strawberry cake

leah | 03.24.2020

my friend's birthday was today and i didn't want her to have to make her own cake. she did anyway because i took too long to put these together.

recipe
cake: smitten kitchen's yellow birthday cake with 1/2 cup buttermilk replaced by 1/2 cup strawberry puree
filling: strawberry jam thing made by reducing the remaining strawberry puree (about 1 cup) then thickening slightly with gelatin
frosting: smitten kitchen's german buttercream, half recipe

method

• blend strawberries into puree.
• mix cake batter with 1/2 cup strawberry puree, pour into two cake pans, bake. they seemed done after 35 min (which was the recipe's timing) so i pulled them to cool completely.
• make custard for german buttercream. cool completely in fridge.
• make strawberry jam thing. cool completely.
• check on custard: yes, it is cool.
• check on jam: still too runny. return to heat and add gelatin. cool again.
• check on cakes: room temp. put in freezer to make them easier to level.
• remove cakes from freezer, do a really good job leveling the first one only to discover the middle is still raw batter.
• panic.
• keep panicking.
• wait for walker to come out of the shower and say "why not just cut circles out of the baked parts and make a smaller cake".
• do that. yield is 5 usable circles, two 2-layer cakes and an extra.
• beat butter into custard to finish buttercream.
• get ready to frost cakes only to realize the buttercream tastes off, like fridgey. realize the butter was very old and must have absorbed fridge smell.
• make custard again. cool completely, this time using an ice bath before refrigerating to move it along faster.
• get 2 sticks of the newest butter in the fridge, smell them to make sure they're okay, then beat into custard to finish buttercream.
• tint 3/4 cup buttercream grass green. cover one tiny cake.
• add in another 1/2 cup frosting to the remaining green and tint the combined frosting teal. cover the second tiny cake.
• tint 1/2 cup frosting pink and use it to pipe some bad flowers onto both cakes.
• have walker deliver them.

there was one extra cake circle which i cut into two layers and walker filled and frosted. it was pretty good but i will never do this again.