Strawberry Summer Cake

This cake is incredibly simple to make and yet manages to capture the essence of summer. I even made this at 9,000-ft altitude and it came out wonderfully. Don't forget to sprinkle the sugar on top (like I almost did) because it does help the strawberries to get nice and gooey, and makes a delicious crunchy crust.

The recipe calls for a 10" pie dish but I only had a 9" one available. The batter fit but I had one minor spillover during baking, so if you have a smaller pan you'll probably want to put a baking sheet below it. I would recommend using the larger pie dish if you have it because it will make the cake slightly thinner and allow you to put the full pound of halved strawberries on top (I ran out of room).

So this cake seems very popular right now, but as British strawberries are having a good season and I needed something to take to a family dinner, I thought it would be ideal. It was very easy to put together and came out beautifully. I used a 9 inch springform tin as suggested as a possibility in the recipe, which worked perfectly. I also quartered the strawberries instead of just halving them as they were quite huge. The juice from the strawberries seeped nicely into the cake making it very moist, but not too mushy and everyone seemed to really enjoy it and were coming back for seconds. It went very well with cream poured on top, but was also moist enough on its own. I will definitely make this again and may try it with other fruit, such as blueberries or raspberries.

Edit: Forgot to add earlier that I only used plain flour as I had loads of it in my cupboard (and no barley flour) and it tasted really good.