Strawberry-Lemonade Layer Cake

Summer is calling! Fresh strawberries and lemon make an appearance in each component of this refreshingly decadent 4 layer cake.

You guys.

This cake.

It needs to be in your life, STAT.

Layer cakes are a bit intimidating to make, but the results are drop-dead gorgeous!

I wanted to make a fancy dessert for Father’s Day this year, and after a few weeks with minimal kitchen time due to a sprained ankle I was ready to go big or go home.

This is the tallest layer cake I’ve made to date. The first real layer cake I made was only 2 layers, and I left it a bit “rustic” in terms of frosting. It was beautiful, but I wanted to try a taller cake.

I only have 2 cake pans, so I baked 2 of the layers, cleaned out the pans and re-prepped them and baked the last 2. I let the batter sit in the fridge while the first 2 layers were baking.

I also cut a parchment round for each cake pan, so when it came to greasing and flouring, I greased the pan, placed the parchment round in the bottom, greased that and then floured it all. It was a little tricky to do, but the cakes turned out of the pans beautifully.

One other thing that I ran into was that I didn’t have cake flour, and I didn’t really want to have another giant bag of something in my pantry. So I turned to this tutorial over on Joy the Baker‘s blog about how to make cake flour out of AP flour and cornstarch. Basically you’re taking out 2 tablespoons per cup of flour and replacing that with cornstarch and sifting 5 (!!) times. She gives a lot of good information in her post, so I encourage you go go check it out.

Back to the cake. Holy moly did this turn out beautifully! The cake was moist and held together beautifully during assembly. The jam added the perfect pop of sticky sweetness between each layer. The frosting was light and fluffy (aaaaaalmost too much so) and just so, SO pretty.

My son was so excited to see me in the kitchen baking cake all day, and I kept telling him he had to wait until after dinner to try it. One bite and he proclaimed, “MOMMY!! This cake is DEEEEE-licious!”. High praise from a 3-year-old ;).

It was a big hit with the adults, too. It’s the best cake I’ve ever made, and was well worth the time investment for a special occasion.

The leftovers from this cake held up beautifully in the refrigerator for several days. I had a bit of extra frosting in a separate container in the fridge, so every time we had another slice, I’d just touch it up with more of the frosting.

I know the recipe says it’s OK at room temp for 2 days, but I wouldn’t risk it. I would, however, like to try out the suggestion for freezing baked layers for use later. That would make day-of assembly much easier!

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