Thalia Learns to Cook: Ellen's Strawberry Cake!

Recipes and examples of dishes I can now make! Taken from a variety of sources and changed according to my abilities, needs, and dislike of doing dishes.

I recently had the opportunity to attempt my very first cake. And happily, it was for Ellen’s birthday! Therefore, I decided what better cake to try, what better occasion, than to make the famous* “Cake the started it all!”

*your definition of famous may vary.

Below is my annotated version of Ellen’s cake recipe from this very blog! That’s right, I followed the recipe from this blog to moderately positive effects, and you can too!

Ok, ingredients. I know from my previous non-dessert training that getting all the ingredients ahead of time is an important step before attempting any dish. Luckily, I have a full pantry, and an overflowing refrigerator….

Ingredients:

1 box yellow cake mix
1 3-oz box strawberry jello
1 10-12 oz pkg of frozen strawberries (or 2 pints of fresh strawberries)
½ c water
½ c oil
4 eggs
1 box (4 cups) powdered sugar (+ up to about a cup or so more,
depending on how thick you want the icing)
1 stick melted butter

Wait a minute! I don’t have any of these ingredients! Well, I have some eggs and oil (I am assuming canola oil, since that what it says on the box and olive oil might taste a bit strange?) I also don’t have enough butter, since we use a lot of EVOO. OK, off the store, back in a bit.

Preheat your oven to 350.

This I can do.

If you’re making this recipe with fresh strawberries, the recipe will be a little bit different than if you’re making it with frozen berries. If you’re using frozen berries, let them thaw over a strainer placed over a measuring cup.

Thaw until you get about 1 c of juice.

Hmmm…. I decide to go with frozen strawberries so as to more easily control portion size. However, I don’t have a properly sized sieve that will go over a measuring cup. I therefore go for this set up.

Seems to be working. I’ll just leave it alone for a while.

If you’re using fresh strawberries, hull about half a pint of them, then liquefy them in a blender. You want to have about a cup here too, so add strawberries as necessary until you get to a cup.

OK, here’s where I run into my first problem. After 1 hour of waiting for the strawberries to melt into juice, there is no juice. And I have a party to get to!

So, I make an executive decision: I shall squish the strawberries so as to attempt to get out some juice. I use a potato masher. Seems a good deal.

Get some juice, pour it from bowl into measuring cup and…. no dice.

Ok, rethinking my plan. If Ellen says it’s ok to puree fresh strawberries, then perhaps it’s also ok to puree frozen strawberries? Either way, gotta get moving! So, I puree some of the frozen strawberries and I get a cup of frozen strawberry juice/ puree and away we go!

Now, combine cake mix, strawberry jello, strawberry juice / puree, water, oil, and eggs. Mix thoroughly.

Oh! It’s so pretty! And pink! And it smells like childhood! Excellent! And now I run into another problem. I don’t own a “real” mixer. I dream of a Kitchen-Aid mixer. I register for them, I enter competitions to win them. To be honest, I could just go out and buy myself one, but what’s the fun in that? So, I don’t own one and therefore I improvise using this rinky dink thing. It throws cake mix all over the kitchen and me, but otherwise seems to be doing its job.

Prepare 3 – 8” round pans (or you can use a 9X13, or, if you’re going to a picnic like me, you could go with jars!) by spraying with cake release, or buttering/flouring them.

Hmm… several problems here.

1) I don’t own 3 – 8 inch pans. I own 2- 9inch pans. That I got when I got married 3 years ago and have not yet used. So, I dust them off, take off the wrapping, wash them and here we go! I also think I can pour any left over cake mix into a loaf pan (which I also own) and eat it on the sly.

2) I don’t own any cake release! It wasn’t in the list of ingredients. So I decide to do something that I think I remember either my mother doing or seeing on a tv show. It comes from the depths of my unconscious combined with Ellen’s instruction to butter and flour the pans. I rub some butter on them, then I pour some flour on them. Then I tap the pans around to get the excess flour out of them. This seems to provide a thin layer of flour. So, I say let’s go for it.

Bake for 20 – 30 minutes (depending on your pan size) or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean (or with a few crumbs).

Eeek! I don’t own any toothpicks! Ok, I think a fork will work.

Here’s another issue. I have NO IDEA how full to make the pans. If the recipe is meant to go into three pans and I only own two and perhaps a bit on the side, I reason that I should not fill the pans up all the way. And good thing, too. I fill them up half way, and as I turn the light on in the oven, I notice that the cakes have begun to rise up. At an alarming rate. At least if they spill over, it will make a funny blog post. But happily they do not spill over and I continue on my way. The blog post suffers accordingly.

After 20 minutes I pull out the rack with the cakes and they are distinctly wobbly. So I go with another 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, I stick in a fork and it comes out pink and covered in half baked cake. After another 3 minutes, the same thing happens. 2 minutes after that I get impatient again and pull the cakes out to start the cooling process. I take a shower to avoid futzing with the cakes for at least 15 minutes.

If you’re doing a layer cake, or baking your cakes in jars, cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes, then slide a knife around the edge of the cake, place a cooling rack on top of the cake, and invert. Then take a second cooling rack and flip it again so the top of the cake is
facing upward.

Yeah, I don’t own 2 cooling racks. Actually I don’t own 1 cooling rack. So instead I pop the cake out onto my hand to then put on a plate.

This does not go so well. So I pop the cake onto one plate and then flip back onto another plate and then set about making the icing.

I cut my little jar cakes in half to simulate a layer cake, feel free to do whatever you want! Let your cake cool to room temperature, and while it’s doing so, you can go ahead and make the frosting. To do this, mix the powdered sugar melted butter and strawberries, adding more powdered sugar until you get an icing of your desired consistency.

I have no clue what my desired consistency of icing is. Making icing like the extremely thick and sweet sweet nector of grocery store yellow cake of my childhood seems unlikely. So, I just use the whole package of powdered sugar (that’s the same thing as confectioner’s sugar, right?) and the butter and some more strawberries. Again, I do not own a mixer so I make do with the same rinky dink hand mixer as before, only this time I manage to get powdered sugar all over myself and the floor.

In the end, I have a huge amount of bright pink frosting.

Ice the cake! Note, this icing is a little bit on the runny side, so you’ll want to thicken it up a lot or consider cutting back on the butter if you’re making a layer cake.

Oops! I should have cut back on the butter! Oh well. I glop the frosting onto layer 1, call over my husband to flip layer 2 on top (I’m scared of cake disaster and he’s better and both spatial intelligence and physics) and glop frosting over layer 2! (not the most appetizing sound in the world.) I then realize I have a full cup of frosting left over, and if I put any more onto this cake, it will simply continue to run down the sides. So, I pour it into a cup and that’s that. People can add more frosting if they so desire.

Final issue: transportation. We have to drive 45 minutes to get to this party. We do not own a fancy cake transportation system, this being the first cake I’ve ever made and all. And, it’s too late to transfer the cake to another surface anyway. It’s glued to the place with frosting. So I take the bottom of my salad spinner (don’t worry, there was no kale residue), and I place it over top. Voila! Cake! It was tasty and an overall positive experience.

Could this be the beginning of a new foray in to Thalia Learns to Cook: Desserts? Stay tuned!