- Hey, I'm John Kanell. And today on "Preppy Kitchen" we're making an amazing
strawberry lemonade cake. So let's get started. First off, set that oven to 350. Now in a large bowl,
I'm adding three cups, or 360 grams of all-purpose flour. I want half a tea spoon a baking soda. There is some lemon juice in the cake, and that acid will react
with the baking soda to give us a fluffy, amazing cake. I also want two teaspoons
of baking powder. And for some balance I'm
adding half a teaspoon of salt. In you go. If you're using a fine grained
salt, use a little bit less, 'cause it's more salt in a teaspoon. Our scale is done. We're gonna give this a quick whisk, and then it's on to the butter and sugar. Okay. Right now you can grab your stand mixer or a big bowl and a hand
mixer, both will work. Now I'm adding one cup or 226 grams of room temperature butter. And just so you know, room temperature means that I can press with a little bit of pressure
and the butter will yield. It'll also, it'll bend and not break. So if your butter's a bit cold, half power the microwave,
10 second bursts. Get all that butter off. We're gonna cream this up. Just mix on medium for about 30 seconds. Then we'll add in the
sugar and the lemon zest. This lemon is naked,
I've already zested it. This one is nice and ready. The lemon zest has so much
beautiful, delicious flavor, and it's really gonna
add a lot to the cake. (mixer whirling) Once that butter's nice and creamy, we're gonna add two cups or
400 grams of granulated sugar. You have probably noticed from
the sizes that we're using, but this is a big, beautiful
cake, perfect for celebrations. And it's gonna look so pretty. I can't wait to show
you the decoration part. Started mixing the sugar in,
almost forgot the lemon zest. I want one full lemon zested. If you don't have a micro
plane or a nice rasp, you need to buy one, they're so handy. I use them all the time to get the zest off of lemons and oranges. I grate my nutmeg and also it's perfect for beautiful clouds of
cheese on top of pasta. Hmm. One lemon down, and one to go. I want two tablespoons, or
about the zest of two lemons, for maximum lemony flavor. So in this cake, I
haven't even told you yet, the cake itself is an amazing lemon cake, but sandwiched between each layers is a beautiful jammy,
strawberry reduction. And then it's coated inside and out with an amazing, but really
easy strawberry buttercream too. It's gonna be so good. And it's like the perfect
spring summer celebration cake. Highly recommend this one. Tap that in. Now we're gonna mix this
on medium to medium high for about five minutes until
it is light and fluffy. I'll probably scrape the bowl down once. While that's mixing, I'm gonna juice probably
two to three lemons to get a nice quarter cup of lemon juice. (mixer whirling) Ah, okay. Those are really juicy lemons. So now I'm gonna scrape the bowl down and continue mixing. If you're using a paddle attachment, a lot of the times it can compact some of the sugar on the bottom
while fluffing the top up. So you wanna scrape it
down to give it a restart, so it's all fluffy. I'm also gonna crack four large room temperature
eggs into a bowl. I'm on shell patrol, no
shells for this cake. It's not crunchy. Almost forgot, I need to crack open a new vintage of my homemade vanilla. It smells really good. Now we're gonna add two
teaspoons of vanilla right into the mixture. (mixer whirling) One, and two. My butter sugar combination
looks nice and fluffy, it also smells amazing. So now it's time to add four
room temperature eggs in, one at a time. Let each egg in incorporate
before adding the next. It really helps you get
a nice, smooth butter, instead of like having that
cottage cheese broken texture. It makes a difference
in the bake of the cake. (mixer whirling) And now I just wanna
show you really quickly. Ah, it's so loose on top, but underneath it's very
like compacted and hard. So we're gonna scrape the bowl down, and this way we'll get
a beautiful texture. The word of the day is homogenous. We want everything to be
silky smooth throughout. Now we're gonna add our last egg in. (mixer whirling) I have to show you. We have a beautiful fluffy
like cloud-like mixture and we're ready for the next step. Now we wanna measure out one cup of room temperature,
whole milk, that's 240 mills. And if you're wondering why
things are room temperature when you make a cake... That's good. It's because if you put ice
cold things into the oven, the outside will bake up first, the inside, which is so cold, will take a long time to be done. And by the time it's already throughout the outside's gonna be burnt. We wanna give this cake a nice head start by using room temperature ingredients so it bakes more evenly. They also mix together better as well. Now for the fun stuff, I'm gonna add in about a
third of my flower mixture and then we're gonna alternate; Batches of flour and the milk, and the lemon juice goes in at the end. Okay. Mixing on low, you don't wanna
overmix your cake butter. As soon as it's almost
there, half of the milk, another third of the flour, the rest of the milk, and the remaining flour. It is not mixed yet, but I just wanna give
this a little scrape. The baking powder is really happy. It's starting to react
with the wet ingredients, but the baking soda
