Homemade Strawberry Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, Birdeye

Chloe found 42 candles...she cannot wait to
light 'em

Aunt Kara made a strawberry cake recently and Chloe
wanted to make it for Jackie's birthday

Even though Chloe doesn't cook much, when she does get
in the kitchen, she's great at measuring and mixing....
my ole my she's growing up I tell ya!

We made an excellent cream cheese frosting that was not
too sweet and we all appreciated that....

We counted out 42 twice, we wouldn't want another 41 right?

Luckily Jackie didn't mind lighting all 42...
It was getting hot in here.....

HOLY SMOKES!  That's alotta candles, just sayin...Haha!

I headed up Wynne's Walk to School Day last Wednesday,
we had about 50 parents and children walk to Wynne
Intermediate School....I love parking at the practice track and
walking to school.  We're doing it on Fridays until the
Midsouth Kids Marathon on Nov. 3 in Wynne.

Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012

Chloe picked a strawberry cake to make for her dad's birthday.  This is such an EASY recipe.  I only needed frozen strawberries and gelatin at the store.  We made Southern Living's Cream Cheese Frosting which was a zip to do and we had those ingredients on hand too.

I noted the changes I made to both recipes below.

Strawberry Cake from allrecipes.com

2 C. white sugar
1-3 oz. strawberry gelatin
1 C. butter, softened
4 eggs, room temperature
2-3/4 C. sifted cake flour, we used all -purpose flour and sifted it
2-1/2 t. baking powder
1 C. whole milk, room temperature
1 T. vanilla extract, I used my homemade vanilla
1/2 C. strawberry puree made from frozen strawberries (i just used 1/2 c. plain frozen strawberries)

Preheat oven to 350 and grease and flour 2 9 inch round cake pans.  I used Baker's Joy Spray with flour and it worked like a charm.

In a large bowl, cream butter, sugar and gelatin until light and fluffy.  Beat in eggs one at a time, mixing well after each.  Combine the flour and baking powder and stir in alternately with milk.  Blend in vanilla and puree and divide the batter evenly into the pans.

Bake 25 minutes or until a small knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.  Allow cakes to cook in their pans over a wire rack for 10 minutes before tapping out to cool completely.   This is a key step!

Southern Living's Cream Cheese Frosting

1/2 C. butter, softened
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
16 oz. powdered sugar, I used maybe 10 oz.
1 t. vanilla extract

Cream cream cheese and butter until smooth, add sugar and vanilla and beat until light and fluffy with a hand mixer and frost.  Don't ever frost even a lukewarm cake because your frosting will melt.

This is so stinking easy!  We had the cake after going to Don Jose with Memaw and Grandad after church.  We had coffee and good conversation with Chloe's cake.  Jackie will have another partee after work tomorrow at Memaw and Grandad's.  Looks like he's keeping up with Kara's amount of celebrating.....He did ask if he HAD to show up at Don Jose tho....whatever, it's CHLOE'S party anyway!