This was a special cake for a special lady.
We were going to a party for a close family friend and I wanted to make something extra than just a Victoria sponge. After some researching I came across a recipe for drunk strawberries and thought yes this is perfect for this occasion.
The recipe starts with soaking strawberries in vodka & Prosecco over night (I only did mine for an afternoon and they were not strong enough) . I picked the biggest strawberries I could find to do this so it would be easier to decorate later.
Once you take out the strawberries you need to dip them in sugar. I found the best way to do this was get a cup of sugar and dip them in. Next time I will use a stick to dip them in as I was getting sugar everywhere.
I then put them on a baking sheet as I didn't want the strawberries to stick to everything. I dipped the in sugar while the sponges were baking.
Now for the cake:
Once again I was in a new kitchen and this time I have a permanent place for my mixer which I have been very pleased about. It makes baking so much quicker and easier, can leave it to mix while doing something else.
All I did was make two sandwich sized vanilla cakes. This was the first time using the oven to bake and was a bit out of practice and 8 months pregnant. The sponges didn't go exactly how I wanted them to...
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They did come out a little well done but I took off the tops and was going to be adding cream, jam, icing sugar and strawberries so what does it matter.
Now for the fun part - decorating
I had these stencils for decorating with icing sugar so I attempted at making some heart shapes on the cake. I'm hind sight it would of be better if the cake was completely flat but I did get some heart shapes at least on the cake.
I had whipped cream in the mixer so it was thick & fluffy to spread over the strawberry jam already on the bottom sandwich slice of cake. I was trying to get it a nice shape as the piping had not gone to plan, that was me forgettig that the pipe shapes wouldn't stay as it's just cream and doesn't have any sugar in it.
This was the strawberry layer and was trying to get the strawberries in the shape I had created with the cream. Next time I shall do thinner slices to layer over each other in a nice pattern even if you can't see it once it's sandwiched.
A dip cut out for the cream & drunk strawberries. A bit of a mess but a delicious mess!
A cake dedicated to Sally, I will miss chatting and drinking with at parties.
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