Strawberry Limeade Cake

Since I posted the ordeal of making this whole project in the last post, I won’t go into those details here.  Suffice it to say, this didn’t turn out pretty because of those problems and because of that, I don’t have a great finished product image, but I will share what I have.

This is an incredibly easy cake to make.  The cake itself (not the icing) is one a friend of mine that I used to work with made for me every year on my birthday because it became a favorite after the first time she brought it in during a luncheon.

Strawberry Jello Cake

1 – Box White Cake Mix
1 – 3oz Box Strawberry Jello (dry)
½ – C. Cooking Oil
½ – C. Water
4 – Eggs, Well Beaten
1 – C. Frozen Strawberries (thawed – drain off juice)

Beat together with mixer on low until completely blended.  Beat for another 2 minutes on medium high.  Prep pan with grease and flour.  Pour mix into pan and bake at 350º for 35 to 40 minutes or until done.  If baking as layers in two pans, check after about 20 minutes.

Prep Time: 5 minutes   Total Time: Apx. 45 minutes

I always use the Bake Even strips when I’m baking layer cakes.  It almost always eliminates or at least cuts way down on the amount of cake I have to cut off to level and stack my cakes.  It is also critical to prep the pans well or you are going to risk your cake not coming out cleanly.  This particular recipe isn’t the best in the world for doing a layer cake because it is so incredibly moist and the strawberry pieces make this easy to come apart.  If anything, I’d probably just almost over bake this a tad the next time I want to use it for layers to dry it out just a tiny bit as I did have a few smaller pieces in the center of the cake get stuck in the bottom of the pan after it was baked.  They did bake extremely level so I had no cutting that I needed to do.

The icing I used on this isn’t the one my friend normally used.  I chose to go with a modified version of my pink lemonade icing and made it limeade instead.  I was kind of stunned at how well I liked the flavor of this as I’m not typically a fan of lemon or lime unless it has something else to take away from the tartness.  Because this was so light and was balanced by the natural sweetness of the buttercream base, this ended up being an amazing flavor and will probably end up on my top favorite icing list.

The base ingredients in this are nearly identical to my standard buttercream.  I love the blend of butter and marshmallow fluff because it allows this to be a perfectly versatile icing that works great with piping decorations as it holds it shape even at room temperature as well as spreads beautifully when lightly thinned out.

Limeade Icing

1 – Lb. Butter Softened (no substitutes)
2 – 7½ oz Jars Marshmallow Fluff
¼ – C. Frozen Limeade Concentrate
1 – Lb. Powdered Sugar
Milk (if needed)

Beat butter with mixer until light and fluffy.  Add fluff and beat until well blended.  Blend in limeade until smooth.  Slowly add powdered sugar by beating with mixer on very low speed, scraping sides, until fully blended and smooth.  If gets too stiff, add small amount of milk (no more than 1/4 cup).  If need to thin more, use corn syrup.

Total Time: Apx. 30 minutes

I did add a tiny amount of Kelly Green color to give it this beautiful, super pale green tint (which you probably can’t tell from the photo).  Buttercream icings always have a creamy color to them and are never white.  This was just a tad bit more than normal because of the limeade, but not enough color came through for my tastes.

When I do my icing, I always weigh my powdered sugar on a food scale.  For years, I just measured it in cups, but the results were never really consistent.  Since I started weighing, I’ve never really had to do adjustments on the fly to get the right consistency.

The flavor combination between the strawberry cake and the limeade icing was wonderful.  The cake flavor isn’t light and if I were to do this again, I’d probably make the limeade flavor a bit stronger as it didn’t pop quite as much as I would have liked or even go the route of cutting back on the strawberry Jello in the cake itself to lighten things a bit. This was still really great.  It also didn’t come across as quite as sweet as many of my other cakes, probably because it had a bit of tartness to it that I don’t usually have.

This is so not my prettiest cake, but I think it managed to shoot itself up near the top of my favorite cakes taste wise.

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