says, where is my acid? It's in the lemon juice. With the addition of this, you'll start seeing a foamy crazy reaction and your cake is gonna
be so fluffy and great. It smells like lemonade already. It's time for this butter
to go into the pans after you give it one last mix by hand. I always just wanna explore the bottom and see what's going on in here? Make sure there's no like
hidden clump of anything. Okay. I will say you do wanna work
kind of quickly at this point, that's why I'm taking a break to stop and talk to you of course. And I'm gonna line three
eight inch cake pans, that I buttered, with parchment paper. If you take a look in your pan, you'll see it looks foamy and amazing. Don't let that go to waste. Get this into your cake pans right now. And you wanna kind of preserve as many of the bubbles as you can. I'm using a scale just to see if these are evenly distributed. Smooth the butter out with a spatula. You want this to have a nice, even layer, not one with a giant mound anywhere. It'll level out in the oven a bit, but not as much as you want. Our cake layers are ready
to go into the oven, 350, for 30 to 35 minutes, or
until the centers are springy. And you'll also see the edge pulling away. While they bake, we're gonna make our amazing strawberry reduction. (bright upbeat music) Our cake layers are in the oven, so it's time to make
that strawberry reduction I talked about. This is gonna be so full
of strawberry flavor and have the most amazing
jammy consistency. I'm gonna hold my strawberries,
toss them into the pan. Don't worry about
quartering them or anything because if they're not
breaking down fast enough, just mash 'em up with the back of a fork. It's definitely a time saver. Once your strawberries are all hauled, toss them into your pan and grab half a cup of granulated sugar, as well as some lemon juice. It'll sweeten things up
and you're basically making like a homemade strawberry
reduction, which is jam. If you're really, really in a rush, can you use some jam to make this? Yes, you can. You can fill this with jam. I would mix it with a
little bit of lemon juice and just make sure there's no giant chunks
of strawberries anywhere. To add some zing for this
strawberry lemonade cake, I'm adding the juice of one lemon. It's about two tablespoons. (John gasps) That's a lie. (John chuckles) I'm adding the juice of two lemons. It's about a quarter of a cup, sorry. I was recipe developing this for a while and I decided I wanted
more of the reduction so I actually doubled it. But I had though, the
single original in my head. Any who, a quarter cup of lemon juice is about the juice of two lemons. I'm not measuring it out. Add the rest of this lemon juice. I'm popping this onto medium high heat and it'll cook down for 20 to 30 minutes. It really depends on your heat source; Induction, electric, gas,
propane, they're all different. But you're looking for a
nice jammy consistency. And yes, you're gonna
wanna stir this frequently, especially at the edges, and especially after
it starts to break down because the edge can kind
of get singed and too hot. No one wants burnt strawberries. (John vocalizing)
Nothing's happening. Is this on? (John chuckles) True story; When this was installed, it was installed missing a piece. So if you've watched this channel, you've often seen flames
jumping off of this cooktop. We could really show you some
traumatic footage in B-roll if we wanted to. But this finally got fixed, so now it's like a beautiful,
delicate little flame as it should have been, but I'm used as giant, (John vocalizing) If you know, you know. All right. It's started to come to a simmer. I'm just using a potato ricer,
you can use anything you want just to mash them up and
give them a head start. Break down faster. I just didn't feel like
chopping the strawberries today. If you wanted to, and it sparks joy. Go ahead. These strawberries look really nice. If you have like the sadder grocery store off season strawberries, you may wanna add just a drop
of food coloring to amp it up 'cause those can go kind of gray. These will be naturally
beautiful, reddish pink. This is bubbling away, and
I just wanted to tell you that if I was making this at
home and I wasn't distracted, I would be multitasking
making the buttercream or at least starting the buttercream and the reduction at the same time. No, no, no, not when kids are around, and my kids are home today. And also, not for you
'cause I wanna show you each step individually. But for this, because
it's running for a while, you could skip away and do some dishes, come back, give it a stir. You don't have to stir it constantly. You're just kind of scooping the edge away and moving things around here and there. Right now we're breaking the
strawberries down with heat, but we're also evaporating a lot of water, and a reduction is just
reducing something, getting rid of the water and
concentrating the flavor. This will soak into
your cake a little bit, make it that much more moist, but also give you a
wonderful hit of strawberry in between each layer. And it's a total delicious flavor punch. We're also gonna be using this
reduction in the butter cream So one of the last steps is to add this in and it's gonna give you that amazing natural strawberry flavor. All right, just a few minutes later, this is a nice jammy consistency. You can use your spatula and it'll leave a streak
