Strawberries and Cream Sheet Cake - QBC

One of the recent recipes for the Queen Baking Club was Strawberries and Cream Sheet Cake.  This cake is a little girl's dream, being soft, moist, strawberry flavoured pink cake topped with swirls of strawberry and cream flavoured pink buttercream icing, liberally decorated with multi-coloured sprinkles.  

There is plenty to love about this cake, including the fact that the cake itself contains real strawberries.

I held back some of the cake batter so that in addition to the sheet cake, I could make eight cupcakes for a lovely colleague who was leaving:

There is so much joy in this cake, I recommend that you give it a whirl.  You will need:

250g butter
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk (or 1 cup milk soured with 1 tablespoon lemon juice)
250g strawberries, pureed then sieved to remove the seeds
2 teaspoons Queen strawberries and cream flavouring
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
hot pink food colouring gel

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Grease and line a 20cm x 30cm sheet pan.

In a stand mixer, beat the butter until smooth and creamy (ie creamed in the old parlance).  Beat in the sugar until well combined.

Crack the eggs into the bowl, one at a time, and beat in well.

In a separate bowl, sieve together the flour, baking powder and baking soda.

Using a jug, combine the buttermilk, strawberry puree, strawberry flavouring, vanilla extract and enough hot pink food colouring to make it the colour you want.  (I kept it pretty low key.)

Add one third of the flour and one third of the liquid to the batter and on low speed, mix into the cake batter until just combined.  Repeat twice more until all of the flour and all of the liquid have been incorporated into the batter.

Scrape the batter into the prepared sheet pan and smooth the top with a spatula.  Bake in the preheated oven for 45-50 minutes or until cooked through.

Remove the cake from the oven and cool it in the pan for 15 minutes before unmoulding onto a wire rack to cool completely on a wire rack.

For the icing:

250g softened butter
3 cups icing (confectioners) sugar
3 teaspoons Queen strawberries and cream flavouring
hot pink food colouring
sprinkles of your choice

Cream the butter in a stand mixer.  Add the icing sugar to the butter, and on low speed, combine the icing sugar with the butter, then increase the speed and beat the mixture until light and fluffy.  Add the flavouring and the colouring to the shade you want, then spread the icing over the top of the cake with a spatula.  Liberally douse with sprinkles, and slice to serve.