Courtzilla Cooks: Dimply Strawberry Cake

This is kinda less of a cake, and more of a fat kid breakfast. It's not super sweet...and yet you find yourself craving milk. I loved it! Clearly, I belong in fat kid camp. Who wants to watch Heavyweights with me??

But seriously. This was originally going to be the cake to show off my uber cute baby plums... but they went bad before I could use them. And I cried. For DAYS. And then I ate cake and got over it.

You'll need:

-1 1/2 cups of flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp of salt
- 1/4 tsp of cinnamon
- 5 tablespoons of butter
- 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 2 tsp of vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- zest from one orange (which I didn't have, and I didn't think lime zest would be the best alternative....)
- 1/3 cup canola or vegetable oil
- cute baby plums.... orrrr whatever fruit you've got.

First thing's first... preheat your oven to 350 degrees!

Then, butter and flour your pan. Seriously, it's exactly how it sounds. You rub butter around the inside of the pan, then sprinkle flour over it. It helps the cake to come out of the pan clean!

Ok, in a medium sized bowl, whisk together your flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.

Perfect, you're doing so swell.

Alrighty then. Take your softened butter, and put it in another larger bowl. You'll want to mix the butter until it gets light and creamy. Once it's at that stage, add the brown sugar. After a couple minutes it'll look like so...

SUPER appetizing, right?

Ok, now you'll want to add your eggs, one at a time. Afterwards beat each egg on high for about 1 minute. This will thicken up your batter.

At this point, add in your vanilla, zest, and oil and beat until incorporated. I bet this would've been great with the zest. Sighhhh.

Ok, now slowly add in your flour, until it looks like this:

Beautiful! Now pour it in your pan, and level it out so it'll bake evenly.

The swirlage is not necessary in the least.

Now you'll want to add the fruit. As I said, all I had were strawberries... so I wanted to make the most of it. I made this.

Not bad right?

Ok, now you just throw it in the oven, and let it sit for about 40 minutes.

Or at least it should be that simple.

If you used less juicy plums.

If you used strawberries or another juicy fruit (remind me to tell you about my blackberry scone failure), let me show you a trick.

So, I peeked in the over at about the 20 minute mark.

Action shot blur, that's when you know this is getting intense.

Basically what was happening, was 1) my strawberry flower was doomed, and 2) the outsides were cooking way quicker than the middle where all the juicy strawberries were keeping things moist. Moist. What a gross word.

Here's what you do. Make it a foil jacket. It'll totally thank you later.

Just look at it! All dressed up for it's first day of school.

But seriously, the foil will help protect the outsides, while allowing the middle to cook all the way through. How I bombed chemistry, I'll never know.

Twenty minutes later, BAHAHAH!! Perfection.... other than my fail-tastic strawberry flower thingy.