Fresh Strawberry Yogurt Cake

What do you do with strawberries that have mistakenly got frozen? Soft and pulpy, frozen into an indistinguishable lump, what do you do with the slushy mess on your hands? Surely, it would be a crime to throw the delicious fruit away, at least I did not have the heart to do so.

This happened to me a few days ago, when due to a sudden spurt in the voltage, my fridge just stopped cooling. The reason - the evaporator fan in the freezer which apparently is responsible for the cooling in the frost free refrigerators had got spoilt. Call to the service center left me cooling my heels, as according to them, the earliest their engineer would be able to visit was 24 hours after making a complaint. Bummer!! I was panic-stricken considering the amount of veggies, fruits and non-veg that was loaded in my fridge (the compulsive hoarder that I am). Just a day back, seeing the lovely bright red berries beckoning me and silly me, thinking them to be the last of the season, went ahead and bought four boxes in one go. Thankfully dear sweet mom came to my rescue by sending me her spare mini fridge (which was lying unused for quite some time) in which I happily stuffed whatever I could manage (and the rest that didn't fit, of course was sent to my mom's house, who fortunately for me, lives just a stone's throw away from me).

To cut a long story short, the next morning to my absolute horror I discovered  that  whatever I had stuffed in the mini fridge had frozen solid due to some malfunction (how lucky can someone get!!) and now I had 2 kgs of frozen grapes, 4 boxes strawberries, 2 dozen frozen oranges and god knows what else frozen solid on my hands. (A lesson learnt - never to go overboard while buying groceries.) Smart as I am, a brilliant idea came flashing to my mind!! Why not stew the fruits and puree them so I could use them as a base for various dishes instead of wasting the frozen fruits - an idea I must say worked really well. So, that's how I ended with some delicious tasting strawberry puree and a yummy grape sauce (which I soon plan to team with grilled chicken, the wonderful picture already forming in my head, so keep watching this space for the recipe.)

The cake was deliciously soft and super-moist. The yogurt and lemon added a nice tangy taste balancing the sweetness of the strawberry crush I used for the topping. 

Ingredients

200 gms maida

1/4 cup fresh strawberry puree

4 eggs

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 cup yogurt

3 tbsp strawberry crush

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp lemon juice

1/4 cup oil

For the strawberry puree:

36 fresh strawberries

2 tsp sugar

2 tbsp water

1 tsp lemon juice

Method

Place the strawberries, sugar and water in a medium sized bowl. Microwave uncovered on high for 5 minutes. stir. Microwave for another 2 minutes. Cool. Add in the lemon juice and blend in a mixer to get your strawberry puree. (At this stage, you can strain your puree for a fine sauce. I don't mind the seeds, in fact, I loved the crunchiness of the seeds as you bite into the cake, so I used the puree as it is.)

Preheat the oven to 180 C.

In a large mixing bowl, with a hand mixer whisk the eggs and sugar till almost double in size.

Add in the sifted flour, baking powder, lemon juice, strawberry puree, vanilla essence, salt, oil and the yogurt and whisk for 2-3 minutes till nicely blended.

Pour the batter into a prepared cake tin.

Take the strawberry crush and just spoon over the cake batter to form ribbons. 

Bake in a preheated oven for 30-35 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.