that takes a while to come back together. You can take this off heat, and if you want it to
cool down even faster, just pop it into a glass
bowl or a pie dish, spread it out for a lot of surface area and leave it in the fridge. And because I'm on propane, this actually only took 15 minutes. So that's a nice consistency. Right into my pie dish. You really want it to
cool down significantly all the way to room
temperature before you use it. There we go. While this cools down, we are gonna start our amazing
strawberry buttercream. This big cake needs a lot
of delicious frosting, so we're gonna add 454 grams or two cups of room
temperature unsalted butter into our stand mixer, fitted with a whisk attachment. You could make this with a hand mixer, but you'll need a big bowl. Now for the fun part, we are gonna beat this
on high for five minutes. Remember the color of the butter, it'll be totally
different when we're done. (mixer whirling) While it mixes, go ahead and get two tablespoons
of lemon juice ready, that comes in towards the end. Okay. Feel free to give that bowl a scrape. Back to mixing. When you fluff the butter up like this, you're really pumping
a lot of air into that and giving it a head start
before the sugar goes in. It'll give you a really
luscious creamy buttercream. (mixer whirling) Ah, about five minutes later. What? Look at this, it is so light and fluffy. It's almost like a pure white color. Amazing. Since our butter's all fluffed up, we can start adding eight
cups of powdered sugar in, that's 900 grams. And like I said, this is a big cake, we need a lot of frosting to cover it and we have some really
fun, easy decorations at the end as well. Start mixing it on low, and you can add this in a cup
of time or in several batches, it's up to you. And if you don't love
American buttercream, this is American buttercream, you can definitely make this cake with a Swiss or Italian
meringue buttercream that is flavored with
that strawberry reduction. So you could click up here for my Swiss meringue buttercream video, and then just add in the same amount of strawberry reduction and it'll be a delicious light cloud. It'll be less sweet and more creamy. But this is a nice balance. Once half of the powdered sugar's in it's time to add in a third of a cup or 80 mills of the strawberry reduction. This color is so naturally beautiful, and it's gonna give you a lovely shade of pink on the outside. There we go. I didn't put this through
a blender to puree it, so I'll have some larger chunks
of strawberry throughout. I love the way that looks, but if you don't just blend this up and you won't see any. Add that in. (bright upbeat music) Oh!
(John chuckles) It got me. Add that in. I was about to say it's a
little jammy as it should be, 'cause it's gonna be between
the layers of the cake, so you might have to use
your spatula to take it out. Ooh, I was totally like, psych. Now mix this in, and once it's mixed we'll add in the rest
of the powdered sugar, and some other delicious things. (mixer whirling) Hmm, it looks so beautiful. But there's some unmixed
nonsense in the bowl, so I'll give it a good scrape, then we'll add the rest
of the powdered sugar in. I get so excited for strawberry season. This year we expanded the kitchen garden and now we have tons of
strawberry plants out. They're doing really well, and I cannot wait to start using them. They're just coming into
their second harvest, so we're between harvests right now. In this buttercream recipe, the lemon juice we're gonna add in is gonna give this a nice bit of balance. If you want you could add like
a pinch or two of salt in, but it's totally optional,
and up to your taste. The rest of the sugar is in. We're gonna mix this on low. Don't you dare explode. My sugar's incorporated, but right now this is
too thick and too sweet. We need to mellow this, balance this out, and make it nice and silky. To start that off, I'm adding two tablespoons of lemon juice. I had an extra juicy lemon. Normally I don't measure it
out, but this is way more. I'm also adding in two to
three tablespoons of cream. This will help give my buttercream a beautiful, silky consistency. And you can add this in kind
of to your personal taste. Do you want it to be extra like slack or be a little bit thicker
so it sets up better? In this cake the buttercream
needs to support my big cake, it's a layer cake. But you also want it
to be like silky enough that it pipes really beautifully
and tastes delicious. Hmm, okay. Grab a tasting spoon. Hmm. (John laughs) That's so good. It's like strawberry, lemon, amazing. Scrape the bowl down, there will be chunks of
butter, less delicious. And also after you taste it, feel free to add in a
little bit more lemon juice, strawberry reduction, salt. It's up to you. One of the lessons I would do in my middle school science
class when I was a teacher is with tasting strips, these little strips
with chemicals on them. Everyone gets to taste one and
you write down what you taste And the funny thing is
that just genetically people taste things differently. So one person tastes sweet, one person tastes bitter, one person doesn't taste anything at all. And that's why all of us have
