Erdbeerkuchen (German Strawberry Cake)

At work, we have the birthday cake thing. If it's your birthday, you bring a cake. Or someone else brings one. Whichever. As long as there is cake. My good friend turned 30 at the weekend - although I don't think she is ready to embrace her thirties just yet - and her favourite cake, we discovered by gentle probing and MI5-style questioning, is Erdbeerkuchen. Now you may think, hmm, a cake with beer? But no, die Erdbeere is the German for strawberry, and der Kuchen is, of course, cake. The beauty of this cake is the simplicity, and the freshness, and, I expect, the nostalgic feeling brought about by eating something from your childhood.  

Erdbeerkuchen

As ever, the recipe was pulled together from several different blogs, my favourite being the authentic German Kitchen, where the recipe calls for a shop-bought flan base [shock! horror!] but my German colleague said this was perfectly acceptable! So fair enough. Homemade jelly glaze topped the fresh hulled sugared strawberries. It turned out quite nicely, if I may say so, and I served it with some double cream, whipped up with couple of tablespoons of icing sugar, a splash of rum and the juice of a lime.