Strawberry Cream Cake

Don't you just love strawberries? I sure do. It's not even strawberry season yet, but I lucked out and found some nice ones at the store last week, which was perfect because it gave me a reason to make this cake.

This Strawberry Cream Cake . . .

Here, I'll just give you the recipe right up front and then we can get on with my helpful tips for when you go to make this cake yourself.

You are going to make it, right?

So, before I go on, I want to know why no one has said to me "You know Jill, I think I know why your butt is so big. It's because you eat too many sweets." Of course I'd have to agree with you, but I also feel I should tell you that I have to make these treats.

No, REALLY. I know you think I'm just in denial, and I am a little bit, but I have croppers over every Saturday evening and I like to spread the baking love all over them. They give me the perfect excuse to try new recipes. Someone besides me will eat it, thereby cutting down on the amount going to my butt, and the treat is sure to be gone before they leave. Which means I won't be forced to eat it at every meal until it's gone. See? Win-win.

Now that that's settled, let's talk about some important points to keep in mind when you go to make this cake. This cake that is, I'm so not kidding, A-MAZE-ING. Really.

First of all, I want to share a little trick I learned from Bakerella, and I got to use it for the first time on this cake.

When you need to cut parchment paper to fit your cake pans, cut them all at once by stapling the pieces of parchment paper together and cutting all the circles out together, just once. Brilliant! I want to be Bakerella.

See, look how much time I just saved myself. I could make another cake with the time I saved. Or not.

Before I get too far in, I feel I should tell you that I got this recipe from the April/May 2008 issue of Taste of Home, but I changed it a teensy little bit. If you want to see the original recipe, go here.

I only did two things different. First, I didn't make the whipping cream frosting because I didn't want my cake melting and oozing into a big sloppy mess of oozing strawberries and soggy cake. And maybe that wouldn't have happened, but I knew I wanted something sturdy to anchor my strawberries.

So I made a cream cheese frosting. I know. I should be shot.

The second thing I didn't do, is I didn't let my egg whites stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. Puh-leeze. Like I'm going to wait around for that. Forget it. I set them aside and did the thing with the egg yolks, but then once that was done I said to those egg whites "Ready or not, Guys, you're goin' in. Suit up!" And they were okay with it. Didn't mind it one little bit.

See. They're happy to sit and wait and ready to go when needed. Thanks guys.

So, I'm not Pioneer Woman or anything like that, even if I want to be, but I do like to show you a few pictures so you know if you're on the right track.

This is what your egg yolk mixture will look like when you're ready to set it aside and give some attention to the egg whites.

This is what your egg whites will look like once they are ready to be folded in with the egg yolks.

Here they meet.

Folding gently.

Gently folding.

Gently, gently folding. Remember, we already beat the crap out of our eggs, now we're being nice.

This is what the batter will look like when you put it into your cake pans. It's very thick and stiff and it is going to turn into the most delicious cake on the planet. I promise. Even better than the Barefoot Contessa's Fourth of July Cake.

I'm not kidding here. This cake is a cross between a pound cake, an angel food cake, and the moistest, most delicious yellow cake you've ever eaten.

Aren't they pretty?

I just popped my cakes out of the pans, which was super easy since I lined them with parchment paper.

See how easy it peels off? And you're left with a perfect cake bottom that won't disintegrate when you try to frost it.

Try very hard not to eat them yet. There's more work to be done.

Whip up that cream cheese frosting and start laying those strawberry slices down.

Plunk another layer on and . . .

Repeat.

And another layer.

And oops, I forgot to upload the finished cake picture here. Well guess what, I'm not goin' back. That was 22 pictures and I'm going to bed. You're going to have to scroll back to the top to see what the finished product looks like. This picture is the inside of the cake, the next day, after everything started melding together and oozing a little bit.

Oh geez, my eyes are rolling into the back of my head thinking about it and . . .

THUNK!

I'm out. I can't see anymore so I'm going to bed. Somebody hit PUBLISH for me, please.