Lasheeda Perry has cranked out thousands of Valentine’s Day desserts over the years. She was a pastry chef at the Four Seasons for nearly a decade, she has her own Long Beach, CA, culinary company (Queen of Flavor), and she appears regularly on the Food Network Kitchen app, whipping up fun sweets like hand pies and blondies. “After being in the industry for 16-plus years, I feel like I need to switch it up on Valentine’s Day,” she says. And by that she means no more molten chocolate cakes. For this dessert, she went for unexpected flavors — a riff on a recipe she created for the book Toques in Black: A Celebration of Black Chefs. “I wanted to try a strawberry version because who doesn’t love strawberry milk? It’s so nostalgic!” she says. —Kate Trombly O’Brien for Food Network Magazine
| Level: | Easy |
| Total: | 2 hr 40 min |
| Active: | 40 min |
| Yield: | 8 slices of cake |
Ingredients
- Cooking spray
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 5 large eggs
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups strawberry milk
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
- 1/4 cup thawed frozen strawberry concentrate or strawberry syrup
- 1/4 cup freeze-dried strawberries
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon lemon extract
- Sliced strawberries, for garnish
Instructions
- Make the cake: Preheat the oven to 350˚ F. Coat a 9-by-13-inch baking dish with cooking spray. Sift the flour and salt together into a medium bowl. Beat the eggs and granulated sugar in a large bowl with a mixer on medium-high speed until thick like cake batter and pale yellow in color, about 3 minutes. Add the vanilla. Gently but quickly fold in the flour mixture with a rubber spatula until combined. Pour the batter into the baking dish and spread evenly.
- Bake the cake until it springs back when gently pressed, 25 to 30 minutes. Let cool 30 minutes.
- Make the strawberry sauce: Combine the strawberry milk, heavy cream, condensed milk and strawberry concentrate in a large bowl and mix very well. Pierce the cake all over with a fork, then slowly drizzle with the strawberry sauce. Refrigerate at least 1 hour.
- Make the whipped cream: Grind the freeze-dried strawberries in a food processor until powdery. Beat the heavy cream, confectioners’ sugar and strawberry powder in a large bowl with a mixer on medium-high speed until medium peaks form, about 2 minutes. Fold in the lemon extract.
- Spread the whipped cream over the cake and garnish with strawberries. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Nutrition Facts
| Serving Size | 1 of 8 servings |
| Calories | 496 |
| Total Fat | 30 g |
| Saturated Fat | 17 g |
| Carbohydrates | 48 g |
| Dietary Fiber | 0 g |
| Sugar | 41 g |
| Protein | 9 g |
| Cholesterol | 209 mg |
| Sodium | 187 mg |
Reviews
Making the cake now. Looks like mine will turn out good, but I had to alter the recipe significantly. Mixed the eggs/ sugar for almost 20 minutes on high (3 min, are you kidding?) for it to thicken like cake batter. Then, only baked it for 22 min, instead of the recommended 25-30min. Hope the rest goes ok! This recipe needs to be rewritten.
Tried this one for my GF and she loved it! Top marks for this recipe. Very tasty!
I made this but instead of a 13×9 inch pan I put it in a round 9×9 inch. The 13×9 would have made this super flat. Cake came out fine in the round pan….the sauce however….too much liquid. It did not come out as pink as the picture and I would recommend not putting the entire sauce in. My husband surprisingly loved it and said at least he didn’t need a cup of milk with it since the cake was sopping wet. Wasn’t bad but wasnt great.
This recipe worked like a charm because I followed ALL the instructions. On the part about beating the eggs until thick like cake batter, the instructions said 3 minutes but there is a note that says IT MAY TAKE LONGER and don’t stop till it’s thick and cake batter like. It took me with my hand beaters about 13 minutes. If I would’ve only done it 3 minutes, it would’ve failed, but since I followed the full instruction to wait till the eggs and sugar were thick like cake batter, it turned out fluffy and delicious. Will be making again soon.
WHAT A DISASTER! Cake was thinner than a pancake despite following the recipe (I kept checking it because it felt like the proportions were WAY off)! Agree with everyone’s comments below about the sauce and frosting, but the cake was dreadful.
The recipe turned out great but I can see why someone might struggle. It’s basically a genoise sponge, so your eggs are your fluff. The eggs make it so you can add a lot of liquid once it’s baked without it tasting like sopped bread. You want to really whip the eggs until the volume of the mixture triples. Think like egg whites with an angel food cake. It looks very fluffy while being whipped and then falls a slight bit and becomes more batter-like when you stop. However, the volume is still very high and the batter is very aerated. I used my stand mixer with the whip attachment and beat it for several minutes on a high setting, pausing twice to scrape the bowl when it was still yolky. When I was done, I had a pale yellow, very airy batter. Add the vanilla at the end so it doesn’t make the batter soupy and flat. I folded in the flour super gently and I poured it into the pan and baked it immediately so I would not lose any volume. Smells super eggy in batter and bake, but tastes great.
I’m sorry to say I agree with the other comments- it was a failed dessert for our family gathering. I tried the recipe two different times, in two different kitchens, with 6 adults working together, and it still turned out weird. Firm, rubbery, didn’t absorb the liquid. The whipped topping was delicious. We followed everything that was written. I agree that the recipe seems to be missing an ingredient (maybe baking powder) or extra instructions. As a FN magazine recipe maker for many years, this is the first ever complete flop and biggest disappointment.
There has to be a typo in the recipe!!!! The cake is crazy, flat, not spongy…. the leches and frosting were good. The cake just floats in a puddle of liquid…. Valentine Day dessert disaster! I’ll try again but different cake recipe, after checking it out the one here doesn’t seem close to being a sponge cake.
Weird cake mix! The strawberry lecha was great and the frosting perfect but if you are going to make this use a regular cake recipe or even a butter cake box cause the cake was just not meant to absorb the moisture.
Clearly I should have come here first! The “cake” was basically a sweet omelette from the oven. I had to start over again with a different cake recipe all together.