Fancy Strawberry Vanilla Cake with Whipped Cream Frosting (Plus ten more)

This is a fancy cake, a very good cake.  It looks fancy. It's actually easy.  We'll show you how.

It's innovative. But once you've made one, you may never go back to making round layer cakes. 

We'll show you others using the same method.    

How to Make Square Layer Cakes

Make the cake according to package directions. We used a Vanilla Bean Baby Cake Mix.  It's a cream cake, "made with pudding," and a little denser and moister than the light, fluffy mixes found in the grocery store but not as dense as a pound cake. It'll hold up better to handling and decorating. You can use other mixes.

Bake the cake in a 9 x 13-inch pan. After it cools, trim the edges and cat the cake into two equally sized pieces. Those are your "layers". We cut this one horizontally across the nine-inch direction. Many times, we have cut them longitudinally. You can also cut the cake into three equal pieces.

Now it's time to stack and decorate them.

Make the frosting with the recipe below. It's a whipped cream frosting with both cream cheese and meringue powder as stabilizers. It's a superior frosting. You guests will love it but even with stabilizers it won't hold up for more than a day.  If your going to hold art of the cake overnight, use a buttercream frosting.

1. Place one of the cakes on a serving platter and spread a layer of frosting over the top of the cake.
2. Use a strawberry slicer to cut thin, uniform slices of strawberries. Layer them on top of the frosting.
3. Place the second cake layer over the strawberries. If you want the vertical surfaces frosted, do so now.
4. To frost the top, put the rest of the frosting in a pastry bag loaded with a round tip.  Pipe the frosting diagonally across the cake, one "round ribbon" of frosting next to another so that you cover the top off the cake.
5. Finely chop some nuts for decorations. Sift them onto the top of the cake from the palm of you hands into attractive rolls across the ribbons of cake.
6. Strategically place strawberry pieces across the cake for decorations. Cut pieces with a serrated knife.

Vanilla Whipped Cream Frosting Recipe

This is a cheesecake flavored frosting. You could double the meringue powder and omit the cream cheese if you wanted avoid the cheesecake flavor.  But this is a very good frosting. 

Cream 3/4 cup granulated sugar with 4 ounces of cream cheese.  Add one teaspoon vanilla, two tablespoons of meringue powder, and two cups heavy whipping cream--Darigold or equal.  

Whip until it is very stiff. Whipped cream frosting is better if used the same day.

Any cake, any frosting!

Since this is a method, not a specific recipe, you can use any cake, any frosting.  You use it often. It's as easy as an everyday round layer cake.  Here's more.

A chocolate version . . . 

This is the same cake except it's made with a Fudgy Baby Cakes Mix.  This mix has tiny pieces of chocolate in the mix for an extra fudgy cake.

A lemon cake . . .

This a lemon whipped cream cake. The frosting is made with a really good lemon added to the whipped cream.  The lemon flavor is true lemon pie flavor. Lemon pastry filling is used between the layers.

A huckleberry cake . . . 

This was made with a jar of huckleberry jam.  The jam was used to flavor and color the frosting. More huckleberry jam was used between the layers.

And a blueberry cake . . . 

This too was made with a bottle jam . . . blueberry jam.

This is a caramel pecan cake . . . 

The cake was made with chopped pecans and flavored with caramel flavor. That's a swirl of caramel designer sauce atop.

A Pumpkin Nut Cake . . . 

It's a pumpkin nut cake (it could have been a carrot cake) and frosted with whipped cream frosting with caramel ice cream topping, a bit in the frosting and a drizzle on top.

A Cherry Whipped Cream Cake . . . 

This cake has a pool of cherry pastry filling on top. The pastry filling is used to tint and flavor the frosting.  

A Caramel Apple Cake . . . 

Caramel was added to the batter and to the frosting. An apple pastry filling is between the layers. It's drizzled with a Caramel Designer Sauce.

An Apricot Cake . . . 

This has our really good apricot flavor in the batter. Apricot pastry filling is between the layers. 

See how to make a five kinds of carrot cake . . . 

See our spiced pear cake!