Quadruple S! (Spongy, Sweet, Strawberry Shortcake~)

You can’t run on a campground. You can only ran. Because it’s past tense (past tents).

Hahaha! Nothing like starting out a recipe with a horrible pun~! I’ll see if I can find some good cooking or baking puns to start out some of my later posts.

So hi again, hope you’re doing well! Today’s recipe is strawberry shortcake using sponge cake as the base! This is probably the first recipe I did by myself many years ago without my parents help. It’s an extremely delicious light cake that fits as a tea snack and dessert after a heavy meal. This is the version I always use, but as always, feel free to experiment with the recipe as much as you’d like to get it to suit your tastes!

Ingredients:

Sponge Cake

·      1 cup cake flour

·      1.5 tsp baking powder

·      ¼ tsp salt

·      1 cup sugar

·      6 eggs, separated (look at my egg separating blog post for tips!)

·      ¼ cup boiling water

·      1 heaping tsp grated lemon or orange zest

·      1.5 tbsp lemon or orange juice

·      1 tsp vanilla extract

·      ¼ tsp cream of tartar

Decoration

·      Lots of strawberries! (There’s no such thing as too many strawberries, so I always buy 3-4 boxes. I only use about 2 boxes, but it’s good to have some extras just in case) – remove the leaves and cut the strawberries in half

·      Whipped cream (make your own or buy the premade cans)

It’s best to have all the ingredients at room temperature, but I’ve made this recipe more than ten times and only one or two of those times did I actually have the ingredients at room temperature, so don’t worry too much about that.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF and grease two large round cake pans. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. Quickly beat the egg yolks in a large bowl (everything will be combined into this bowl later) until thickened, gradually beat in the sugar until light and has slightly increased in volume, beat the boiling water until the mixture is a bit more runny, and then beat in the zest, juice, and vanilla extract. Slowly beat in the dry ingredients until combined. Clean the beaters and beat the egg whites and cream of tartar on high speed until they form stiff peaks. Divide the whites into quarter sections, and fold the whites in one-quarter at a time. Pour the batter into the greased pans and bake for 40-50 minutes.

Once the cakes have cooled down to room temperature, remove them from the pans, and cut each cake in half so that you now have four rounds of cake. Place one round on your serving platter, spread a thin layer of whipped cream, place a layer of halved strawberries, and cover with another thin layer of whipped cream. Place another round on top and repeat the layering, but when you reach the top you can design with whole strawberries, and then you are all done!

This recipe is so light and sweet and absolutely delicious~! I’m the type of person who prefers actual cake for strawberry shortcake rather than biscuits, so this recipe is perfect for me. I hope you enjoy this recipe too, and have a sweet rest of the week~ ^_^