Strawberry Vanilla Loaf Cake

After the success of my strawberry muffins back in June, I've become slightly obsessed with using this fruit in baking. The heat works its magic on the strawberries, turning the already delicious flavour into a jammy, scented treat. 

I've spoken before about how much I love loaf cakes; deceptively simple, the best ones are moist, buttery and bursting with flavour. This recipe does not disappoint - beautifully textured, the strawberries and vanilla work so well together, resulting in loaf cake perfection. 

This cake is ideal for al fresco eating - it's got a bold flavour, it's easy to transport and even easier to slice and devour! So I'm sending it over to this month's Tea Time Treats Picnic challenge; the challenge is hosted by Karen (this month's host) at Lavender and Lovage and Janie at The Hedgecombers.

As strawberries are still in season, I'm also entering it in to the Simple and in Season challenge, devised by Ren Behan and hosted this month by Elizabeth from the wonderful Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary.



RECIPE

125g butter, room temperature
160g caster sugar
2 eggs
175g self-raising flour
3 tablespoons buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
200g strawberries

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C

Grease and base line a loaf tin, 23 x 13 x 7 cm 

Wash the strawberries carefully, dry, hull and cut into quarters. 

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla extract.

After weighing out the flour, remove one tablespoon (this is used to toss with the strawberries before adding them to the batter). Sieve the rest of the flour and fold in to the cake mixture. Mix in the buttermilk. 

Toss the prepared strawberries in the left-over tablespoon of flour (this prevents it from all sinking to the bottom during baking) and fold in to the cake batter.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, smoothing the top.

Put in the oven and bake for about 45 mins or until the cake is cooked and golden brown on top. It takes longer to cook than a normal sponge cake because of the addition of the strawberries.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for about 20 mins before carefully turning out and leaving to cool on a wire rack. 

This cake makes a perfect pudding eaten still warm from the oven, served with crème anglaise. As a cake, it's wonderful too and in fact tastes even better after a day or two - very handy for a summer picnic.

Strawberry and Orange Muffins

It's been a beautiful June. I've been gorging myself on asparagus and strawberries, dining outside, going for long country walks and bike rides and sunning myself in the garden - bliss. 

I made these muffins this morning, for an al fresco breakfast. The strawberries were some that I had left in the fridge and were slightly past their best for eating normally. The buttermilk was also left over from a chocolate cake I made earlier in the week so satisfyingly, I was able to use that too. 

The muffins smelled wonderful as they were baking, the strawberries giving that heady, jammy perfume. The taste was exceptional, sweet and moist, balanced with a lovely acidity from the orange zest. 

As this recipe neatly used up some old strawberries and buttermilk, I'm sending this off to the No Waste Food Challenge. It's being hosted by Michelle of Utterly Scrummy Food for Families on behalf of Elizabeth's Kitchen.

I'm also sending this off to Four Seasons Food over at The Spicy Pear where the theme is the Colour Red this month. It's normally hosted over at Delicieux or Eat Your Veg.




Finally, I'm pleased to be entering it into a new challenge, Bake of the Week over at Casa Costello.

RECIPE 

225g plain flour
160g caster sugar
2 and a quarter teaspoons baking powder
half a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
half a teaspoon of salt
250ml buttermilk
55g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
grated zest of one orange
1 egg, beaten
about 130g fresh strawberries, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Line a muffin tin with paper liners.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarb of soda, and salt into a large bowl and mix together. I add the chopped strawberries at this point too because I found that if I added them last of all, they didn't mix in as well. Adding them at this stage means that they are evenly dispersed throughout the muffins.

In a separate bowl, mix together the buttermilk, melted butter, orange zest, and egg. Make a hole in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients in. Mix with a fork just until blended, being careful not to over mix. With a standard ice-cream scoop or a large spoon, scoop the batter into the prepared cases, filling them almost full.

Bake the muffins for 20 to 25 minutes, until golden brown.

