Experienced bakers please help! I want to bake a cake with fresh strawberries(without jello and from scratch). I have had very good luck with sweetapolita's recipe for fluffy white cake that uses 3 c cake flour and 2 c sugar and I want to adapt it so I was going to use 1/2 c strawberry purée in place of 1/2 the milk. Do you think this would work? My concern is that I found another recipe that used a similar baking method and ingredients but it only called for 2 1/4 c cake flour and 1 3/4 c sugar. The recipes both yield an 8 inch cake. Any idea why the difference in ingredient quantities and an opinion on which recipe would yield better results? Links to both recipes will follow, with the adaptation of sweetapolita's like I mentioned above. I plan on cooking the purée
http://sweetapolita.com/2011/07/fluffy-vanilla-cake-with-whipped-vanilla-bean-frosting/
I add strawberry to my cake recipe with no problems BUT I cook my strawberries down to get a thick almost syrupy consistency which removes alot of the water and enhances the flavour of the strawberries. I just take the tops off, cut them in half and pop in a saucepan on low heat until they are at the consistency I want. When you taste the strawberries you will think that the flavour is not very nice at this stage as it is so concentrated but it is perfect for cakes/SMBC etc. Great for using up overripe strawberries and freezing in ice cube trays then a ziploc bag for later use :-)
Depends on what recipe I am adding it to and how much I am putting in, it has a lot of the liquid taken out during the process of cooking down the strawberries (it is a very thick 'syrup' texture for want of a better word) so in smallish quantities I don't find it makes much difference to the cake batter and it is great for the SMBC for that reason too :-)
Definitely cook the strawberries down. It makes a huge difference! I did it for SMBC and my customers raved not just about the taste but they said the smell was amazing. Also if you grind up freeze dried strawberries it will also bring intensity of flavor without added moisture.
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