Vanilla & Strawberry Birthday Cake
This year, R* wasn't sure what he wanted to do for his birthday but he knew he wanted it to involve ice cream cake. However at the last minute, we had a family emergency and had to spend his birthday weekend out of town. Since ice cream doesn't travel well, I decided to make him a small birthday cake. He requested a vanilla cake, and I suggested we complement it with strawberry frosting since that's his second favorite flavor. A Vanilla and Strawberry Cake was in order!
Looking for recipes for small-batch vanilla cakes I came across this one from Butternut Bakery. I'm a fan of their Instagram page where everything always looks delicious, and the recipe got good reviews. I also liked that it was only a 2-layer cake, so that I'd have to make less frosting when I put it together.
The cakes baked up in 25 minutes, it seems my oven is now running too hot, whereas before it wasn't heating up enough! My oven thermometers never show the same temperature and aren't trustworthy either... sigh! I could tell the oven was too hot because although the centers of the cake layers were baked through and a toothpick came out clean, they were a bit collapsed even as I took the cakes out of the oven. The other surprising thing about this recipe is how tall the cake layers are. The rose all the way to the rim of the cake pan! I think if you wanted to use this recipe to make three cake layers you could do so without a problem.
I decided to try this strawberry filling recipe from the All Recipes website. It would save time compared to pureeing strawberries and waiting for the puree to cool. I halved the recipe and was a bit taken aback by the amount of cornstarch it called for. I went ahead with it anyway. I may have overcooked the filling a bit, in hopes that it would reduce a bit, because it looked a bit liquid and because it says to cook until thickened and it never quite looked thickened. Probably the cornstarch prevented it from reducing but the filling did cool very quickly and it was certainly firm enough to hold its shape.
The only frosting I had time for was American Buttercream, using Preppy Kitchen's excellent recipe. I used milk because I had no heavy cream in the house. I used 2 tablespoons of milk, 2 teaspoons of vanilla and added 2 teaspoons of strawberry jam. With all this extra liquid I had to add another 1/4 cup of confectioner's sugar and a bit more salt. The buttercream was still pretty thin and had lots of bubbles, but I knew I could work with it. And the family isn't critical!
For the decoration, I was thinking of doing a buttercream transfer of a bicycle, somehow incorporating sprinkles. But it was late by now, and R* hasn't even been that much into cycling as of late. However, we've been having fun watching the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. That would be the theme!
When putting the cake together, I piped a double buttercream dam in between the layers (one on top of the other, each using a 1/2 inch round tip), so that I would be able to fit in more filling. You want to balance those tall cake layers with larger amount of filling. One thing I'll say for this All Recipes strawberry filling is that it yielded the perfect amount of filling for the 6-inch cake layer with the taller buttercream dam.
I thought it would be fun to use a cake comb on the sides of the cake but with such soft buttercream the teeth of the comb went all the way through the crumb coat and exposed the sides of the cake. Fortunately, with the soft buttercream, this was easy to repair. I ended up piping buttercream on the sides of the cake with the 1/2 inch tip, smoothing that, and doing a simple decoration of vertical angled stripes using the small spatula. These two tall layers and the filling created the perfect height for a 6-inch cake.
The next morning, I colored some buttercream blue and piped 5 Olympic rings on the top of the cake. When we got to Grandpa's house I completed the caketop decor with an Eiffel tower topper, a novelty American flag ring, and a Happy Birthday topper. Once the toppers were on, I wished I hadn't piped the Olympic rings squarely in the center of the cake. If I'd piped them lower, the toppers wouldn't have been so crowded. However I think this was only obvious to me. Also, I still think sprinkles would have been fun, but by now the buttercream was far too firm to even consider that. On the plus side, the extra space below the caketop decorations allowed plenty of room for candles!
We ended up lighting the candles and cutting the cake a day ahead of R*'s actual birthday so that we could share it with Grandpa. We had a simple dinner of our homemade chili, cornbread and baked potato. The cake was delicious! Kudos to this recipe from Butternut Bakery as it was absolutely delicious! Even though the cake layers were probably a bit overbaked they weren't dry. I don't use a thick layer of buttercream, so that felt very well balanced. The only downside was that the strawberry filling felt quite gelatinous in the mouth. It felt 2/3 gelatin and 1/3 strawberry. This bothered everyone and everyone ended up scraping away most of their filling. If I do try this filling again I'll use more strawberries and less cornstarch. All that said the next day the cake was even better and the filling had somehow softened up a bit. So this could be a good cake to put together a couple of days before.
Most importantly R* gave a happy laugh when he saw the cake decor and it helped him feel his birthday was special. He was happy to pose with it and even sent a picture of the cake to a friend. Happy Birthday dear R*!
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