Strawberries-and-Cream Cake

I love baking cakes but do not know how to decorate them at all. As a matter of fact I am quite terrible at doing things by hand, it's a combination of lack of skill and patience that really gets my projects to turn out quite ugly. Where I am getting at is I was helping to plan this baby shower for a very dear friend and she had requested a strawberries-and-cream cake, a Brazilian version of Strawberry Shortcake. I knew how to bake the cake, but not how to decorate it. So we came up with an idea: wrap the cake in foil and place the individual cakes inside a beautifully decorate box ( made by another friend, not by me obviously). It's not a novel idea, this used to be quite common in Brazil back when we were kids, as it makes it very easy to serve. 

The cake turned out well, but next time I must cut smaller slices and give it some thought before-hand on how to neatly wrap them in the foil, as my wrapping technique ( or lack thereof I should say) did not turn out so well, the pieces were quite chunky and made for a terrible presentation. I bought the foil already pre-cut, but I think next time I will custom-cut them to get to the right size. 

For this event I baked 3 cakes, used 5lbs. of strawberries and almost 2 quarts of heavy cream. Each cake yielded 12 very generous pieces.

Ingredients for the cake: 

- 2 cups of flour

- 2 cups of sugar

- 1 cup of milk, boiling ( I microwaved it on high for 2 minutes)

- 1 tablespoon baking powder

- 4 eggs

Directions:

-Pre-heat oven to 350F. Grease and flour 9x13  pan.

-In a mixer, beat the egg whites with the wire whip until they are stiff. Switch to a flat beater, add the sugar and then the yolks, beating constantly on medium speed.

-Next add the flour and baking soda, on low speed. Remove the bowl from the mixer, add the boiling milk and gently stir it by hand. 

Ingredients for the filling: 

- 1 1/2 lbs. of strawberries

- 1/2 cup of sugar

- 1 bottle of cream-soda

-  1/2 cup of rum

- 2 cups heavy cream

- another 1/2 cup of sugar

- 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Directions: 

- Mix the cream soda and the rum, set aside.

- Clean strawberries, removing stem and leaves, dice them in small bite-size pieces, place them in a bowl with 1/2 cup of sugar and let it marinate in the fridge for several hours.

- For the whipped cream, beat heavy cream, sugar and vanilla until very stiff.

Assembling the cake: 

Carefully cut the cake in half with a bread knife. Remove the top half of the cake. Poke holes in the bottom half of the cake with a knife and drizzle cream-soda/rum mix on it. Next place a generous layer of strawberries, and add the fresh whipped-cream on top, using an angled spatula to spread it. Carefully place the top half of the cake on top. To cut, grease your bread knife with cooking spray, it really makes life much easier.

Five lbs. of strawberries, diced and marinated in sugar.

The egg whites still not ready, still too runny.

Now the eggs whites are stiff and ready.

Adding the sugar.

Adding the yolks.

Adding the flour, slowly, spoonful by spoonful.

Gently adding the steaming milk.

Carefully stirring by hand after adding the milk.

Cutting the cake in half.

With the strawberries on.

Topped with fresh whipped cream.

With the top half on.

Cake cut, ready to be wrapped and served.