different tastes in food. This however tastes perfect to me. So I'm gonna grab a cake stand, my cooled cake layers, and get to assembling. My cake layers baked up nice and flat. They're cool to the touch. When you wanna take them outta the pan, in case you don't know, just run a knife or a little
spatula around the edge and then give them a
little tap on the side. There we go. That dislodges them. Yay! Lift the paper off and repeat. My first cake layer is ready to go on. Be gentle with it, it's very delicate. Ah, I'm so excited for
this decoration portion. Right now you're gonna
wanna grab a piping bag and a decorative piping tip. This is a four B, you
could use any star tip you love though. Cut a hole in the piping bag. (bag rustling) All right. You probably want maybe
two cups of frosting in this piping bag. I'm gonna use it for the
assembly and the decoration. (John humming) Onto your first layer we're gonna add about
half a cup of frosting. Plop it on, and now
we're gonna spread it out into a nice even layer. Strawberry and lemon together are magic. And what I wanna do is
create a nice flat layer upon which I can have a lake
of that strawberry reduction. There we go. To hold it in you need a border. So let's use a piping
bag and pipe that up. I'm using this because it's easier. I want about three tablespoons
of my reduction right here. If you add too much it'll
squish out and be messy, so really about three table spoons. Says I who added four
tablespoons just now. It's our secret. Spread that into a nice even layer. This looks so amazing
when you cut into it. Ah, it's gonna be really cool. You probably saw that in the
intro to the video though, 'cause it's a beauty shot. Don't worry if it's not all
the way out to the edge, it'll kind of squish
out and meet the border. Okay. Oh, right on top. If you're doing this on a super hot day, and this is kind of falling apart, it's happened to everybody. Don't worry, just pop this
into the fridge to set up and then continue the process. Totally normal. Another half cup, smooth it out. This is also the time
where you check to see if things are askew. That's not cool, you want
it to be all nice and even. So give it a turn. And as you can see, I'm
using my turntable today. It's what I love for cakes. It makes everything so much easier. More of our border. There we go. I was a little bit
conservative with my frosting on that first layer. So you want a thicker
border, that's the best. Another three tablespoons. Smooth it out. Look already, this is so good. If there's a cake with a flavor combo you haven't seen on the channel yet. Let me know, I am all ears. Strawberry matcha, anybody? Strawberry matcha cheesecake perhaps? All right, last layer goes on top. I'm gonna smooth some
of this frosting out, that I add on top, but then I'm going to add
it directly onto the sides, it's the easiest way to go. I'll refill my piping bag, 'cause this is all my decorative piping I was supposed to be doing on top. Grabbing my favorite
tool, a bench scraper. Now, I'm gonna start just my
complete coverage of this cake. Don't actually worry about the top because we're gonna cover it completely, just make sure it's pretty level. Using that same offset spatula just to get the sides started. This cake is fairly tender, so you wanna be gentle on the side. Now I'm using my bench scraper
just to clean the side up. It also helps you keep
things nice and even. So it's standing straight, not leaning. And look how much work
this turntable's doing? All righty. And pull that edge in so that we can have a nice base to work on for our decorations. One tip that I think is really important; If you let buttercream sit
out for any length of time, it'll get kind of bubbly
and lose that silky texture even with American buttercream. So give it a quick whip and you can also just kind
of work it up the sides and it'll press those bubbles out. You'll end up with a much
more finished, beautiful look. Still tastes the same. Piping bag is refilled. I'm gonna do a really pretty rope border. Just make those circles,
and it looks so cute. Tuck this little bit in
where everything met, and now at the edge I'm doing an optional, just a little skirt too. These are just little
puffs that I'm piping on. A piped puff if you will. Optional, but I think it looks cute. Just little tiny ones. This is pretty, but it'll be even more beautiful
crowned with strawberries. So I hauled and sliced
and quartered a few, it's really up to you. You can have a few
scattered around the edge or you can completely cover
the top like I'm gonna do. There is no rhyme or reason, and anything you do, honestly,
it's gonna look great. This is a big cake, so you might have some stability issues. If anything is looking wobbly, just go ahead and pop it into
the fridge for half an hour, the frosting will set up a bit and it'll be really easy to
slice into, and transport. If you're making this cake in advance, just go ahead and add the
strawberries at the very end, 'cause they will dry out in the fridge. Little strawberries,
cradled in buttercream. What could be better? Look at this beauty. It's a celebration of summer,
so beautiful and delicious. Time for a bite. (bright upbeat music) Hmm. The cake is an explosion of
strawberry, lemon deliciousness. And the cake itself melts in your mouth. It is so soft and fluffy. I hope you get a chance
to make this recipe, and if you liked this video, check out my summer cake playlist.
