The top layer started moving at 8:50 Tuesday night. It wasn't falling, just drifting, a slow slide toward the edge of the cake stand like a car easing down an icy driveway, with a pink smear of filling behind it. Nora said "Mom. Mom. Mom," at rising volume, and I got there in time to push it back into place and stab two wooden skewers down through all three layers. The whole cake went into the fridge, and we stood there staring at the closed door like it owed us an explanation.
Nora turned twelve on Wednesday. Her cake request had two parts: pink, and tall. She did not want a box mix and she did not want anything "strawberry-flavored." She wanted it to taste like actual strawberries, which in February is a lot to ask of a strawberry.
Real berries in February
Winter grocery-store strawberries are pretty and kind of watery, and if you puree them straight into cake batter you add a lot of water and not much flavor. The cake comes out heavy, pale and a little gummy in the middle. So I cook the puree down. A pound of berries, blended and simmered for about 20 minutes, turns into roughly 3/4 cup of thick, dark red concentrate. Most of the water is gone and the sugar and flavor stay, so the batter can carry a lot more strawberry without turning soggy. That's the one bit of science in this post, and it's the reason the cake works.
For the frosting I grind freeze-dried strawberries to a powder in the blender. That adds flavor and color with no water at all, which matters a lot with buttercream.
Ingredients
- 1 pound fresh strawberries, hulled, for the cake
- 3 cups cake flour
- 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 3/4 cups sugar
- 5 large egg whites, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup whole milk, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 small drop pink gel coloring, optional (Nora's call, and she called it)
- For the frosting: 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened; 1 1/4 ounces freeze-dried strawberries, ground to powder; 5 cups powdered sugar; 3 to 4 tablespoons heavy cream; 1 teaspoon vanilla; a pinch of salt
- For the filling and top: about 1 1/2 cups fresh strawberries, diced or halved
How I make it
- Blend the pound of berries smooth and simmer in a wide skillet over medium heat, stirring often, 15 to 20 minutes, until you have about 3/4 cup. Cool completely. This can be done a day ahead.
- Heat the oven to 350°F. Grease three 8-inch round pans and line the bottoms with parchment.
- Whisk the cake flour, baking powder and salt. In the mixer, beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the egg whites two at a time, beating well after each.
- Stir the milk, vanilla, coloring and cooled strawberry reduction together. Add the flour mixture and the strawberry mixture alternately, in three parts each, mixing on low just until combined.
- Divide the batter evenly (I weigh the pans) and bake 24 to 28 minutes, until the tops spring back when pressed and a toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs.
- Cool 10 minutes in the pans, then turn out onto racks and cool completely. All the way. Read on.
- For the frosting, beat the butter 3 minutes, then add the strawberry powder, powdered sugar, cream, vanilla and salt and beat until fluffy.
The slide, and the crumb coat that saved it
Here's what I did wrong. I baked the layers after school on Tuesday, and at 8:30 they felt cool on top but were still faintly warm in the middle. Then I spread fresh diced berries straight into the frosting between the layers. Warm cake softens buttercream, and cut berries weep juice. Together they made a slip-and-slide.
The fix took about an hour. I took it apart, piped a ring of stiff frosting around the edge of each layer as a dam, put the berries inside the ring, restacked it with the skewers in and chilled it 20 minutes. Then came a crumb coat, a thin layer of frosting all over that traps loose crumbs and glues everything together, and 30 more minutes in the fridge. By the time the final coat went on, the cake was cold and firm and nothing was going anywhere. The skewers came out before the candles went in, and the berries went on top.
Make-ahead, and what I'll do next year: bake the layers on the weekend, wrap them well and freeze them. Frozen layers are firmer, easier to stack and don't slide.
The whole cake cost about $24, most of it butter and two pounds of February berries, with the egg whites courtesy of Deb's hens. Nora cut the first slice herself and eyed the rest like she was pricing them for a bake sale. Jack gave it a ten and asked whether it counted as fruit. I wrote a card for it and filed it behind Granny June's white layer cake card, since that's the cake it grew out of.
