Strawberry Shortcake

This is kind of a late post since I made it late September, right on the first official day of Fall I think. Luckily here in the beautiful California, the weather was still quite nice, warm days although the day is a lot shorter, but during the day it was still warm and sunny. I can still find my sweet strawberries at my favorite strawberry stall in farmers market, and I was really determined to make a shortcake. A cake that maybe more suitable made in the beginning of summer to welcome the warm weather, but there I was waiting until the summer officially ended to make this summer staple cake. It seems like I was in denial that summer was really gone and maybe I was hoping that I could bring summer back by making a strawberry shortcake? Silly me, of course it won't happen, but hey, you can't blame a girl for trying :)

It was only two layer cake, and I intentionally made the sponge layer to be a bit higher than usual as I'm afraid the end result won't be high enough, but it turned out really high, about 3" high. The cake was only 8" round, but it looks like it's a lot bigger than that with 3" height. For simple cake like this, I like the cake to be very soft, and so I used cotton cake as a base, filled with mascarpone cream that has been flavored with a good doze of Cointreau. I always try to use orange-flavored liqueur, be it Cointreau or Grand Marnier as I find that the combination is prefect. I arranged the strawberries vertically inside the cake so that it would look pretty when cut, and it was! Too bad I didn't have a camera when it was cut :(. Even though the end cake was huge, it doesn't stop anyone who ate it to be intimidated by it. In fact, it was gone pretty quickly even though the slices were pretty big. The overall cake was super light, sweet and slightly tart strawberry and a hint of orange liqueur in the background.

I had to make the same cake again the night after as my niece and nephew kept asking what happened to the cake I made the night before and that they really want it. So since I have another two layers of the same sponge cake, although smaller 6" in diameter, I made another one. This time I used heavy cream without mascarpone and Cointreau of course! The only thing different was that I added toasted almond slices on the side of the cake and sprinkled a little on top too. The whole 6" was gobbled up by both my nephew and niece, not in one sitting though, they had it for dessert for three days I think. I thought it was pretty good since they're still a kid, but they liked it so much! I didn't bother to take a picture of this second cake, I don't know why. Maybe it was because after I was done making it at 9pm or so, they had begged me to cut it :)

I forgot how simple dessert can be this good and I'm sure that I'll be making it every year when strawberry is at its peak. If it's strawberry season at your place, make sure that you put this cake on your list of things to make. Don't forget to use only sweet and fresh strawberry for this.