strawberry delight

Recipes for Strawberry Cake that I found online disappointed me. Gelatin? Frozen strawberries? Ugh. Those ingredients seemed lame. Instead, I turned to my Blue Willow Inn cookbook. It's subtitle is "Bible of Southern Cooking," and I must say, that every recipe  I've made from the book turns out Delish!

Their recipe is simple, and similar to the ones found online, actually. So I was disappointed, skeptical, but tried it anyway. One box of butter cake mix, 3/4 cup of oil, 4 eggs, one box of strawberry gelatin, and one 10oz box of frozen strawberries, thawed.

Naturally, I used fresh strawberries. And I used much much more than the 4-5 oz they suggested for the cake's batter. I made cupcakes, two dozen of them, in fact, special-like for Rebekah's birthday. Ian helped me make a decision on what to top the icing with: sprinkles or strawberry slices. He asked "What will the kids like?" Oh, sprinkles, I suppose. So there was my answer.

Rebekah leads Biscuit

Rebekah is one of the sweetest young women I know. She turned 18 on Saturday, and I felt bad that I didn't have anything other than the strawberry cupcakes for her. But, she liked 'em. I took them over to Mize in Gray, Tn. because Rebekah worked Horse Days. She thanked me for them. Even asked, "Did you MAKE them?" Of course. All from scratch, ma'am!

And then had so much batter left over that I made a one layer cake as well. Didn't use their icing recipe. Used the one that Nigella suggests for her Guinness chocolate cake: creme cheese, confectioner's sugar, and whipping cream.

Sadly, no photos of cupcakes. They never look as grand as ones others make. I either overfill the cups or underfill them. This time, I underfilled them, and their appearance was rather poor. Sad, actually. Yet, they tasted good. I was very pleased with how they came out. Yum. Super good. Will definitely make this recipe again. And even though my batter and icing were much more strawberry loaded than the recipe called for, I still had at least a half pint of berries remaining in that container. So now what to do with the remaining 3 pints?

Comments

[lla]

It is with great interest that I read your thoughts on the BWI cookbook. I may have to investigate this further...

I'll admit to being somewhat of a knee-jerk, anti-BWI snob. It all stems from a long ago article in the AJC (in the Thursday Food section which I so love...) It was an in-depth piece, discussing their history, popularity, philosophy, and (of course) it included a few recipes.

What so turned me off was the manner in which the BWI people practically boasted about how (in my opinion) crappy some of their recipes were. It was a point of pride that they only ever used canned green beans (b/c fresh green beans are apparently too "unreliable" - it seems that BWI diners prize consistency over all. Canned green beans give you the same results every time.) Seems like a similar boast was made about CoolWhip (don't remember what the grievance was re: real whipped cream, but there was one. I vowed that no matter how many times Southern Living raved about BWI, I wouldn't be driving to Social Circle to eat canned green beans and CoolWhip. But I do trust you, and if you say you've found good stuff, I am more than willing to admit that I could be way wrong....