Strawberry cake, delicious and visually spectacular recipe

Pastry can be considered the art of preparing and decorating desserts such as cakes, cookies or cakes. In a meal, each dish has its place and importance and dessert is no less. It is what we wait for, throughout the meal, to end up accompanying it with a drink, a coffee or an infusion. There are many types of cake, but without a doubt, those that tend to succeed in a pastry shop are those that combine a good dough with fruit, such as strawberry cake, for example. This cake is not only striking because of the red color of the fruit, but it combines flavors in such a way that each bite is a luxury for those who eat it. Therefore, if we want to surprise someone, let’s not hesitate to include this delicious cake on our menu. In addition, it is a simple recipe that will allow us to prepare two of the parts that make it up: the shortcrust pastry base and the pastry cream. The icing on this cake is the protagonist: the strawberry. Go for it?

Recipe information

• Preparation time: 1 hour
• Cooking time: 30 minutes
• Total time: 1 hour and 30 minutes
• Rations: 8
• Category: cake shop
• Type of cuisine: international
• Calories: 213 kcal per 100 g

Ingredients for strawberry cake for 8 people

• 700 g strawberries
• 20 g apricot jam

For the base of a 28 cm mold:

• 250 g wheat flour
• 160g butter
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla essence
• 50 g powdered sugar

For the pastry cream:

• 4 yolks
• Lemon or lime zest
• 1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
• 125g sugar
• 50 g of cornstarch or flour
• 500 ml of milk

How to make strawberry cake

In a bowl, mix the wheat flour with the cold butter. Since we are going to mix these two ingredients with our hands, we will make our work easier if the butter is previously cut into cubes. We mix well until we achieve a sand-like texture.

When we have the desired texture, we add the remaining ingredients for the dough to the same bowl: egg, powdered sugar, salt and vanilla essence. We continue mixing with our hands until we get a homogeneous dough, without lumps and smooth. If it sticks to our hands, add a little more flour until it doesn’t stick. We wrap it in transparent paper. We let it rest in the refrigerator for approximately 30 minutes.

Taking advantage of the fact that the dough is resting, we are going to prepare the pastry cream. To do this, we beat the yolks with the sugar and starch until we achieve a fluid texture.

Now we put the milk together with the lime zest to heat in a pot. When it starts to boil, remove from heat.

So that the cream does not curdle, we pour a little of the milk into the yolk mixture. We mix and, now that the mixture has adapted to the temperature, we pour everything into the pot with the rest of the milk. Mix well and add the vanilla essence and stir over low heat until the pastry cream thickens. We reserve the pastry cream in the pot and cover it with plastic wrap, thus preventing a crust from forming. Let it cold down.

While the pastry cream rests, we start working with the dough. We stretch it with a roller, avoiding handling it too much, since if it gets hot it will be difficult to work with. We spread the dough and, when it is larger than the mold, we roll it on the rolling pin and transfer it to the mold previously greased with butter and flour.

Then, we fit the dough well to the mold and trim the excess edges. Prick the dough with a fork so that it can breathe and does not rise when baking. However, to ensure that it does not rise, as an option, you can put weight on top of the base. You cover it with parchment paper and put chickpeas or rice on it.

With the oven preheated to 180 °C, we put our cake inside and leave it for 15 minutes or until it turns golden. Once ready, we take it out of the oven, remove the weight and the baking paper from the cake and let it cool. At this point, we only have to prepare one ingredient: the strawberries. We wash them, cut the leaves and cut them in half.

It’s time to assemble our strawberry cake. To do this, we add the pastry cream to the base with a spatula or spoon. If you prefer it to be smooth, you can use a pastry bag. When we have everything covered with the pastry cream, we place the strawberries one at a time.

To finish, we dilute a little of the apricot jam with water and, with a brush, paint the strawberries. This way the cake will have a shiny appearance that will attract even more attention.

We now have our cake to cut and serve to our guests.

Easy Preparation Summary

1. We mix the wheat flour with the butter with our hands until we have a sandy texture.
2. When we have the desired texture, we add the remaining ingredients: eggs, sugar, salt and vanilla essence.
3. When we have a ball of the base, we wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.
4. For the pastry cream, on the one hand we beat the yolks with the sugar and starch until we achieve a fluid texture.
5. On the other hand, we heat until the milk begins to boil along with the lime zest.
6. We pour a little of the milk into the pastry cream mixture so that it does not curdle and we mix
7. When the mixture has reached a certain temperature, we add the rest of the milk little by little and stir so that it thickens and forms our pastry cream.
8. When we have it ready, we cover it with plastic wrap so that no crust forms and we let it cool.
9. While the pastry cream rests, we stretch the base with a rolling pin, roll it on it and stretch it over our mold. Once stretched, we cut the edges that extend beyond the mold
10. We prick the base with a fork, cover it with greaseproof paper and put chickpeas or rice on top so that it does not rise due to the weight. We bake it at 180 ºC for 15 minutes or until we have a golden crust. We remove and let it cool
11. We prepare our strawberries and fill the base with the pastry cream and strain our strawberries on top as we like.
12. We now have our strawberry cake ready to share it with whoever we want.