Strawberry Shortcake Cake part 1

I know, I know, strawberries are out of season, but just barely, and it's my sister's birthday request so, not my fault.

I'm making this from a King Arthur Flour recipe. They're incredibly reliable and besides, I like the company.

I just want to show you a few things about the cake. First, make sure everything is room temperature. You're going to make you life so much easier that way. If you say, got the butter warm but took the eggs right out of the fridge, your batter might break. By break, I mean it'll look kinda gross, like it's separating. Lots of things cause batters to break, temperature is only one of them. Not the end of the world if this does happen though, because 9 times out of 10, adding the flour usually fixes it. Thing is, why drive yourself crazy? Just keep it all nice and room temperature.

Ok, so you read the recipe, and it says to beat the butter, then add the sugar and beat for 5 min. This is creaming. We do this because the sharp sugar crystals create little pockets in the butter when you're mixing them and that gives the eggs a happy home to go to when you add them. Now, I don't know about you, but I hate sitting there timing myself, so I'm going to show you not done and done.

Not done

See how dry it looks? Ok I probably should have zoomed in, but you can see that this isn't really creamy. It's more like play-doh or something.

This is done

Ok seriously, I'm zooming in next time. It's a lot easier to see if you compare the pictures. They're more or less the same color, but see how it's starting to look a bit more like a batter? There aren't these clumps, it's smoother. That's done. Now you can add your eggs.

This is all the eggs added, but no flour.

Looks kinda like pudding.... yum.

So you'll see that the recipe tells you to add the yogurt and the dry ingredients separately in stages. This is usually done because a batter can only absorb so much liquid at any one time. Force it and it breaks like I told you above. That's why you start with the flour, dry things up a bit then you can put the yogurt in. Do it in stages, (usually 3 dry, 2 wet) and do it by hand because the less you fuss with your batter, the more tender it will be.

This is what it looks like once it's done and divided into the pans.

 

Don't worry about how thick it is, or too much about how evenly you spread it. It's a cake, it'll all work out in the end. Speaking of the end... that's what this is.

 

See? Worked out just fine with minimal spreading! Tune in for part 2 where I put the cake together.