Strawberry Vanilla Cake

Last week we celebrated Sweet 16 for my little cousin, L. Cake was in order.

After asking the birthday girl what flavors she preferred I settled on strawberry with a vanilla accent. Strawberry season is upon us so there is no lack of fresh, sweet berries right now.

The red strawberries are such a pretty accent against the icing. I used a gel food coloring to make the buttercream a bright turquoise. You could use whatever color you like.
These are the before pictures. Before I took it to the party that is.

This is after I got to the party. It had to be decorated with candles and a big “16” that I made out of white chocolate. We started by adding 6 candles.Then we added more candles until it was a big mass of 16 bright candles! She’s sooooo old!

You can see that the cut tops of the strawberries had started to seep juice onto the top of the cake. It was delicious regardless but it’s best if you add the berries right before you are going to serve it, in order to avoid this problem.

She managed to get all the candles blown out without spitting all over the cake. Whew! I am a freak about the cake spit. I usually avoid the cake if I feel like the birthday person is “spitty”. That usually means little kid cakes are out! Fortunately, she’s a big kid.

This cake is very dense. It’s almost like a strawberry pound cake.

The buttercream is just a simple vanilla flavor but it is perfect with the fresh berry flavor of the cake. It was a hit with the birthday girl! (And was perfect with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!)

Strawberry Cake

3/4 cups butter, room temp (1 1/2 sticks)

1 1/4 cups sugar

3 eggs

1 cup pureed strawberries

2 tsp vanilla bean paste

1/2 cup milk (I use almond milk)

2 1/4 cups flour

1 Tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

In a separate bowl mix eggs, pureed strawberries, vanilla & milk. Set aside.

In a separate bowl mix together the flour, baking powder & salt.

Once the butter/sugar mix is fluffy, turn the mixer down to low and carefully add the dry and wet ingredients to the butter mix, a little at a time. Start and end with the dry ingredients.

Pour the batter into 2 greased 9″ cake pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Allow to cool completely before icing.

Add 15-24 fresh berries to the top of the iced cake to mimic the look here.

(I multiplied this recipe by 1.5 in order to make 3 layers for the cake pictured here.)

Vanilla Bean Buttercream

2 sticks butter, room temp

2 tsp vanilla bean paste

1/2 tsp salt

3-4 cups powdered sugar

1/4 cup milk

Beat the butter on high speed until it is  light and fluffy. Add the vanilla & salt. Turn the beater down and add the powdered sugar a little at a time, adding a drizzle of milk as you need it to make everything come together. Add powdered sugar until you get to the consistency you like. You can add coloring gel to make whatever color icing you like.