Strawberries and cream are such a summer staple, so I thought I would recreate it by turning them into a cake. Just picture this: a soft and moist vanilla cake topped with a creamy and soft mascarpone icing and fresh strawberries.

Strawberries and Cream Cake

I think we can all agree there’s nothing better than a bowl of fresh strawberries with cream on top in the summer. For many of us this was a standard summer dessert growing up and something I look forward to every summer. That’s what I wanted to turn them into a cake that was soft and moist in the middle, topped with a delicious creamy vanilla mascarpone icing and then topped again with fresh juicy strawberries. This is such a simple cake, but yet one of my favourites so far, so much I’m considering making it again soon!

So what’s in this cake?

This lovely strawberry and cream cake is really, really easy to make and you’ll only need the following:

• Butter
• Vegetable oil
• Granulated sugar
• Vanilla extract and vanilla bean puree
• Eggs
• Greek yoghurt
• Plain flour
• Baking Powder
• Mascarpone cheese
• Double cream
• Icing (powdered) sugar

A few tips for success

• Use a mix of butter and vegetable oil – I usually use vegetable oil for my cakes as it gives them extra moisture, however, for this one I used a mix of both as the butter gives the cake a delicious buttery taste that goes perfect with the vanilla flavour.
• Make sure your eggs are at room temperature – room temperature eggs allow for more bubbles to get into you batter, which means your cake will be airy and moist.
• Use plain flour – I like to use plain flour for this cake rather than self-raising. The reason for this is because I don’t necessarily want my cake to grow a big dome when it cooks as I’ll be topping it up with the frosting. If you do get a big dome, you can simply cut it using a serrated knife.

Strawberries and Cream Cake

Ingredients:

For the cake:

• 58 ml of vegetable oil (I used sunflower)
• 57 gr of butter at room temperature
• 100 gr of granulated sugar
• 120 ml of greek yoghurt
• 1 tbsp of vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• A pinch of salt
• 195 gr of plain flour
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder

For the top:

• 150 gr of mascarpone cheese
• 160 gr of double cream
• 50 gr of icing sugar
• 1 tbsp and 1/2 vanilla bean puree
• 150 gr of strawberries

Method:

1. Preheat the oven at 170 degrees celsius.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the vegetable oil, butter and granulated sugar for 2-3 minutes until they acquire a shiny pearly white colour. Then, add the greek yoghurt.
3. Add in the eggs one at a time beating them into the mix every time you add one. Then, add the vanilla extract and mix again.
4. Add in the dry ingredients, the flour, baking powder and the pinch of salt and mix just until incorporated, make sure you don’t over mix!
5. Butter an 18-20 cm springform baking dish and pour your batter into it. Cook in the oven for 40-45 minutes until a inserted skewer comes out clean.
6. Let it cool completely before doing the frosting. If your cake has a bit of a dome, simply cut it with a bread knife so it’s even.
7. Once the cake is cold, in a bowl mix the double cream, the mascarpone, the icing sugar and the vanilla bean paste and beat them together with a hand mixer until nice and smooth. Make sure you try it before putting it on the cake in case you want to add more vanilla or sugar.
8. Top with fresh strawberries and enjoy!