Sunday, June 12, 2011

Strawberry Summer Cake

A couple of weeks ago, in my stumbling via stumbleupon.com, I came across this amazing food blog.  The recipe that was displayed was for this beautiful looking strawberry summer cake.  And as amazing as it looked, I knew I needed to try it out.  (I should note, a very important factor in deciding whether I'm going to try a recipe or not is how many ingredients I need to buy - for this one, it was just the strawberries - win-win).

If you want to see the original recipe, head on over to Smitten Kitchen.  I'm going to repost is here, along with my picture of the beautiful finished product.

You will need:

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for pie plate
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup milk (I used whole since that's what we have in the house because of Katie)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pound strawberries, hulled and halved



-Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a 10-inch pie pan or 9-inch deep-dish pie pan. I used a standard 9-inch pie pan, because this is what I had.  I noticed with my first attempt there was just a tad bit too much batter, and it spilled over the edges just a teensy bit.  Didn't affect the taste, obviously, but didn't look as pretty.  With my second attempt, I just left out about a 1/4 cup of the batter.  Worked wonderfully.
-Whisk flour, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl. In a larger bowl, beat butter and 1 cup sugar until pale and fluffy with an electric mixer, about 3 minutes. Mix in egg, milk and vanilla until just combined. Add dry mixture gradually, mixing until just smooth.
-Pour into prepared pie plate. Arrange strawberries, cut side down, on top of batter, as closely as possible in a single layer (again, on my first attempt, I left a little bit of space.  This allowed the cake to swallow the strawberries into the cake.  Didn't look as pretty as I'd hoped, so with the second, I overlapped the strawberries so there was virtually no cake batter showing). Sprinkle remaining 2 tablespoons sugar over berries.
-Bake cake for 10 minutes then reduce oven temperature to 325°F and bake cake until golden brown and a tester comes out free of wet batter, about 50 minutes to 60 minutes. (Gooey strawberries on the tester are a given.)
-Let cool in pan on a rack. Cut into wedges.

Here's my finished product:

Friday, June 3, 2011

Hello, Sunshine!

Wow, hard to believe it's been a full month since my last post!

Things have been a bit crazy, but crazy in a good way.

I finished last semester with yet another 4.0 GPA.  Now, normally I wouldn't brag about something like that, but since I'm a mom, a part-time worker, and a full-time student, I'd say that's a pretty big accomplishment and deserves a wee bit of bragging.

Katie is growing way too fast for my taste and she's discovering new things every single day.  Unfortunately, I can't find my camera battery charger so I don't really have any photos.  Fear not, though, for I just purchased a new one today from Amazon and it should be here by next week!  Hooray for summertime pictures!

Katie and I took our first trip to the pool a few days ago.  She absolutely adored it - couldn't stop going down the water slide and getting all upset when I made her get out to put more sunblock on.

We got some wicked colds this last week which just knocked us all pretty much completely out.  Daddy's on painkillers, so the last few days have been .... interesting, to say the least.

And as soon as the bug decides to wake up, we're getting right back out into the sunshine!!!!  Hurry up Katie, Mommy needs some vitamin D!