Over the weekend my whole family got together to celebrate some birthdays, we do this kind of thing every single month. Between the 30ish of us there are so many birthdays that we have to double and triple up to celebrate. This month we celebrated my mom and my cousin Elicia. My mom hosts all of the birthday dinners at her house for my dad's side of the family, and since it was her birthday we went out to eat pizza at our family's favorite pizza place and then came back to her house for cake and presents.
My brothers and I almost always make her birthday cake for her and this year she requested Strawberry Mouse Cake from Southern Living magazine.
Photo: Iain Bagwell; Styling: Heather Chadduck and Caroline Cunningham
I used the photo from the Southern Living website because I want you to see what it could look like. I let my 16 year old brother frost our cake, so it was a little crooked and didn't have the fancy swirls in the frosting like this cake does. It didn't effect the taste though I promise.
This is our cake, we didn't even garnish it. How lazy is that?!
Honestly, this cake was delicious. I wasn't sure if I would like it or not because I don't like strawberries (I like the flavor just not the fruit) and this cake is bursting with berry goodness. The vanilla cake was so moist and had such a nice texture that I think I am going to start using that cake recipe as my new standard vanilla cake. The mouse and frosting were both packed full of strawberries and it was just a nice spring/summer dessert.
We did make one change to the recipe. The frosting calls for butter, powdered sugar, and fresh strawberries only, and I guess our berries weren't juicy enough because we were basically making noodles not frosting, so we added just a small splash of the whipping cream you need for the mouse and it was perfect. Definitely a cake I would make again.