Celebrate spring’s new-season strawberries and the mellow sweetness of pecans in this wonderful slice-like streusel cake. It’s especially good with any berries, but it’s also worth trying with rhubarb or stone fruit once they come into season.
Strawberry and pecan streusel cake
Celebrate spring’s new-season strawberries and the mellow sweetness of pecans in this wonderful slice-like streusel cake. It’s especially good with any berries, but it’s also worth trying with rhubarb or stone fruit once they come into season.
Ingredients
- ½ cup 125 g unsalted butter, softened
- ½ cup 110 g caster (superfine) sugar
- Grated zest of 1 orange
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 eggs at room temperature
- ½ cup 75 g plain (all-purpose) flour
- ½ cup 50 g almond meal
- 1 tsp baking powder
- A pinch of sea salt
- ¼ cup 70 g plain yoghurt or buttermilk
- 2 cups 300 g strawberries, hulled and quartered
STREUSEL TOPPING
- 75 g 2½ oz unsalted butter
- ¼ cup 55 g white (granulated) sugar
- ¼ cup 35 g plain (all-purpose) flour
- ¼ cup 60 ml thick (double) cream
- 75 g 2½ oz roughly chopped pecans
- Icing confectioners’ sugar, for dusting
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 170°C (340°F).
- Grease and line a 22 cm (8½ inch) square cake tin with baking paper.
- Beat the butter, sugar, orange zest and vanilla in an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and stopping every now and then to scrape down the side of the bowl.
- Add the flour, almond meal, baking powder, salt and yoghurt or buttermilk and beat for 1 minute or until well combined.
- Transfer the batter to the cake tin and smooth the top.
- Scatter the strawberries over the top and push them into the batter a little.
- Bake the cake in the middle of the oven for 25 minutes or until risen, pale golden and almost cooked.
- About halfway through this initial cooking time, prepare the topping.
- Combine the butter, sugar, flour and cream in a saucepan.
- Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture starts to bubble and everything is melted into a gorgeous golden caramel.
- Take the cake out of the oven – it should be just pale golden on top and cooked enough to ‘hold up’ the caramel and nuts.
- Sprinkle the chopped pecans over the cake, then pour the caramel over the top.
- Gently spread the topping with a spatula so it covers as much of the top of the cake as possible.
- (Don’t worry if it doesn’t cover the cake entirely – it will spread further as the caramel cooks. )
- Return the cake to the oven and bake for a final 25 minutes or until the caramel is golden and the cake is cooked through.
- Set aside to cool for 5 minutes, then lightly dust with icing sugar and serve warm with cream, yoghurt or ice cream.