Baked Sunday Mornings: Strawberry Supreme Cake

This week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe is the Orange Buttermilk Picnic Cake with Chocolate Chips. But I made the orange cake in March and already blogged about it, so I'm going to write a different Baked Occasions recipe today: the Strawberry Supreme Cake. This cake seemed like a perfect choice for an office birthday a few weeks ago, especially after I picked up some small, beautiful strawberries at the farmer's market.

I've been eager to try this recipe since Baked Occasions came out. I've never met a Baked layer cake I didn't love. And this one promised to be something special -- strawberry cake covered in pink vanilla buttercream, filled with strawberry jam, fresh berries, and whipped cream.

The strawberry cake recipe is identical to the very vanilla cake recipe used for the Baked Ultimate Birthday Cake, except that it has less vanilla and includes eight ounces of fresh strawberry puree instead of a cup of rainbow sprinkles. You divide the cake batter into three 8-inch pans and bake. The frosting is the standard Baked cooked buttercream, made with flour, sugar, milk, cream, butter, and vanilla. I dyed it light pink.

Before assembling the cake, I leveled all of the cake layers. Then I put one layer on a cardboard cake circle and piped a rope of buttercream on top around the perimeter of the cake. I spread a layer of strawberry jam inside the buttercream and then spread on a mixture of whipped cream, vanilla, and chopped strawberries. Then I added the second cake layer and repeated the process. After adding the third cake layer, I covered the entire cake in the remaining vanilla buttercream and added some whole strawberries on top as garnish. I kept the cake in the refrigerator overnight, but brought it to room temperature before serving.

Even though I had the cake at room temperature for two hours before slicing, the frosting was still a bit stiff. I didn't think this cake looked great sliced, largely because the color of the cake was dull and dreary. It was also difficult to clearly see what was between the cake layers. However, the cake tasted a lot better than it looked. You could definitely taste the strawberry in the cake, jam, and filling -- although the texture of the cake was a little heavy and not as fine and delicate as other Baked cakes. But putting fresh fruit (including its juice) into cake batter is a bit of a tricky proposition.

I didn't think that that whipped cream layer in the middle had much impact flavorwise. In the future, I would probably just use jam and buttercream to fill the cake, and skip the fresh fruit and whipped cream. I might also experiment with using freeze dried fruit in the cake instead of fresh strawberry puree. Still, this was a delicious cake and my tasters loved it. Those guys at Baked definitely know how to make a layer cake!

Recipe: "Strawberry Supreme Cake" from Baked Occasions by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here.

Previous Posts:

• "Baked Sunday Mornings: Baked Ultimate Birthday Cake," May 10, 2015.
• "A Walk in the Park to Make and Take: Orange Buttermilk Picnic Cake with Chocolate Chips," March 25, 2015.