Baking a Strawberry Cake

With all our valentine preparation we have been thinking pink a lot. We have been talking about making a strawberry cake, so yesterday was the day. I looked on-line for a recipe. Most of them used strawberry gelatin which we did not have on hand, but I finally found one that used strawberries at A Dash of Sass. I made a few changes to the recipe, but not too many. I did not have self rising flour--I have cake flour, all purpose flour, organic white bread flour, whole wheat flour, and I think I may still have some brown rice flour, but no self rising flour. So I looked on line for a substitute (and to find out what it is) and found on Buzzle an easy substitute, so this is one of the changes I made.

I forgot to take pictures of us making the batter and even of the batter, but here is the empty bowl with a bit of batter left. I did not use any food coloring and didn't really think it needed any.

In the oven

The recipe makes a three-layer eight-inch diameter cake. We only had two eight-inch pans so we made one nine-inch as well.

Then we made the cream cheese frosting recipe included with the cake recipe. It tasted good, but did not spread well. I don't know what I did wrong, but something was definitely wrong. I did not use the milk and used all three cups of sugar.

But it tasted good, so we aren't too worried!

All three of us enjoyed a piece after it was frosted and enjoyed it!

The cooked color was not as pretty as the batter, but I would rather not have the artificial food coloring, so we will keep it that way. I think next time I might consider making it a bundt cake and doing a chocolate glaze for the top.

Anyway, my cake recipe adapted from A Dash of Sass:

3 cups all-purpose flour
4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
(baking powder and salt are not needed if you use 3 cups of self rising flour!)
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup canola oil
2 cups pureed strawberries (I used frozen ones that I thawed in the oven at 250 for a few minutes and then pureed in my food processor--I did not strain the seeds out and did not notice them)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 eggs beaten

1) Preheat oven to 325. Spray three 8-inch round cake pans with non-stick spray.
2) Mix the flour, baking powder and salt together. Then gather the rest of the ingredients without adding them.
3) Once you have all the liquid ingredients you can add them to the dry ones and mix. Then distribute evenly into the three pans.
4) Bake for 27-30 minutes.
5) Cool on rack in pan for 10 minutes than remove from pans and cool completely.
6) Frost or glaze however you would like.

Enjoy!!