Strawberry Lemon Delight

Strawberry Lemon Sheet Cake - a delicious summer dessert

Cake Ingredients:

• 2 cups cake flour
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cup whole milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil 
• 1/4 cup of melted butter cooled (optional)
• 1 tablespoon grated lemon rind
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 

Strawberry Lemon Filling:

• 16 ounces of frozen strawberries
• 6 tablespoons of sugar
• 1/4 cup of fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour

Whipped Cream Filling:

• 1 1/2 cups whipping cream
• 6 tablespoons sugar

For Strawberry Filling: 

1. Bring strawberries, lemon juice and 4 tablespoons of sugar to a boil in saucepan and cook for 5 minutes. 
2.  Whisk in the rest of the sugar and flour and cook over medium heat 5 minutes or until it thickens and bubbles around edges. 
3. Put in glass bowl and chill for at least 2 hours.

For the Cake:

1. Grease a 15 by 10 inch jellyroll pan and line with parchment paper and than grease the paper. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine cake flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in bowl
3. Whisk eggs, milk, oil, butter, lemon rind and juice until blended.  (I say the butter is optional because when I made this cake I stuck the butter in the freezer to cool it faster and completely forgot about it. So, my cake had no butter and it was still delicious!)
4. Add the dry ingredients in with the liquids and mix until blended.  Pour batter into pan.
5. Bake for 30 minutes.  Make sure a toothpick comes out clean
6. Cool in pan for 10 minutes on wire rack.  Remove from pan and cool on wire rack completely.

For Whipped Cream Filling:

1. Combine ingredients and beat at high speed with electric mixer until it stiffens.

The recipe makes a layered sheet cake, but I decided it would look prettier in a round glass dish so you could see the layers. So, I used by dish to cut the sheet cake in perfect circles. I put a cake than strawberry filling and topped it with whipped cream.  I repeated the layers and topped with strawberries. 

This was a lot of work, but it was absolutely delicious and worth it!

Recipe from Southern Living 2004 Annual Recipes Cookbook