A Strawberry Birthday cake

Strawberries are just perfect right now. And so they were my inspiration for a birthday cake for my hubby.

There are a few strawberry fields nearby and their fruit is just heavenly.  But these fresh, unpreserved strawberries go off really quickly, so I decided to use some for the birthday cake and then dehydrate the rest for later, and for decoration.  I already had the dehydrator on for something else, so it was easy to add a couple of thinly sliced strawberries.

The recipe for the cake was a new one for me.  It came from La Tartine Gourmande - but I made a few changes.  For example I halved the recipe, didn't use butter, didn't use buttermilk, didn't use cane sugar, nor eggs.... but you get the general idea!!

Having fresh strawberries in the cake itself made it a very moist cake - you didn't need anything to go with it.  The dehydrating concentrated the strawberry flavor in the strawberry slices and gave a nice crunchy texture to the cake topping.  I'll do that again - and next time, with more than just a couple of strawberries, as they'd make a lovely snack.

The strawberry cake finished off a birthday dinner just nicely.