Fairy cake

fairy cake
Originally uploaded by anricat

A friend asked me to make a cake for her daughter's birthday party tomorrow. She wanted a fairy-themed cake. I sculpted the fairy (my first human-ish figure) all out of fondant. The toadstool is cake covered in fondant.

She wanted a strawberry cake and I don't have a go-to strawberry cake recipe. I looked around online and I found a lot of strawberry cake recipes, but none of them used actual strawberries. (Huh?!) Most of them used strawberry jell-o (and most of them combined a box of white cake with a box of strawberry jello). I'm pretty sure the birthday girl wouldn't have cared, but that's just not me. I wanted strawberry cake with REAL strawberries. From scratch. I'm not a box cake baker.

So I found a recipe, tried it out and it was okay, I suppose. It wasn't OMG NOM NOM yummy so I found a recipe for a basic white cake and set out to turn it into a strawberry cake. My first attempt was actually pretty good, but it was a little too sweet and not quite strawberry enough. So I adjusted it again when making this cake. I saved aside a small amount of batter for a taster cupcake so I could see how it came out and it is now perfect.

I paired it with a strawberry italian meringue buttercream which I made with strawberry juice (again, my own creation based on a vanilla meringue buttercream). The juice was left after defrosting the strawberries which were frozen, on purpose, because freezing allows for a better puree for baking (and leftover juice). Someone has probably already made a strawberry meringue buttercream before - I can't imagine this is a new idea, but it worked well and made a delicious frosting.

I also had some strawberry puree left after making the cake so I slapped that between the layers. I sure wish I was having a piece. It looks delicious! I'll post the recipe soon. It's definitely a keeper!