English Courting Cake

This cake was made by young girls in northern England for the young men they were engaged to. For this reason it is called The English Courting Cake.

The recipe was given to me by my good friend, Barbara from Ohio. We have so many similar tastes in a lot of things, especially food. We also love foods that not only taste good but are easy to make. This recipe fits the bill.

It's easy to make and a great cake for summer because of the fresh strawberries. Maybe in some southern states you can get fresh strawberries that are sweet all year round, but not here in the northern states. I imagine you could substitute another fruit that you can get in the winter or autumn if you wanted to still make this cake.

Getting a little bit of everything on your fork and into your mouth is like a little explosion of the sweetness and juiciness of the strawberry, the creaminess of the cream and the buttery deliciousness of the cake. A little party in your mouth.

I don't often describe foods like this, but for some reason that is what I felt when I took the first bite. Everyone that ate it noticed something different about the cake and all combined is what I described in the first paragraph. No wonder those young English girls would make this for their betrothed.

1. The original recipe calls for casting sugar which is "fine" sugar. it is a little expensive so you can achieve this by putting your sugar in a blender and it will make it finer.
2. It also calls for self rising flour. I didn't have that so to substitute use 1 cup of flour mixed with 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt. (To use 1 1/2 cups of flour in this recipe mix 1 1/2 cups flour with 2 teaspoons of baking powder and 3/4 teaspoons of salt.)
3. It didn't say to do this but I also added 2 tablespoons of the finer sugar to the heavy cream just because I like it better sweetened.
4. The original recipe also called for three 7" cake pans. I used two 8" cake pans and it worked out just great.