more strawberries

Strawberry season is done for now. Sniff. I had some stragglers left the other day, which had been cast aside in favour of new raspberries and cherries. Still, I couldn't abandon the strawberries so I made this cake. I made a previous version using yogurt instead of milk as for some reason I was out of milk. That version was delicious but I'd slightly overbaked it. The second one is still being eaten by my man. Mmmmmpf he says through the crumbs.

Strawberry Summer Cake (adapted slightly from Smitten Kitchen)

6 tbsp butter
1 1/2 c flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
7/8 c plus 2 tbsp granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/2 c milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 pound strawberries, hulled and halved

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a 10-inch springform pan.
Whisk flour or flours, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl. In a larger bowl, beat butter and 1 cup sugar until pale and fluffy with an electric mixer, about 3 minutes. Mix in egg, milk and vanilla until just combined. Add dry mixture gradually, mixing until just smooth.

Pour into prepared pan. Arrange strawberries, cut side down, on top of batter, as closely as possible in a single layer. Sprinkle remaining 2 tablespoons sugar over berries.

Bake cake for 10 minutes then reduce oven temperature to 325°F and bake cake until golden brown and a tester comes out free of wet batter, about 50 minutes to 60 minutes.  Let cool in pan on a rack.

strawberry!

We ate the first strawberry out of our garden yesterday - well, our boy ate most of it and I had a little nibble. Yummy. T was so excited and wanted more strawberries. But when I gave him some of the not so local ones he wasn't impressed. (He usually loves them but they really don't compare...) Then last night I got an email from our local fruit stand to say they were going to open either on Saturday or Monday (well actually the email was from the guy running the fruit stand - I don't think the stand itself actually has email access!) So they are expecting local strawb's to be ready on the weekend - yippee!

I went to check on the progress of some other strawberries in our pot today only to discover that we have a garden thief - one half eaten green fruit lay on the paving stones and bare stalks indicate that the couple of berries that were close to ripe yesterday have been stolen. Slug? Squirrel? Cat? Racoon? Small boy? All are possibilities...I will have to monitor.

As a side note, we had roasted yam pierogi for supper tonight. They are so tender they fell apart in the bowl but they were pretty good served with carmelized onions and sour cream.

So what is ready in your garden? What are you waiting for from the market?