Three Berry Cake

I love cake with fruit in; by that, I don't mean 'fruit cake', although I love that too, or cakes layered or topped with fruit, I mean cake with bits of fresh fruit in the batter. Apple cake is a particular favourite of mine (see here and here for two recipes) but it's obviously an autumnal cake whereas I wanted something in a similar vein but that would celebrate this beautiful weather we're currently enjoying. With the plethora of gorgeous soft fruit we have available in summer, it took much deliberation before deciding on a mixture of raspberries, strawberries and blueberries. Summer in a cake - what more do you want?

I'm linking this up to several blogging challenges. The first is July's gorgeous Tea Time Treats Challenge, Fresh Fruit Treats, jointly run by Karen of Lavender and Lovage (this month's host) and Kate at What Kate Baked.

It's going to Javelin Warrior's wonderful weekly challenge too, Made with Love Mondays, which encourages everyone to cook from scratch.

Finally, I'm entering it into Calender Cakes, run by Rachel from Dolly Bakes and Laura (this month's host) from Laura Loves Cakes. The theme is Fruity Bakes.  

RECIPE

200g butter

200g caster sugar

200g self raising flour + one tablespoon for the fruit

180g raspberries, strawberries and blueberries (roughly 60g of each fruit)

3 eggs

zest of one lemon

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C

Grease and base line a round cake tin, 22cm diameter

Wash and prepare the fruit.

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking well after each addition. Sieve the flour and fold in. Toss the fruit in a tablespoon of flour (this prevents it from all sinking to the bottom during baking) and fold in to the cake batter along with the grated lemon zest.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, smoothing the top.

Put in the oven and bake for about 45-50 mins or until the cake is cooked and golden brown on top. It takes longer to cook than a normal sponge cake because of the addition of the moist fruit. 

Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for about 20 mins before carefully turning out and leaving to cool on a wire rack. 
This cake makes a perfect pudding eaten still warm from the oven, served with crème anglaise. As a cake, it's wonderful too and in fact tastes even better after a day or two - very handy for a summer picnic.

Strawberry cake

Everybody is blogging about strawberries. Well, it is the season after all. Before I carry on, there's one thing I have to get off my chest - much as I love strawberries, I don't particularly like them with cream. There, I've said it. I realise that in most people's eyes I have just committed heresy but I just don't think that they go very well together. The blandness of the cream detracts from the fresh succulence of the fruit, at least in my mind (and my palate). I'd much rather eat the strawberries on their own, unadulterated but I understand that I am and forever will be firmly in the minority in this case. Mine is a lonely road...

The cake here incorporates two strawberry elements - a puree of the fruit, lightly sweetened, folded into the batter and fresh strawberries scattered over just before baking. The puree gives the cake a subtle pinkish hue and the taste is delicately fruity. I love it just as it is, but you could treat it like a Victoria sponge, splitting it open and sandwiching with jam, crème patissière or even whipped cream.

As the theme is Summer Fruits, this is my entry to June's Tea Time Treats challenge run by Lavender and Lovage and What Kate Baked, hosted by Kate this month. It also neatly fits in with the One Ingredient Cooking challenge, which is hosted by Nazima at Working London Mummy and Laura at How to cook good food and the theme is strawberries.

      


RECIPE

140g butter
180g caster sugar
4 eggs
225g self-raising flour
260g strawberries
1 tablespoon icing sugar
zest and juice of a lemon

A 22cm cake tin, greased and base lined with baking parchment.

Pre-heat the oven to 180 °C .

Wash and hull the strawberries. Put just over half of them in a food processor or blender and whizz them together with the icing sugar and a good squeeze of lemon.
Halve the other strawberries and leave on one side while you get on with the cake.

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking well between each addition. Fold in the sifted flour and then the strawberry puree.

Pour into the prepared cake tin. Place the remaining halved strawberries on top, pushing them in slightly so that they're partially submerged.  Bake for about 40-45 minutes, or until a cake-tester (be it a knitting needle, metal skewer or anything else you might use) comes out clean.

Leave in the tin for about 10 minutes before turning out on to a wire rack to cool.

Before serving, dust with icing sugar or slice in half and spread with whatever you like (see note above).