Over the past few years, I’ve really enjoyed making my own birthday cake. This is what I made last year – link here. So I wanted to keep that tradition alive and this year, I made a strawberry shortcake.

I found a vanilla cake recipe online from Liv For Cake blog (recipe here). It was a very basic batter with a good amount of butter and sugar – those make everything delicious. There is also some buttermilk which I DIY’d – milk with a little lemon juice – which makes the cake super light and fluffy.

With the single batch of batter, I made 6 cupcakes and a 9″ cake. I scooped out the cupcakes first and then just poured the rest into the pan for the large cake. The cupcakes took 22 minutes and the cake took 35 minutes to bake. Once they were baked, I let them cool completely.

The next component was the strawberry. Instead of sliced berries, I made a strawberry jam using fresh Ontario strawberries that I picked a couple weeks ago. It was just chopped berries with a little sugar (not too much because they are already very sweet) and a splash of lemon juice. It cooks down until it thickens up and the berries are a little mashed up. I made the jam and then stuck it in the freezer until I made the cake. This was so easy to make and came out delicious.

The final part of this cake was the whipped cream. I prefer this over buttercream because it’s a lot lighter and less sweet. It was simply whipping cream that was whipped to soft peaks with a little sugar and some real vanilla bean. You can use vanilla extract but I liked the look of the specks of vanilla.

Assembly was quite simple. I cut the 9″ cake in half, spread a nice layer of whipped cream, followed by the strawberry jam and then topped it with the other half of the cake. I just finished with more whipped cream on top and then I let it chill in the fridge until it was time to serve.

This cake turned out really well. The cross section is pretty beautiful too. The cake was so fluffy and soft which went nicely with the creamy whipped cream and the berries. Such a perfect summer cake and sweet birthday!