Near the tip of the Eastern Shore, that tongue of land that juts down the side of the Chesapeake Bay, there sits a small barrier island nestled between salt marshes and the sea. Until relatively recently, Chincoteague Island was home to oyster fishermen, wild ponies, ice cream parlors and not much else. My family has been spending summers here since I was about five or six years old, and my parents moved here less than a year ago.
I’ve been spending a lot of weekends here lately. One such weekend was in celebration of my mother’s birthday.
It’s been so long since I’ve made an honest-to-goodness, classic birthday cake, and my mom deserved something worthy of a goddess. (For those who’ve met my mom, you know what I’m talking about.) When I found Smitten Kitchen’s strawberry “pink lady” cake, I knew I’d found the winner. Seasonal, not overly sweet, and pretty pink.
Since strawberries are starting to come into season, we opted for fresh fruit rather than frozen. You puree the strawberries and swirl them into the batter, which tastes like a butter cake with just a hint of fruit. If you have any leftover strawberry puree, mix it with some sugar, water, and freshly squeezed lime juice to make an agua fresca.
Since I think a buttercream would have been too heavy for this rich cake, I used a thick whipped cream to frost it instead. To top it off, I sprinkled on some homemade pink sprinkles that my gal Maddie made. If you’re feeling really ambitious, you could try your hand at making sprinkles too, recipe here.
strawberry celebration cake
adapted from Smitten Kitchen
3 cups white flour
2 cups sugar
3 1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup freshly pureed strawberries
5 egg whites
1/2 cup milk
1 T pure vanilla extract
red dye (optional)
Preheat the oven to 350. Butter two 9″ round cake pans, and cut out pieces of parchment paper to fit into the bottom of the pans. Butter those too.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. In a smaller bowl, beat the butter and strawberry puree together until smooth. Add the strawberry/butter mixture to the flour mixture, and beat with an electric mixer for 2-3 minutes until fully incorporated. The batter will be very thick.
In another medium bowl, beat the egg whites, milk, and red dye (if using) until frothy. Add this mixture to the rest of the batter in 2 additions, beating well after each incorporation.
Pour the batter into the two prepared cake pans and smooth the tops with a spatula or knife. Bake for 30 – 40 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool completely before icing.
For the frosting, beat whipping cream with some sugar with an electric mixer until stiff, or opt for your favorite buttercream. Sprinkle some pink sugar or sprinkles on top.
loved the post………
Thanks for sharing the recipe with us. Can’t wait to get back to Johannesburg from Mwinilunga, Zambia, to bake it. In fact, if I wanted to bake it now I would have to travel 3.5 hours to a place called Solwezi to buy the ingredients as they only have bread flour in Mwinilunga – and who wants to spoil a cake like this with bread flour. Am posting it on Facebook – it’s my friend Mary’s birthday today. It’s the nearest I can get to giving her a cake for this day. Thank you so much.
Thank you for sharing! I remember when I was in Italy, of all places, and was craving chocolate chip cookies. Italy doesn’t have vanilla extract or baking soda, and the cookies tasted pretty horrible. Sometimes it pays to wait until you’re home again to make those foods, and enjoy the ones you can where you are!
Reblogged this on tajmipana and commented:
If I do not have fresh strawberries can I use strawberry jam. This recipe sounds amazing and I want to try it out. I would make a strawberry frosting to go on top of it.