Strawberry Summer Cake

One of my goals for this summer was to cook and bake using more whole grains. I have a cookbook that is all about baking with whole grains and I wanted to try something new from it once a week. I have only cooked one thing, scones- yum, but that's it! What's the deal? I hate not reaching my goals. As I was thinking about how horribly I stunk at this goal, I realized that I wasn't totally off...

Funny thing is, when I decided on this goal I started noticing recipes that called for unique flours or grains. I realized I was printing and saving recipes that fit my goal, even though they weren't from the cookbook. Whew. I don't feel like such a failure after all.

This strawberry cake is one of those recipes. It doesn't have a heaping helping of sugar, though it may seem that way, and it has barley flour- which I am now in love with. Especially with fruit in baked goods. So divine.

If you are on the fence about giving this cake a try, let me convince you. This cake is fabulous for the following reasons:
1) no gross amounts of frosting, the cake stands up for itself
2) the strawberries melt into the baked cake so elegantly, and they leave a moist, berry saturated area around them that you will want to recreate over and over
3) it's good for breakfast too!
4) it just screams 'summer! get it while it lasts!'
5) it is super duper easy.
6) it impresses the heck outta people.

Strawberry Summer Cake from Smitten Kitchen

ingredients

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup barley flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon table salt
7/8 cup sugar (measure a cup, take out two tablespoons)
1 large egg
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pound strawberries, tops chopped off and cut in half


Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a 10 inch pie pan or a 9 inch or 10 inch spring form pan- which is what I did and it was lovely.

Mix the flours, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl. In a larger bowl, beat butter and sugar until smooth and fluffy with an electric mixer, or by hand if you're strong like that.

Mix in egg, milk and vanilla until just combined. Add the dry mixture more gradually, mixing until just smooth. Don't over do it.

Pour into prepared baking apparatus. Arrange strawberries, cut side down, on top of batter, as closely as possible in a single layer. I accidentally put them cut side up once, and while it was a bit ugly at first, it looked very nifty when I sprinkled the powdered sugar on top and the cut side melted the sugar so you had this white powder with striking red spots.

If you want to, sprinkle the two tablespoons of sugar you kept out of the cake, on top of the cake. I have done this, and forgotten to do this, and it turns out well both ways.

Bake cake for 10 minutes then reduce oven temperature to 325°F and bake cake until golden brown and a tester comes out free of wet batter, about 50 minutes to 60 minutes. Ignore ooey gooey strawberries, you want that. Let cool, if you can, then sprinkle a little powdered sugar on top. Why? It looks so lovely, that's why!

Enjoy!
-m