No better word than FREE!
Last weekend at the Sydney Markets we managed to get ourselves 7 trays of strawberries for… wait for it… NOTHING. How was this possible? Well let me tell you. They were being thrown out. Discarded because the punnets on the trays each contained a few spoilt strawberries. When we pulled into our parking space we saw these 6 trays stacked up on the side of the road. Maybe a seller dumped them there, or maybe a buyer decided their investment wasn’t a good one. Not sure but our eyes twinkled a little when we saw these trays lying there. At first I wondered if someone was playing a trick on us. Nope. No one seemed at all interested in them like we were. So into the back of Daniel’s truck they went. Yes, all 7 trays.
That night our current workawayer, Tamara, sorted through all the strawberries. Not a fun job given the state of some of them – fluffy with white mould. But there were diamonds in the rough. Actually there were about 3kg of diamonds in total. Tamara dutifully sorted, washed and topped the good strawberries to fill 4 large containers.
The strawberries are sweet and delicious. Perfect to eat as is (which the kids have been!), in smoothies or in a dessert. That’s when Tamara approached me to do some baking. She wanted to bake a strawberry cake. At first the plan was to make a sponge cake topped with vanilla cream and strawberries set in strawberry jelly. This is a delicious dessert in itself and one I’ve made often. But I had other plans. To make an actual strawberry cake. So after a little searching online Tamara and I found this recipe.
It’s super easy – everything gets mixed together, no creaming butter and sugar, and used fresh strawberries. The original recipe on www.gonnawantseconds.com has strawberry buttercream between the layers and on top of the cake. The blog author claimed this icing was problematic so I decided to cover the cake with a more traditional combination of strawberries and cream. I thought this would make a lighter cake overall as buttercream can make the cake too rich which is great for special occasions but this cake was just for a family treat.
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Strawberry Cake
Ingredients
- 380 g White Cake Mix, 1 box
- 3 ounces Strawberry Jelly, 1 box
- 4 large Eggs
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup flour
- 1/2 cup Fresh Strawberries, Finely Chopped
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 1/2 cup milk
Instructions
- Preheat the Oven to 180 degrees celsius (or 160 degrees fan bake). Spray three 22cm cake pans with butter and line with baking paper. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, mix all cake ingredients with an electric mixer on low until just combined. Scrape the side of the bowl, and increase mixer to medium and beat for 3 minutes.
- Pour cake batter into prepared pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cakes comes out clean, about 20-23 minutes.
Notes
- I used Aldi's White Mill Vanilla Cake mix in this recipe. It doesn't contain icing in the pack, just cake. You will need to check the weight of your cake mix packet but total weight of just mix and no icing is 380g.
- The packet of jelly crystals I had at home were colour free strawberry ones. If you want a pinker coloured cake, just use regular jelly crystals.
- If you don't have three cake tins the same size, just separate the mix between two tins and bake for approximately 30 minutes, or until the toothpick comes out clean.
- Frost the cake with fresh whipped cream mixed with pureed strawberries.