Maggie Monday: Strawberry Cake

Strawberries and dessert. They are such a perfect fit. Strawberry shortcake. Strawberry ice cream. Strawberry pie. Strawberry cake? Yup. Take a look at what Maggie baked today….

This cake was sooooo much better than it looked in the recipe photos, and in reality, so much better than it looked… coming out of my oven. I was worried I had wasted ingredients and my precious time when I pulled this baby out of the oven. Not to worry. There was a reason the recipe made it to the Penzeys Spices catalog.

I love Penzeys spices. If you haven’t tried them, do it. They have a massive variety of high quality spices, salts, and herb blends. Their website is packed with recipes, and they send seasonal catalogs in which they highlight amateur cooks and their creations. Recipes are real, good, and family friendly.

Penzeys commercial is over. Back to the cake. As usual, the first time I make a new recipe, I usually follow it carefully. Usually. This time I did not stray. In regard to flavor and texture, I wouldn’t change this. However- there is too much batter for a regular 9 inch pie plate. Use a deep dish or bigger one, and you’ll be fine. Mine overflowed, which resulted in a rather lopsided cake on one edge, and my perfectly aligned and arranged sliced berries becoming all wonky. Not good a good thing for my borderline personality disorder that really likes symmetry and beauty.

Beauty aside, the taste rocks. I loved the crispy and buttery edge. We added some vanilla ice cream, and it was delicious. Prep was really simple, ingredients all things I had on hand. I will make this again. It was a hit with all eaters in my home!

Strawberry Cake

What you need:

1 ½ cups flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp kosher salt

6 Tb butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg

½ cup milk

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 lb strawberries, hulled and halved

2 Tb Vanilla sugar (regular sugar is fine if you don’t have vanilla sugar on hand)

What you do:

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a deep dish pie plate- 10 inch if you have it. You could probably bake this in a 9×9 baking dish. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl using a mixer, blend the sugar and butter until fluffy. Add the egg, milk and vanilla. Blend. Slowly add the flour mixture until combined. Pour batter into the pie plate. Arrange the strawberries on top of the batter, cut sides down, as close together as possible. Sprinkle with vanilla sugar. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

Reduce oven temperature to 320 degrees and bake for about another hour, until the cake is golden brown and firm to the touch. Let cool in the dish.

Cut and serve with whipped cream or ice cream.