Fresh Strawberry Cake

Happy Mother's Day!!!

I get emails from various recipe websites (bettycrocker, recipezaar, etc) with different season inspired recipes. Recently, on of my Recipezaar emails was advertising a very delicious sounding fresh strawberry cake.
Not having fresh strawberries, but rather strawberries that were fresh last summer and frozen quickly via the use of dry ice (thank you Alton Brown), I thought it appropriate to use those.
The only things I changed to the original recipe were the glaze and a some of the methods. It turned out absolutely delicious. My hubby loved the texture of the cake- all thanks to the use of cake flour instead of all purpose. (But if you need to, you can substitute 1 cup less 2 tbl all purpouse + 2 tbl cornstarch for eash 1 cup of cake flour. The texture really does make it worth it to go get a small box of cake flour at the store, though!)
The fresh glaze on top was just sweet enough to accent the cake. Another great thing about glaze is that you don't have to try and make a perfect frosting job. Glaze looks GOOD when it dribbles down the side of the cake. :)

Fresh Strawberry Cake

Cake:
2 1/4 c. cake flour
1/4 tsp. salt
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 c. unsalted butter (1 stick), softened
1 1/2 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 c. fresh (or frozen!) strawberries, thawed and mashed

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder.
In another bowl, cream together the butter and eggs. Then add in the vanilla. Blend. Then blend in the eggs, one at a time until fully incorporated.
Add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture in batches, alternating with the mashed strawberries.
Beat it all for 2 minutes.
Pour the batter into two greased and floured 8- or 9-inch round cake pans. (you could use a 9x13, but the bake time will vary)
Bake for 25-30 minutes (I used 9-inch pans, and 25 minutes was just perfect)
Turn out the cakes onto cooling racks.
Start making the glaze.

Strawberry Glaze
1 c. mashed strawberries
1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
2 tbl. melted unsalted butter
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract.

Mix together all of the ingredients. (Note: If you used frozen berries, and they are still cold, warm them up a bit before adding the butter or it will just firm up up again.
Put the first layer of your cake (still warm) on your serving platter. Poke holes in it with a toothpick or skewer. Drizzle some glaze on top and using a spatula, move it around to make sure the cake sucks it all up into those holes.
Put the top layer over the bottom, and do the same thing. You can save the extra glaze to serve with individual pieces, or wait until the glaze has sucked up into the top layer and add more- repeating until it's all gone.
Wait until cake has cooled completely to eat. Enjoy!

This delicious cake is linked up with:

• Made By You Monday at Skip To My Lou
• Mouthwatering Monday at A Southern Fairytale
• Just Something I Whipped Up at The Girl Creative
• Foodie Friday at Designs By Gollum 
• Motivate Me Monday at Keeping It Simple
• Market Yourself Monday at Sumo's Sweet Stuff
• Tasty Tuesday at Beauty and Bedlam
• Tuesdays at the Table at All The Small Stuff
• Tempt My Tummy Tuesday at BlessedwithGrace
• Tuesday Tastes at Crazy Daisy
• Recipe Share Party at Harrigan Howdy
• Friday Favorites at Simply Sweet Home
• I'm Lovin' It Fridays at Tidy Mom