Bake Date: 2/14/15

When my dear friend Jennie requested a strawberry cake for her birthday,  I went to work finding a worthy challenge.    
Strawberry cake is a little outside my comfort zone, and I was a little nervous.  I went over the recipe all week.  It mentions “strawberry extract” as being optional, and since I couldn’t find any anywhere, I proceeded without it.   The strawberry purée was fun to make, and I made a much smaller mess adding the mixtures a tablespoon at a time like the instructions suggested.  

It did call for three 8-inch pans. I have two 9-inch pans and they got a little full. Be warned!  It will need to bake longer if you do this, too. 

While they cooled, I worked on the Ermine frosting.  I was very nervous about this stuff because it sounded strange.  Flour in frosting? Weird. 

I stirred constantly, and eventually it did thicken.    Once it cooled, I added it to the butter cream and it was whipped deliciousness.  

Jennie had mentioned that she loves chocolate with strawberries, so I piped come chocolate swirls to put on as a garnish. Here is the video that taught me how to do that.   After crumb coat, full frosting and the chocolate swirls, the cake went into the fridge to keep the little swirls from melting in the heat wave we are currently  experiencing.  It turned out really pretty!   We sang happy birthday today, and everyone approved of the subtle strawberry taste and light whipped frosting.  Hooray!      

 Try for yourself here and let me know what you thought!