Home, Cooking: Once-a-Year Strawberry Cake

I first figured out how much better in-season strawberries are than grocery-store lumps when I was a teenager working on a farm in Virginia. The normal rhythm of farm work, where we’d do a few different blocks of work in a day, swapping between mulching and planting and weeding, changed completely during the weeks that the strawberries were in. We put in full, hot days of strawberry picking, broken up only by going to the farmers’ markets on Wednesdays and Saturdays, where people bought every berry we offered in the first half hour after the selling bell rang. 

A decade or so later, living in Texas, I had a life-altering realization: I could buy whole flats of in-season strawberries, and preserve them. Other people who didn’t grow up in a canning household, but got into the habit later in life, may understand how over-my-head I got with jam-making during that period. I bought flat after flat, bag after bag of white sugar. I was on fire for jam, and so was my kitchen. 

For the past few years I’ve been practicing letting go, a little bit, of my desperation to grasp and hold strawberry season in both hands. If I get to the market in time to nab some (9:14 am, last weekend), I buy three or four boxes, fewer if there are a lot of people still behind me in line. I wash and pick over the berries, enjoying the wine-y smell that reminds me of the fields, that teenage summer. The ones that are super dark and on the edge of “too ripe,” I use for a small batch of freezer jam, or freeze for future popsicles. I keep a few perfect ones out for eating. And then I use a pound for this cake. 

This is a Smitten Kitchen recipe, similar to a few others I’ve seen out and about on the web (Martha Stewart’s; Sarah Jampel’s on Bon Appetit). After you bake it, the top acquires a particular jammy texture that’s absolutely singular. Although it’s not jam or compote, this cake is also, in a way, a method of preserving strawberries. I cut it into pieces, freeze them on a tray, then put them into any freezer-friendly container, layered with parchment paper. I take one piece out at a time, and send it with my child’s lunch. Or, if any frozen cake is still around when Memorial Day or the Fourth of July arrive, I’ll cut the pieces smaller still, and bring a plate of bites to a cookout. 

Once-a-Year Strawberry Cake

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients

• 6 tablespoons (85 grams) unsalted butter, softened to room temp
• 1½ cups (188 grams) all-purpose flour
• 1½ teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon table salt
• 1 cup (200 grams) cane sugar
• 2 tablespoons (25 grams) turbinado sugar (or cane sugar is fine)
• 1 large egg

• ½ cup (118 ml) milk (can sub plant milk) 
• 1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla extract
• 1 pound (450 grams) your most perfect strawberries, hulled and halved

Directions

1. Set the oven at 350 degrees. Butter a 10-inch pie pan, 9-inch deep-dish pie pan, or whatever equivalent you prefer. 
2. Whisk together dry ingredients. In a larger bowl, cream butter and cane sugar with electric mixer. Add egg, milk, and vanilla. Add dry mixture in, combining with a light touch, until batter is smooth but not overly so.
3. Spread in prepared pan. Now comes the fun part, at least for people who are, perhaps, a bit more creative than me! Arrange your strawberries face down (cut side down) on the batter, using whatever fun swirly pattern you please. They should be in a single layer. Sprinkle turbinado sugar over the top. 
4. Bake for 10 min in your 350-degree oven. Then reduce oven temp to 325 (no need to take the cake out while you do). It’ll take 50 to 60 more minutes to get the cake to golden brown, and for a tester to come out without cake mush on it. Cool completely on a rack. 
5. Serve with whipped cream, if you want. (Maybe lavender whipped cream, for extra fanciness?)