Weekly Dish

For my sister’s 19th birthday, she came for a visit this past weekend. Elizabeth is fun to cook for because a.) she lives in a dorm and shares a tiny kitchen with 120 other college-aged girls b.) she and I have very similar taste in food c.) she gets excited about everything (which also makes her really fun to buy gifts for).

This cake looks complicated, but as long as you allow yourself enough time, it really isn’t hard to make. The base is a buttermilk cake that is dense enough to hold itself together 4 layers high, but moist and loose-crumbed enough to happily soak up all the strawberry juices (especially if you have time to refrigerate it for a couple of hours before serving).

If you like super-sweet desserts, this cake may not be for you. Louisiana strawberries have been sweet this season, so I didn’t sugar the berries. The original recipe also suggests adding sugar to the whipped cream, but I prefer my strawberries English-style with unsweetened cream, so I omitted that step. In my opinion, the cake is sweet enough to provide a counterpoint to the tangy-sweet berries and the smooth, rich cream. Too much sweetener would blur the lines between the separate components too much for me, I think. Elizabeth and my mom agreed, but if you’re making the cake for a person with a real sweet tooth, this recipe would be an easy one to up the caloric ante.

Buttermilk Cake with Strawberries and Cream

Recipe from the Foster’s Market Cookbook by Sara Foster

4 1/2 cups flour
1 T. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
3 sticks butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
6 large eggs
2 t. vanilla
2 cups buttermilk
3 cups whipping cream
3 pints strawberries, washed, hulled, and sliced lengthwise

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees, and grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans. Mix the dry ingredients–flour, baking powder, soda, and salt in a large bowl. (Sift if you are a sifting kind of baker. I never sift anything.) Set the dry ingredients aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs with the mixer running, and beat for a few minutes. The batter should be light and fluffy. Stir in the vanilla.

Measure the buttermilk into a pourable measuring cup. Turn the mixer speed to low and alternately add dry ingredients and buttermilk, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl if batter gets stuck there. The ingredients should be just combined.

Pour the batter into greased cake pans. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until the tip of a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. The tops of the cakes should be golden brown. Cool the cakes in their pans for about 10 minutes (the cake should be cool enough to handle without burning your fingers). Turn the cakes onto cooling racks or dish towels and allow them to cool completely. (Don’t omit this cooling step–slicing warm cake into layers is not pretty or fun!)

When the cake is nearly cool, whip your cream until soft peaks form, and slice your strawberries. Have them both at hand while you assemble the cake.

Now comes the tricky part: you need the longest serrated knife you can find. Slice each layer in half, carefully. I am not particularly good at this; mine always come out just a little uneven (as you can see in the picture), but the important thing is to take your time and try to watch your knife: make sure that the blade is always in the center of the layer. I start at the corner and then work my way around the cake. If you mess up, don’t worry, just make sure you have one pretty, even layer for the top.

Place the ugliest layer bottom-side down on a cake plate (so that the exposed part is the center). Spread an even layer of whipped cream over the cake. Lay the sliced strawberries evenly around the outside edge (they will be the ones that stick out, so you want them to be even and pretty); then fill in the center with sliced berries. Top with the next layer, and repeat this process. If you plan to refrigerate the cake, wrap it in foil when you’ve placed the last layer. Before serving, top the last layer with a handful of sliced berries and a dollop of cream.

Another fun thing about my sister is that she loves dessert so much that she often eats it for breakfast. In honor of her, that’s what I had this morning–leftover birthday cake!

Here I am making the cake for my sister; I wanted to show off my new apron that my sweet Aunt Prissy got for me. Isn’t it so cute? I almost feel like I should be wearing pearls and heels with it. I wore it a few weeks ago when I cooked for my girlfriends on our beach trip–they all agreed that it would make a really cute dress too. Thanks, Aunt Pris!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 at 8:30 am and is filed under Cake, Family, Something Sweet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.