Rustic Strawberry Cake

 

A smallish strawberry cake I made cuz I was bored and had nothing to do :-)

Ingredients

I pretty much followed this recipe here and cut the amounts in half except for the vanilla bean and lemon zest. And for the frosting and filling I used stabilized whipped cream with 1/4 cup sugar macerated strawberries.
This is not my recipe but I am posting the amounts I used for convenience... I highly recommend you visit the link above to read great stories and details.

1 cup All purpose flour
1/2 tsp Kosher salt
1/2 tsp Baking soda
1/6 cup Buttermilk (I didn't have any so I used 2 Tbs of Greek yogurt diluted with water)
1 Large egg (Room temperature)
1/4 cup Oil (I used melted unsalted butter)
1/4 tsp Almond extract (I skipped this)
1/2 Vanilla bean (I used Rodelle vanilla beans and kept the original amount)
1 tsp Lemon zest
1/2 cup Fresh pureed strawberries

Pre-heat oven to 350F.

I used a 6" dia and 3" high Wilton springform pan to bake this. Prepare your pan by rubbing some oil or melted buter on the sides and then dust lightly with flour. Place a parchment cut to the size of your pan at the bottom.

Combine the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, and salt) in a bowl. Split and scrape out the seeds from the vanilla bean. Rub the seeds into the sugar.

In a large bowl whisk together the melted butter and vanilla sugar for a few minutes. Add the egg and continue to whisk for another minute and then pour in the yogurt mixture.

Gently add the dry ingredients in 2 batches into the mixture and mix slowly. Fold in the pureed strawberries and zest.

Pour the batter into the baking pan and bake until done. Mine took close to 50 minutes to fully bake because the baking dish was quite deep. The baked cake had crispy sides and a dense texture as a result of longer baking. I have baked this cake before following the instructions exactly and in a larger pan.... that cake was moist and soft. I like both textures :-)

Cool on a wire rack. Use a knife to cut the cake in two. Use half the amount of the whipped strawberry cream as filling and the other half smeared on top.

Whipped Strawberry Cream

Macerated strawberries:
5-6 Medium sized strawberries diced into small pieces
1 Tbs Sugar

Stabilized whipped cream:
1 cup Heavy cream
2 Tbs sugar
1/2 tsp Unflavored gelatin
1 Tbs Warm water
1 Tbs Room temperature heavy cream

In a small bowl combine the cut strawberries and a Tbs of sugar. Let this sit on the counter top for about 30-45 minutes until the mixture becomes watery. Remember to drain the water out before folding the macerated strawberries into the whipped cream.

Please read the info here to make stabilized whipped cream... you'll have to scroll down a bit :-)