A Yummy Birthday Cake

Over the weekend I was trolling around different sites, looking for a tasty birthday cake option for Molly's b-day. I didn't want a standard layer-frosting-layer-frosting kind of cake, but was looking for something a bit different.

My go-to site for this search was Smitten Kitchen. One of my favorite cooking blogs - great recipes, great pictures and an approach to food that I can relate to - good food, cooked well and deeply appreciated. I quickly came across this recipe for strawberry summer cake. Up here in Maine, our strawberry plants still have flowers on them, while down south in NY they have fresh berries at the Farmer's Market already. Even though we are a few weeks from berries, this recipe had me, well, smitten.

I can only imagine how this would be with late season Maine strawberries, oozing with juicy-goodness. While I'm decidedly biased about most things Maine (except maybe February), close, if not at the top of my list of "things that are better in Maine," are strawberries. Our berries work hard up here in the slow, often cold spring. You can taste their hard work in the concentrated flavors, that are just sweet enough and just tart enough.

Since I knew I'd be going with store-bought berries, I decided to go with a berry mix instead of just strawberries. I landed on strawberries, blackberries and raspberries for my mix. I also decided to try SK's suggestion of using some barley flour.

As described at SK, this recipe is "short on steps." Easy to make and delicious to eat. Served with some brown sugar whipped cream we had unanimous yums all around.

I'd like to try it with some other summer fruit combinations - peaches & blueberries, strawberry & rhubarb - I think most any juicy summer fruit would work.

I going to send you over to Smitten Kitchen for the recipe, cause I think you'll love her site.
Enjoy!