This year, my friend's daughter Clara requested a strawberry cake with strawberry whipped cream frosting for her seventh birthday. I knew exactly what recipes to use. I had recently made Sally McKenney's strawberry cupcakes for another birthday party, and Sally has a scaled-up version of the recipe to make a strawberry layer cake. Because Clara specifically asked for strawberry whipped cream, I decided to skip the strawberry American buttercream recipe that goes with Sally's cake. Instead, I frosted the cake with BraveTart's Super-Thick and Fruity Food Processor Whipped Cream.
The whipped cream seems like it should be a snap to make. You just grind some freeze-dried strawberries with sugar in the food processor; add heavy cream; and pulse until thick and creamy. When I tried it, the cream was not thickening, no matter how long I mixed. I thought perhaps my food processor just wasn't cutting it, so I transferred the mixture to my Vitamix blender and gave it a whirl. I promptly ended up with strawberry butter. Whoops. I started over again and the second time my cream still wasn't thickening in the food processor. I added more freeze-dried fruit (that I ground separately in a spice grinder) and that did the trick. I ended up with beautifully thick, pale pink, strawberry-flavored whipped cream. To ensure that there was enough strawberry flavor to go around, I also made a batch of Rose Levy Beranbaum's lightly sweetened strawberry sauce to serve alongside the cake.
I didn't get a chance to taste the cake (in pandemic times, I do a lot of cake drop offs), but Clara was delighted when she saw it and I received a favorable report afterwards. While I was very happy with the way this cake turned out, I couldn't help but feel a little wistful thinking about Clara's birthday last year, when we baked her cake together at my house, along with her two older sisters. Hopefully it won't be too long before we can bake together again.
Recipes: "Homemade Strawberry Cake" from Sally's Baking Addiction and "Super-Thick and Fruity Food Processor Whipped Cream" from Stella Parks.
Previous Post: "Clara Turns Six!: King Arthur Flour's Classic Birthday Cake," December 3, 2019.
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