Strawberry Whipped Cream Stack of Deliciousness

Martha featured a beautiful cake on her cover this month, Chiffon Cake with Strawberries and Cream http://www.marthastewart.com/901686/chiffon-cake-strawberries-and-cream.  As soon as the magazine came in the mail I knew I wanted to make it.  It reminded me of a cake my grandmother used to make when I was growing up--just a plain cake with strawberries and whipped cream.  She called it strawberry shortcake and I think I was quite a way into adulthood before I realized that actual strawberry shortcake is supposed to have, well, shortcake.  

I put off making Martha's version for a bit.  First I thought I would make it for my son's birthday party, but he was inviting a ton of kids and the cake didn't look big enough.  I bought a cake for the party, and thank goodness I did because transporting the strawberry cake to the pool where we had his party and keeping it in tact in the heat would have been a challenge.  My mom visited last weekend so I made it during her visit.  

It was not a difficult cake to make, but did require a lot of bowls for mixing different element of the cake.  I typically like to make one bowl cakes, two at the most, but at one point I had three separate bowls of ingredients mixed or being mixed, not to mention the strawberries macerating separately.

Dry and wet ingredients ready to go.

I did appreciate that although the recipe required separating 9 eggs, it also used all 9 egg whites and 7 of the yolks.  I hate having a bunch of leftover yolks or whites.  The recipe did not call for greasing and flouring the cake pan, which I thought was odd.  I decided to do it anyway, espeically since I don't have a straight sided tube pan, only a decorative bundt pan that you can't just loosen by running a knife around the edge.  There was way too much batter for my pan, although it was the same size the recipe called for, so I just made a smaller cake as well and froze it for when I have a dessert emergency.

Everything went well with baking, but I was confused by the cooling instructions.  The recipe said, "let cool upside down (over a bottle or on tube-pan feet) 1 hour."  Upside down?  What does that mean when it's a tube pan?  Upside down from the way the cake went in the oven or upside down from the way the cake will be served?  I went with the latter...

     
but in hindsight I think that was not what she meant.  Maybe if I had not imbibed the contents of my "cooling stand" (I made sangria too) it would have been more clear at the time.  But, I did ask my husband, mom, and step-dad (yes, all also drinking sangria) and we all came to the conclusion that if we had cooled the cake the other way it would have just fallen out on the counter.  Well, after trying to get the cake out of the pan, I now know it would not have just fallen out.  That sucker was stuck in there.  It wasn't easy, but I did manage to get it out without any real damage (so glad I decided to grease the pan!)

Slicing the cake into three layers was easier than I expected and the result was a very pretty and very delicious cake. 

Just looking at it makes me want more!

Everyone agreed it was teriffic.  We all had decent sized pieces and all went back for seconds.  There were only six of us total (two children) but we still managed to polish off nearly three quarters of the cake in one sitting.  I mentioned how good it was right?  I should have taken a picture of the inside because the cut layers were really pretty, but I guess I got wrapped up in eating and forgot about blogging.  It looked exactly like this picture on Martha's website. 

I would make this cake again in a second.   It's one of best, if not the best, recipe I've tried so far for the blog.  I'm actually going to buy the proper tube pan so I can keep making it without having to worry about the nooks and crannies on my bundt pan.  I also might try putting down a layer of whipped cream on the bottom of the layer and then mushing the berries into it so it's a little more stuck together. I'll also try cooling the cake upside down as instructed and let you know how that works out!

-Jacqui