Monday, February 19, 2007

Best Strawberry Cake

1 pkg white cake mix
1 pkg strawberry jello
1 -10 oz. pkg frozen strawberries in syrup
4 eggs
3/4 Cup oil

1.5 pints whipping cream
2 pints fresh strawberries

Grease 3 cake pans and line bottoms with wax paper. (This is critical! I use Crisco and then cut a circle of wax paper for the bottom of each cake pan.) Mix first 5 ingredients in mixer. Pour into prepared pans and bake about 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

Slice berries (saving some whole ones for garnish if you wish), sprinkle with some sugar and smash them to produce extra juice. Beat the cream, adding sugar to taste, until it is stiff. (If you've never made whipping cream before, try it. It is so easy and cannot be compared to Cool Whip! Beat it in your mixer until it starts to get stiff and add sugar a little at a time. The important thing is to be sure you don't get any drops of water in the cream or it won't whip up.)
Remove cakes from pans and allow to cool. Pierce a layer with a fork and then spoon the berries on top -drizzle the juice over the cake too! Spread some whipped cream over the berries and top with another cake layer and begin process again. The top layer should not have any berries - just the whipped cream. Use the remaining whipped cream to ice the cake when it is assembled. (I add some toothpicks between the layers to add stability.)
Plan to make this cake at least a day ahead as it only gets better the longer the strawberry juice soaks into the cake layers. Don't forget you'll need to refrigerate this cake!
This is a pretty easy cake to make and it always gets rave reviews. I've made other kinds of strawberry cakes and tasted other versions, but this one wins hands down in my opinion!

2 comments:

Kelley said...

Save me a piece! :-)

Jack made an awesome one for Julie's birthday last year. It was an America's Test Kitchen recipe and was quite tasty. It was also loaded down with Kirsch (sp?) so you felt a little tipsy afterwards. (Okay, maybe that was just a sugar rush.)

Rachel said...

Mmm, sounds delicious!!! I will be trying this recipe sometime when we will have others to share it with - gotta watch the weight iykwim.