My favorite fruits are the different kinds of berries — strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries.  With the arrival of spring and summer, these berries are a wonderful treat.  These berries are loaded with vitamins and other anti oxidants.  So to welcome the spring and the warm weather, I took a normal version of butter cake and added a little bit of tweaking to create this new recipe.  It’s best to use fresh strawberries.  Since the strawberries I had were very sweet, I did not add any sugar when making the strawberry sauce.  Also, I did not strain the sauce to remove the seeds.  Once baked the seeds become a bit soft and crunchy.

For the cake, original recipe uses 1 cup of sugar and I lessened it to ¾ cup.

Ingredients

• 9 oz all-purpose flour
• ¾ cup sugar
• 4 oz butter
• 2 eggs
• ½ tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon strawberry essence
• ½ cup strawberry sauce

Method

• To make the strawberry sauce add 1 cup chopped fresh strawberries and about 1 cup water and cook on a medium flame for about 7 -8 minutes or until the sauce thickens.
• When it cools puree in a blender
• Return to the stove and simmer until you get ½ cup strawberry sauce.
• cool completely

To make the cake

• Preheat oven to 350ºF.
• grease a 8 inch round pan
• in a bowl beat butter and sugar until soft
• add one egg at a time and beat until blended
• sift the flour with baking powder
• add the flour alternating with strawberry sauce
• beat until the mixture becomes smooth scrapping the bowl with a spatula occasionally
• pour the cake mixture into the prepared pan and bake for about 30 minutes or until tooth pick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean
• cool on a wire rack