Day 17 - Vanilla Pound Cake & Strawberry Country Cake

 Sunday, March 6, 2011

Today is such a rainy day, perfect for laying in bed to watch a movie, snuggling up with a book, or baking! Today I chose to do a little of each. I decided to bake a Martha Stewart vanilla pound cake [piggy backing off of last week] and a strawberry country cake from Ina Garten.

I started off with the pound cake. There were actually not that many ingredients in this recipe, just butter, flour, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and salt. The batter came together quickly and was a smooth, silky consistency. It baked in the loaf pan for "about an hour" as the recipe suggests. Maybe I should have checked it earlier because when it came out after an hour it looked ok, although a little more "well done" along the edges then last week's pound cake. After it cooled for a bit, I flipped it out of the loaf pan and I could feel that it was a bit dense. I poked the top of the cake and instead of springing back, it felt sort of hard. I sprinkled it with confectioners sugar which not only make it look yummy but I figured it couldn't hurt the flavor either.

   

I cut an end off the cake and could tell that something wasn't right. I couldn't tell if it was the flavor that was off or just that it was way over baked. I left it on the counter to fully cool and the cake only got worse. I wish I had a scale to put it on because it was literally like a brick! Needless to say, it ended up in the garbage. So disappointing. 

While the pound cake was over baking in the oven, I started on the batter for the Strawberry Country Cake. The batter was a bit more complicated than the pound cake because it had quite a few more ingredients. It seemed like a white cake recipe with the added flavors of orange and lemon zest. What makes it a strawberry cake is that the cake is topped with fresh whipped cream and strawberries. It sounded a bit like a strawberry short cake which I have always loved since I was little so I think thats what drew me to this recipe.

I was sure to check the cakes often to ensure that they didn't over bake. The cakes came out a few minutes before the timer went off and they looked great. They were golden brown and sprung back nicely as I touched it. Unfortunately I had to wait for the taste test because the cake is topped with fresh whipped cream which only should be made when you are ready to eat the cake. I also figured I should wait until later to put the cake together so I could share it with my family!

So tonight after dinner I was ready to assemble and decorate the cakes. I whipped up some fresh whipped cream and spread it evenly over one of the cakes [which would be the bottom layer]. Then I decorated it with fresh strawberries and topped it with the second cake. Again, I topped the cake with whipped cream and decorated it with strawberries. The cake looked beautiful when it was done!

The cake was delicious. It had a slight citrus flavor (from the orange and lemon zest) which was really nice. It sort of tasted more like a pound cake [ironically!] And who doesn't love fresh whipped cream and strawberries anyway?! The only thing is that the cakes were HUGE! It probably would have sufficed to make one cake and topped it with the whipped cream and strawberries - the two cakes were a little much, but none the less delicious!

Stay tuned for next week :)