buttermilk
• zest of two small or one large lemons, grated and finely chopped

Instructions

1. Grease and flour 2 nine inch round cake pans and line the bottom with 2 circles of parchment paper. Sift together both flours, baking soda. baking powder, salt and sugar, Set aside.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer beat together the vegetable oil, shortening, vanilla and lemon extract. Beat well at high speed with whisk attachment until light and fluffy
3. Beat the eggs in one at a time.
4. Fold in the lemon zest.
5. Fold in the dry ingredients alternately with the buttermilk.
6. I always add dry ingredients in three divisions and liquid ingredients in 2 divisions. It is very important to begin and end the additions with the dry ingredients. Do not over mix the batter. As soon as it has no lumps in the batter, pour into the two prepared 9 inch cake pans.
7. Bake at 325 degrees F for 30-35 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool in the pans for 10 minutes before turning out onto wire racks to cool completely.

Fresh Strawberry Frosting

(I kinda made this recipe up, and it worked fine, but frosted cake should be refrigerated until ready to serve, and if you want the frosting to be extra stiff add an extra 1/2 to 1 cup of powdered sugar)

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup fresh strawberried, stemmed and sliced
• 1 cup butter, room temperature
• 4 1/2 cups powdered sugar (add 1/2 to 1 cup more for firmer frosting)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Puree the strawberries.  Set aside.
2. Add butter to stand mixer and beat several minutes until white and creamy, stopping to scrape down the sides as needed.
3. Add 1 cup of powdered sugar to the butter and beat until creamy.
4. Add 1 more cup of powdered sugar and beat again until creamy.  
5. Add the strawberry puree and beat.
6. Add remaining powdered sugar and vanilla and beat until fluffy.  
7. For extra thick frosting add in additional powdered sugar, otherwise, frost the cake.  

note: There will be about 2 cups leftover frosting unless you frost very thickly.  If desired add stemmed strawberries in a ring around the top edges like I did.  If you are planning on doing that, wait until the last second and make sure the strawberries are very well dried.  Otherwise strawberry juice might start dripping down the side of you cake.

chocolate chocolate cake

Okay, neither the recipe for the cake or the frosting belong to me, but they are so good together.  This is my go to chocolate cake.  The cake is dark, moist, and not overly sweet.  The frosting is fluffy, super chocolaty, easy to apply, and makes plenty extra.  I personally like to make sandwich cookies with the extra chocolate frosting spread thick between two graham crackers.  So good!  My parents used to make them with extra frosting when I was little.  Keep the extras in the fridge to help firm them up.

Last week was a milestone birthday for my Mupma.  She'd totally kill me if I said the exact age.

I wanted to make the cake a bit fancier for her birthday and I had plenty of extra frosting, so after frosting the cake I put some in a piping bag and piped the edges, then lined it with chocolate chips.  I still have about 2 ups of frosting left so I foresee some graham cracker sandwiches in my near future.  :)

I ordered a small silicone alphabet mold a while ago from amazon (I heart amazon!) and used it to make the "Happy Birthday" and the hearts.  It set pretty quickly, but just to be safe, I made the letters ahead of time.  This was the first time I'd used the mold, so next time I know I need to tap it more after I've poured the chocolate in to try and get rid of the dreaded air bubbles.

Liam LOVES his Mupma.  He kept jumping into her lap all evening, and helped blow out the candles.  Ignore the candle covered cake for the moment, that's all for the next post.

Liam immediately pulled the blown out candles out of the cake and insisted that everyone needed to eat the frosting off of them.  "Because that's what you do!"

Someone was pretty excited to officially get his own piece of chocolate cake.  He ate the whole piece (inhaled actually) and ran around like crazy the rest of the evening with a chocolate fu manchu.


Chocolate Cake
recipe by Betty Crocker
prep: 20 min
bake: 35 min
cool: 1 hr
12 servings

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cups AP flour
• 1 2/3 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 2/3 cup cocoa powder
• 1 1/4 cups water
• 1 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 2 large eggs

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease bottom and sides of two 9 inch pans.
2. In large bowl, beat all ingredients with electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds, scraping bowl.  Beat on high speed 3 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally.  Pour equally into pans.
3. Bake 30 to 35 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.  Cool in pan 10 minutes, remove from pans and cool completely on wire racks for 1 hour.  Frost.

note: the cake puffs up, so you might want to trim the tops off.  For this cake I only trimmed the top off the top layer, just because I wanted the top to be flat for the birthday message.  It's really up to you.

My Favorite Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

recipe by Cooking Classy

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups butter, at room temperature (I like to use 1 cup unsalted and 1/2 cup salted)
• 3 3/4 cups powdered sugar
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder*
• 3 - 4 Tbsp heavy cream or half-&-half
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

• In a the bowl of an electric stand mixer, fitted with whisk attachment (paddle attachment works too. Whichever you use just pay attention the the shade of the butter), whip butter on moderately high speed until very pale and fluffy (nearly white in color), about 6 - 8 minutes, occasionally scraping down sides of the bowl. Sift in cocoa powder then add in powdered sugar, 3 Tbsp heavy cream and vanilla and mix on low speed until combine, scrapping down the sides of the bowl as needed and adding up to 1 tbsp additional cream to thin if desired. Increase mixer to medium-high speed and whip mixture until pale and very fluffy about 4 - 5 minutes, occasionally scraping down sides of the bowl.
• Note that similar to whipped cream the frosting will lose some of its "fluff" after a few hours, it will still taste the same it just loses some of the air that was whipped into it (similar to whipped cream how it loses it's stabilization after a few hours). It is best to prepare and use within a few hours for best (fluffiest) results.
• Recipe Source: Cooking Classy