Yellow Cake : Strawberry Frosting

I found this recipe at Bakerella.com. Normally I am not a cake person, but in my mind when I saw the pink frosting I immediately filled in the flavor as strawberry. I LOVE strawberry. The rest of the day I was craving what my mind imagined this cake would taste like. So I did something totally out of character and went ahead and made this that very night.

Since I didn't change the recipe I won't rewrite it. But here are my notes for those who want to try and attempt this.

Flour: I couldn't find White Lily brand flour and ended up buying Softasilk brand which I thought was self rising. I was wrong. I was frustrated as I couldn't find anything that said "self rising" so I thought this was my best bet as it says on the box "cake flour". It turns out I was looking in the wrong area. I thought this would be in with the special, expensive flours, but it was in a 5 lbs. bag next to the generic cheap flour. So that was my first mistake.

Sifting the flour: This was my second mistake. The Softasilk says it's pre-sifted, but in hind sight it had settled down too much in the box. Make sure you really sift the flour otherwise the texture will not be right.

Cake Texture: The cake actually came out like a pound cake. I believe this is due to mistakes #1 and 2 above rather than the actual intention of the recipe. It still tasted good, but it was not the light and fluffy cake I was expecting.

Adding Moisture: I didn't do the spray bottle trick suggested, however I did wrap the cakes in plastic warp while they were still quite warm.  This seemed to do the trick as the cake was nice and moist even a couple days later.

Icing flavoring: I couldn't find strawberry extract so I bought frozen strawberries that came in a sugary juice. The liquid from the defrosted strawberries worked perfect for adding flavoring. I also used a food processor and added some tiny strawberry bits to the frosting which turned out great!

Icing consistency: This is a butter cream frosting. Not sure what I was expecting because I KNEW it was butter cream, but it was a bit too buttery for my taste. Also, taking from other recipes I've seen since then, I would definitely sift the powdered sugar should I ever decide to make this again. This was very thick and not fluffy.

Overall I did really enjoy the cake when it was finished. So much so I did something yet again completely out of character for me and ate a piece at breakfast the next morning! Yikes. There went being good that day. I tried to give the cake away to people, but they all said it was so rich they would only take one or two pieces. They all raved about the taste- and I don't think they were doing that to appease me. They were all people who haven't had problems telling me I made a cooking blunder in the past. Plus people could tell there was a LOT of butter so everyone was weary of what it would do to their waste line. To that ends I did end up throwing about a third of the cake out. I had to stop myself from eating any more. I would try this again if I had the right occasion, but definitely not unless I had a large enough crowd to help polish it off.