Basketful of Berries

What's a better way to celebrate summer then a basketful of strawberries?  How about a CAKE basketful of strawberries?

This delicious cake is one of my all time favorites, both in its looks and taste.

To make this great dessert I started with a yellow cake.  Any yellow cake recipe or box mix will work.  I made two 9" round cakes and leveled and split each cake using a string.  I find that a string is the best tool for leveling cake.  Wilton sells a cake leveler, which is great, but nothing beats the string method.  Still if your unsure about your string splitting skills, a cake leveler will do it and they are not terribly expensive.

For the icing I used yellow tinted buttercream.  (But leave some tinted white and tint some green, for daisies.)   If you have your own buttercream recipe, you can use that, or see my favorite buttercream recipe here. For filling I used a strawberry filling.  You can make your own, but I prefer to purchase it in packages.   A great place to purchase fillings if you live on Long Island is the Chocolate Duck in Farmingdale.  But many good cake stores will have the fillings.  I have seen raspberry, lemon, chocolate, and many more.   Then I layered the cake.  If you have never layered a cake before Wilton has great directions.   Filling Cake Layers.

After I crumb coated and set my cake, I used a pastry bag and a basketweave tip to pipe the basket.  Some people use the basketweave tip in both directions when piping.  But I prefer to use a round tip to make the vertical lines and a basket weave tip to do the horizontal.  I feel this gives it a real basket look.  After finishing the basketweave around the cake, I finished the basket by piping a rope along the bottom and the top with a star tip.

Once the outside of the cake was iced, I washed and cut the ends off some large fresh strawberries.  I LOVE berries, I eat them every day on my cereal or for dessert.  I like to get my berries at Costco, especially in the summer.  They are large and much fresher then grocery store berries.  I use a bag of icing and a round decorating tip, and use the icing as a glue to secure the berries onto the top of the cake.    My suggestion is that you do not put the strawberries on the cake until the day you are serving, this is for two reasons...

1) The height of a four layer cake with the strawberries is very high and it gets difficult to put in the fridge.  With the strawberries on top, the cake no longer fit in my cake container.
2) They are berries and berries have juice.  The juice seeps into the cake and the icing.  By holding off you keep the cake fresh and it won't get soggy from the juice.

Once the strawberries are in place, the last touch is to add the daisies.  I created them using a small petal tip (like Wilton 102 or 103) and a small leaf tip.  I made the leaves first then added the petals into the center.   I tried to make the petals so that they would go different directions on the strawberries, to look like they were real flowers placed on top of a basket full of berries.  Then I finished the daisies off with a small round tip and some yellow icing, creating the centers.

The end result is a delicious and beautiful cake, topped off with real fresh berries.  It is a perfect summer treat and it is as much fun to cut into it as it is to look at.  (And even more fun to eat.)