qu'ils mangent de la brioche = strawberry bread

Let them eat cake!  Wait, say what?  We've got a bread like cake?  Ok.  Qu'ils mangent de la strawberry bread cake.  

You know, it's so hard to find a strawberry cake from scratch meaning no cake mix and no jello. (FYI: I will eventually revisit my semi-homemade -meaning cake mix and jello- strawberry cake vlog recipe and update you on that.) So when I discovered this recipe for the cake only, I was excited!  I can agree with the blogger that the "cake" is indeed incredibly moist.  But it had the texture of bread, specifically similar to that of a banana bread. It was dense and chewy, and those are not characteristics I would attribute to a cake.  Had I known this prior I probably wouldn't have prepared a frosting with it, but I have a fantastic recipe for a strawberry cream cheese frosting that is simply divine; it tastes like a strawberry ice cream dream! 

Despite the fact that I separated the eggs, whipped the whites to stiff peaks, and folded them into the batter at the end, it did very little to fight against the gravity of the strawberry puree weighing down on the cake.

The bread itself has a sublime strong strawberry flavor.  Most baked strawberry desserts don't taste of strawberry but this recipe packs a punch.  I used a lot of strawberries to make a pureed strawberry reduction.  This is a good thing.  Buy frozen strawberries.  I got mine on sale at the local supermarket.  It was a buck a pound!  So I used a good 32 ounces and that produced 2 cups of reduced puree for me, which was so tasty by itself.  I could eat that by the spoonful.  And it was all natural - no sugars added in my reduction.  

VLOG: a simply complex mocha buttercream

There is a cake back home that I like.  It's a chocolate cake with a mocha buttercream frosting. The sides of the cake are coated with chocolate cookie crumbs.  The last time I purchased this cake, I recall peeling off the nutrition label listing the ingredients in hopes of one day recreating this cake on my own.  But when a cake is being mass produced, the ingredients aren't necessarily the greatest (i.e. shortening vs. butter).  However, this recipe is simply superb.  It's made with quality ingredients and you can tell after one bite.  This is an Italian meringue buttercream, which means it uses eggs cooked in a hot syrup and is combined with butter.  (Yeah, not so simple as my simple buttercream vlog!)  It is mocha flavored from the addition of chocolate and coffee!  And I'll share my favorite chocolate cake recipe on this blog one day as well, but any of your favorite chocolate cake recipes will do for now.  Remember, the cake is the vehicle and not the star of the show.