Strawberry Cake ‒ Mansikkatäytekakku

I haven't blogged a total failure for a while so perhaps this was bound to happen. I've been watching how to make basic layered birthday cakes all my life but I've never tried one myself. It turned out much harder than I had thought. Needless to say, I'm no confectioner but perhaps I should just stick to salty dishes altogether.

I took the crust recipe from a forum post. It gave 75 minutes for the oven time but after 50 minutes I started to smell something burning. The cake had got scorched only a little but simple moistening didn't really return the softness I had hoped for. After the first bite I also had to check if I had read right the amount of sugar which it seemed to drown all the other tastes, including pineapple weed (pihasaunio) which I have just come to like on its own right and not just as a poor man's camomile.

As if this wasn't enough I couldn't just frost the cake with the standard oat cream you can by from food stores. I tried this topping recipe but apparently wasn't patient enough since it remained all runny and kept bringing down the strawberries on top. At the end I tried fixing the edges with a store-bought soy cream spray I don't really like but didn't have much better luck with it either.

If possible, the whole thing became even more crooked looking as I carried it across the town for a picnic meeting. Miraculously it was edible although not exactly the best cake I have ever tried. Here are the measurements I used. Be careful with them.

The cake:
- 190 g margarine
- 9 dl wheat flour (I mixed graham and white flour)
- 5.25 teaspoons baking powder
- 3.4 dl sugar
- 4.5 dl oat milk (or mineral water)
- 1 tablespoon flowers and leaves of pineapple weeds
- apple juice for moistening (approximately 1 dl)

The frosting:
- 2 dl soy milk
- 75 g margarine (or 50 g coconut butter)
- 2.5 tablespoons potato flour
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- piece of a vanilla pod
- salt (just a pinch)

The filling:
- 500 g strawberries
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon flowers and leaves of pineapple weeds

Mince the pineapple weed. Mix the dry ingredients together and shrub together with the margarine. Add the milk, carefully. Pour into a buttered cake mold and put into a 200°C oven for as long as needed (45 minutes?). Let the cake cool down a bit and flip over to a sugared parchment paper.

When the cake has fully cooled down cut it in layers (I only used two layers but if you want three or more you might want to find some other filling to the second layer. Some jam for example.) Moist with apple juice. Mash the filling ingredients together with a fork. Spread between the cake layers and let it rest in the fridge.

For the frosting, heat up most of the milk, the margarine, the sugar and the salt in a saucepan. Let the mixture come to a boil and remove from the stove. Mix the potato flour with the rest of the milk. Blend the two together. Refrigerate. When the frosting has cooled down completely (think this was the part where I lost my patience), continue by whipping it into a fluffy cream. It should be thick enough for spreading on the cake as such and possible to pipe if you cool it down again.

Let the cake juice up in cold before serving. Decorate with strawberries or pineapple weeds.

Nutritional values / 2445 g:
energy 5468 kcal
fat 209 g
protein 92 g
carbohydrates 793 g
fiber 37 g