6.26.10 Raspberry Buttermilk Cake

...except not.

You can't really tell from the picture, but the fruit in the cake is actually strawberry, not raspberry. I also didn't use buttermilk; I used a mix of half-and-half and milk. So i guess technically my cake is a strawberry half-and-half/milk cake.

Anyway, I tweaked this cake a lot. On Smitten Kitchen, it says that you can use any berry you want. I had both blueberries and strawberries, but I chose strawberries since they looked like they were going to go bad faster. I also had one open and one unopened bottles of half-and-half so I decided to use those for the buttermilk. I also ignored the option of lemon zest, just because I didn't want to grate lemons.


Things started to go downhill pretty fast. I was off to a good start, whisking the dry ingredients together. However, when I was measuring the sugar out, I accidentally dumped it into the dry ingredients bowl instead of the bowl with butter. I freaked out and tried to transfer as much of the sugar as I could. Then, when I was measuring out the half-and-half, I noticed that the unopened bottle had already gone bad. How does that work?? The expiration date hadn't even passed yet and it was unopened. I was a little tempted to use the sour half-and-half for the buttermilk because buttermilk is sour milk (I think). I didn't, though, because I didn't want anyone, including me, to get food poisoning. So instead, I used milk to fill the 1/2cup I needed. I also cut up the strawberries into small pieces like I do when I make strawberry scones. As the instructions say, I "scattered" them and popped the cake into the oven for 25 minutes.

When I took the cake out, chunks of strawberry had sunk through the cake so you could barely see any on top. I have to admit, I felt a little sad when I saw my cake. It didn't look anything like the nice, pretty cake on Smitten Kitchen! Also, the parts where the strawberries were showing kept on sinking after I took it out of the oven. The good news was that it tasted good, especially when it was still warm.

I think this cake would be perfect for a little tea party or a get-together where there are a lot of people around to consume it. The cake doesn't look pretty after the first day because the strawberries release liquid and it gets soggy. Moreover, the strawberries don't hold their color, so you end up with a cake dotted with white-pink-ish chunks of strawberries that look less than appetizing. Overall it probably was a bad idea to bake this cake for Mallory and me, especially since Mallory doesn't like fruity things. Yeah, I probably should've thought about that first... Oh well.

Next time:
1. use buttermilk and raspberry
2. eat in a day/bake for crowd
3. use zest
4. coat the strawberries with flour so they don't sink?

recipe from smittenkitchen.com