TWD/BWJ: French Strawberry Cake

Goodness Gracious!  Two weeks late, but just under the line before the next recipe. Didn't want to miss out on anything with "French" and "Strawberry" in it's name.  The recipe can be found here and here. And the list of blog links for those participating in the Tuesdays With Dorie/Baking With Julia project is here.

Too much going on to report on it all, but I will say that my daughter and I went on a road trip which is why this is late.  Our road trips go like this: choose 2 possible directions, flip a coin (we have a special one), 2 out of 3 wins, drive, see as many quirky things as possible, eat where the locals eat, find a place to sleep, and start over the next day. The coin took us through the Carolinas, the Virginias, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and DC.

Let's see what we were doing on the missed Dorie day... June 19th...  looks like we made pretzels at the oldest pretzel bakery in the US, saw a house in the shape of a shoe (!), and spent a little time at Baltimore's Inner Harbor.  Just a little taste of one of the 10 days that we were on the road.

We are certified pretzel twisters now.
Qualified to earn 10 cents an hour
just like the original employees, LOL!

There was on old woman...

That's Fort McHenry in the background

Now for the Strawberry Cake.

When it comes to strawberries, we ONLY do organic.  It's worth
the extra cost. Regular strawberries are sprayed so many times
that farmers joke about  grinding them up
and using them as pesticide...

Did I mention it was also pickle-making day?
Got cucumbers in our CSA box this week.
Love those bread and butter pickles!

Decided to put that hot day to work
warming up my eggs!

Cake was put on hold when the King said
"You wanna go look at new refrigerators?" Uh, yes!
This place boggles the mind.
Does anybody know what shape Samsung
ice cubes are?  It's important to the King...

Next Day.  Rushed home after church and got the cake baked.
Only had 9" pans, so I bought an 8" aluminum one.
It worked fine.

On our way to an arena football game.  See upper right-hand
corner.  It says 112 degrees!  I wasn't kidding about hot days.

After the game. I cannot tell you how proud I was of myself
for doing this!

Strawberries and cream are finally invited to the party.

After reading comments that there wasn't enough
cream, I went ahead and made extra.  Note to self: soft peaks didn't
seem like it was whipped enough.  Go for more next time.

"It's like homemade Cool Whip!" she declared.
Poor child. Let's not go there.
We had TONS of cream left over.  She
got the piping bag and her brother got the bowl.

Added blueberries since we had them from
the CSA this week, and it's almost 4th of July.
Yum! What's not to like?

Now for this week's shoe (other than the shoe house of course!)  We saw several on our trip - it's SO hard to decide which one!  This one was spotted in New Market, Virginia.  A beautiful day after we'd done a cave tour and been through a huge garden maze.

See ya tomorrow!