Strawberry Buttermilk Cake

Strawberries are available year-round at all grocery stores, but the local strawberry season has been brief and is nearing its end. I've been trying to do as much as possible with these sweet and juicy berries before I'm forced to buy the tasteless ones off the supermarket shelves.

Recently, I was looking for a recipe where I could do something different with strawberries, but after going through a whole lot of recipes on the Internet, I finally decided to just tweak a Martha Stewart recipe that I'd tried a few months back.

I used buttermilk in my cake after I saw this. I always have buttermilk in my fridge and I’d just bought strawberries a few days back.

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• A pinch of salt
• 6 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar (set aside 2 tsp for sprinkling over the berries)
• 1 egg
• ½ cup buttermilk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 10-12 strawberries, finely chopped
• 6-10 strawberries, quartered
• 1/4 cup white chocolate morsels

Method:

Preheat the oven to 375 F and grease your baking dish of choice. I used my 9" springform pan for this.

In a bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.

In another bowl, beat together the egg, softened butter, sugar, buttermilk, and vanilla extract. Stir in the flour mixture in small batches and mix well after each addition.

Add the chopped strawberries (I tossed the fruit pieces in some flour first to prevent them from all sinking to the bottom of the batter) and chocolate chip morsels and mix well.

Transfer the batter to the prepared pan. Arrange the sliced strawberries on top of batter, cut sides down, and sprinkle the remaining sugar over the strawberries.

Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. The insides of my cake were done in 45 minutes but the surface looked uncooked, so I carefully broiled it for 5 minutes.

Slice and serve.