Strawberry and Cream Cake

My choice of birthday cake this time, and as it's summer, I thought it would be nice to have some summer fruit.

I'd never made this cake before - it's from Tessa Kiros' book 'Falling Cloudberries' where it's called 'Sipi's Strawberry Cake' - and as strawberries are delicious at the moment, I thought it might be a good time of year to make it.

In one bowl put the flour, sugar and 1 tsp of baking powder. Mix in the melted butter, milk and then add the egg yolks and beat in well.

In another bowl, whisk the egg whites to soft peaks, adding the remaining 2 tsp of baking powder as they start to become frothy.

Fold the egg whites into the cake mixture.

Pour the mixture into a 22 cm springform pan, greased and floured.

I lined the base with baking paper, too.

Cook at 180 C for about 1 hour until top is golden and a skewer comes out clean.

Let it cool in pan for a while and then turn out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

When cool, cut in half horizontally with a long bread knife. Put base of cake on a serving plate.

This is where you can start filling and decorating the cake. The recipe said to wash and hull the strawberries, leaving a few with leaves if you like for the top.

Dice half the strawberries and put in a bowl with a tsp of lemon juice and a tbsp of the icing sugar. The other half you can use to decorate the top of the cake.

Whip up the cream into soft peaks with the rest of the icing sugar. Mix the chopped strawberries into a third of the cream and spread over the bottom of the cake (I put a layer of cream then the strawberries), then add the top of the cake and spread over the rest of the cream. Decorate with the remaining strawberries. And blueberries as they are very pretty and delicious!

Add candles, have everyone sing 'Happy Birthday' loudly, and then don't get to blow any candles out yourself because your children are so keen on helping. It's what it's all about.


This was a really lovely cake - a lot of that had to do with the fruit being so perfect, but the sponge was substantial and tasty - not a flimsy Victoria Sponge-type thing.

I only added 300 ml of cream to my cake and I thought it was plenty - Tessa Kiros uses 750 ml.

Ingredients:
sponge:
220 g plain flour
180 g sugar
3 tsp baking powder
180 g butter, melted
185 g milk, warm
4 eggs, separated
1 tsp vanilla extract

to decorate:
800 g strawberries (I used about 600 g)
1 tsp lemon juice
4 tbsp icing sugar
750 ml thick/double cream (I used a 300 ml tub)

Best eaten immediately but leftovers will keep well in refrigerator overnight.