strawberry – Ananya Gupta

This cake is all ❤ . Literally. This strawberry studded cake looks like a fleet of hearts.

In Delhi, we only get strawberries for a few months during the winters, so I need to make the most of it. It’s almost stressful when my mother gets me boxes of these berries, and then I know I have to do justice to them or else I will end up feeling miserable.

This cake is a Martha Stewart jewel, as are most of my cakes, including my go-to banana bread recipe.

If you have friends and family who don’t like frosted cakes. This is a great option! It gives you a fruity tartness from the berries and the ever comforting vanilla sponge cake at the bottom.

So without further ado, below is the recipe – inspired by Martha Stewart.

Strawberry Cake

Here’s what you need (all ingredients need to be at room temperature):

85g Salted Butter
1 1/2 Cup Flour
1 1/2 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 Cup Sugar + 2 Tablespoons Sugar
1 Egg
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/2 Cup Milk
1 Cup Fresh Strawberries – halved

What you need to do:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C, and line and butter an 8inch cake tin
Sift together the Flour, Baking Powder and Salt
Place the Butter and Sugar in a stand mixer and beat on medium speed for about 4 minutes until really pale and fluffy
Once the Butter and (1 Cup) Sugar is all fluffed up, crack in the Egg, followed by Vanilla Extract until its well incorporated
Now, in basically three steps we need to alternate and put in the Flour Mix and the Milk, in a way we end up adding the remaining flour at the end.
- Add 1/3 of the flour mix – then 1/2 of the milk – 1/3 of the flour mix – then the remaining half of the milk – ending with the last 1/3 of the flour mix
- Do not over mix – just fold it will everything is incorporated and there are no dry lumps of flour
Transfer the batter to the prepared cake tin
Now, remember those halved strawberries? Arrange the strawberries on top of the batter with the cut sides facing up.
Once the strawberries are arranged – Sprinkle the reserved 2 Tablespoons of Sugar on top and bake till golden.
It takes about 10 mins at 180 degrees then lower the temperature to 170 for another 30-40 mins.

Eat it with a hot cup of coffee or in bed 🙂

The handicap of clicking half decent food photographs is that you need natural light. Understandably, after stalking numerous blogs, I realised that the only time I can bake and get good quality pictures, is definitely during the day. Which means I can’t cook on weekdays, but this also gives me a schedule for my weekends. I have promised myself a post every weekend.

This week, its strawberry shortcake.

My sister loves Shortcakes (butterier scones). And since I am constantly trying to suck up to her, this post is for her. I mean she does live across the country from me, and obviously didn’t get to try these which is a shame cause these shortcakes were G.O.O.D.

This recipe isn’t for those people who live in an outrageously hot city like I do. Unless they have a centrally air-conditioned kitchen, which I don’t. So if you’re really committed like I was, your gonna have to constantly dip your hands in ice cold water while making the dough AND chill it a couple of times to make sure the butter remains cold and basically doesn’t become melted gloop.

Having issued the prerequisite warning, you can find the recipe below.

Oh, did I mention its from ‘How to be a domestic goddess’ by Nigella Lawson? This is the first recipe that I have tried from the book. Nigella more often that not, has her way with eggs, butter, cream and sugar.

Ingredients:

Strawberry Shortcake

325 gms plain four
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
5 tbsp sugar
125 gms butter- FROZEN (Amul, why? because its utterly butterly delicious)
1 large egg
125 ml single cream (a small tetrapack works)

The ingredients listed above, are everything you need for the shortcakes. You can really experiment with the fillings. My mother is a strawberries and cream person. I had the leftover shortcakes with lemon curd and lingonberry preserve (my special find in Sweden).

Method:

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C; these shortcakes cook really fast.

Sift the flour, salt, baking powder and 3 tablespoons of the sugar in a large bowl.

Grate the frozen butter into the dry ingredients. I had to constantly dip my hands into ice cold water cause the butter would melt in my fingers while grating. If you are living in sweltering heat like I am, you should pop the bowl with the grated butter in the freezer for a few minutes before you rub it in the flour.

Once the bowl is chilled, using your fingertips, start rubbing the butter into the flour mix till they resemble small crumbs.

Crack the egg in the single cream and whisk well. This is the wet agent you add to the flour to make the dough. Start adding the liquid mix into the flour slowly. You don’t need all of it, so keep an eye out and only add the liquid sparingly until the dough comes together. Use a fork to bring the dough together until you can roll it out with a pin.

Once the dough comes together, turn it onto a floured surface and roll it out to a thickness of about 1-2 cm. Dip a biscuit cutter in the flour and make as many shortcake rounds as possible. You should get 4-5 in the first batch. Rework the dough together, roll it out again, and repeat the process until all of the dough as been used up.

Brush the tops with milk and the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar.

Place the shortcakes on a silicon pad and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes until the tops are lovely and golden.

Allow them to cool slightly. Split them down the middle and eat with sweetened whipped cream and strawberries. Or with any other filling of your choice 🙂

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