Fruit Basket Cake

I've decided to pursue a big passion of mine: baking. I've always loved to bake and am always excited to try new recipes, but now I am challenging myself even further. I've always admired fondant and piped frosting from afar, but have never ventured farther than browsing Michaels aisles of baking goodies. Jeff and I have dreams of one day opening up our own restaurant/bakery/coffee shop/general eatery so this will be my way of preparing for this future journey. Even if things don't work out, I will always be that family member who will always bring the most amazing goodies to any holiday or party.

As baking can be expensive and time consuming, I am going to be challenging myself to make one amazing cake each month. Jeff and I decided that we just cannot keep this much cake around all the time, so this will be one of the few cakes we enjoy ourselves and plan on giving away the rest. This month, I decided to stick with something simple and reminiscent of my childhood. More than once, I remember my mom driving all the way across the city to get this amazing cake called the Fruit Basket for my birthday. It was a very simple yellow cake with strawberries and bananas in the middle. I couldn't remember all of the details, so I used Pinterest to piece together the full picture.

I knew I wanted a yellow cake with a whipped cream frosting and of course the strawberries and bananas in the middle. I started with a delicious yellow cake from Pinterest that promised to be moist. Here's the recipe for that:

Moist Yellow Cake

1 cup (2 sticks) of butter (room temperature)
2 cups of sugar
4 eggs (room temperature)
3 cups of sifted self-rising flour (White Lily)
1 cup of whole milk (room temperature)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (McCormicks)
1/2 teaspoon butter flavoring

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease and flour (3) 8 inch cake pans.
Using a mixer, cream butter until fluffy.
Add sugar and continue to cream for about 7 minutes.
Add eggs one at a time. Beat well after each egg is added.
Add flour and milk (alternating to creamed mixture), beginning and ending with flour.
Add vanilla and butter flavoring to mix; until just mixed.
Divide batter equally into three cake pans.
Hold each layer about 3 inches above your counter and carefully drop the pans flat onto counter several times to ensure release of any air bubbles. This will help you have a more level cake.
Bake for 25 – 30 minutes (depending on your oven) until done.
Cool in pans for 5 – 10 minutes.
Remove and immediately wrap each layer in plastic wrap to seal in moisture. Cool completely on wire racks.
Once cooled, you are ready to assemble your cake.

I didn't have butter flavoring so I left that out and it was still delicious. Picture a sugar cookie in cake form. Also, since I am practicing my techniques, I just used a 6 inch spring form pan so I had plenty of batter left over. I went a little crazy and made some mini cupcakes and ramekin cakes as well!

Searching for "fruit basket cake" on Pinterest, I came across a helpful blog that had created a custard for the filling to go with the fruit. I'm almost embarrassed to admit, but I don't actually have a whisk aside from the attachment for my standing mixer. I think the lack of the whisk combined with the fact that I cut corners and halved the recipe, resulted in a much thicker custard than I wanted. It tasted great, but could have been a little more liquidy.

Custard Filling

2 cups of milk
5 large egg yolks
1 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of flour


First, bring two cups of milk to a boil in a saucepan.
In a bowl, add five large egg yolks.
Add in 1 cup of sugar and cream until the mixture is pale yellow.
Beat in 1/2 a cup of flour.
Slowly drizzle in the boiled milk, when the mixture is well combined, return it to the saucepan and bring to a boil, while whisking the mixture the entire time.
A lumpy mixture will form and then smooth out as you whisk, this is your custard.
Remove from heat and whisk in one tablespoon of butter and vanilla extract. Set aside.

I assembled my cake after it had spent a few hours in the fridge. I don't have a cake leveler so I did the best I could. The biggest mistake I made was not leveling off the top of the cake. It was slightly domed and made a difference once I was decorating it. Won't be making that mistake again!

I sliced up strawberries and bananas very thin so I could get as many in the layer as possible. The beauty of this cake is that you could add any type of fruit you want to it. Blueberries and raspberries would also be amazing! I smoothed out the custard as best I could as it really thickend up after cooling and made a dam of the whipped cream to catch all of the fruit.

For the whipped cream, I tried another recipe from Pinterest that claimed to make the whipped cream frosting as sturdy as they use in the bakeries. I must have done something wrong, because there were gelatin pieces in the resulting frosting. The cake needed another layer of whipped cream anyway, so I just made it the usual way (1 cup of heavy cream with 2 tbsp of powdered sugar and a touch of vanilla extract) and covered up the layer with gelatin bits in it! Weird! For those of you interested, here's the recipe for the stabilized whipped cream:

Stabilized Whipped Cream

1/2 tsp unflavored gelatin powder
2 tbsp cold water
1 cup whipping cream (regular or heavy--I always use heavy cream)
2 tbsp confectioner's sugar

Sprinkle gelatin over cold water in small bowl to soften. 
Scald 2 tablespoon of the cream (this means you put the cream in a pan and bring it to a simmer on the stove); pour over gelatin, stirring till dissolved.
Refrigerate until consistency of unbeaten egg white. (This takes about 10-15 minutes.) Then, with a whisk, beat until smooth. 
In a stand mixer with a whip attachment, or with a hand beater, whip remaining cream and sugar just until soft peaks form; whip in the smoothed gelatin mixture, stopping to scrape the bowl twice. Whip until stiff peaks start to form, but be careful not to over beat. You will probably only need to whip it another 10-20 seconds before it's done.

Fills and frosts top of 2 8" or 9" cake layers; or frosts 10" angel
cake or spongecake. Tops one standard 9" pie with some left over to enjoy from a spoon.  Stands up well, even in warm weather. Keep leftover frosting and any product topped with it in the refrigerator until ready to eat.

Recipe is easily doubled. 

This was my very first time using buttercream frosting to do piping details. I was very excited to try out my new frosting tips I bought last weekend. I just beat together 1 cup of butter and 4 cups of powdered sugar for the frosting and added my colors in once it was done. I practiced a little before I took my hand to the cake but was a little antsy to just try it out. The buttercream frosting didn't stick well to the whipped cream frosting...so I would make sure to account for that if you ever try to do the same. I wish I would have planned my flowers out a little better, but in the long run, these are just the first of many flowers to come.

Once we were done with dinner, Jeff and I were so excited to finally dig into this cake I'd been making all weekend long. It needed more fruit to go along with it so I sliced some more up and put it on the side. It was absolutely delicious! The buttercream frosting was the sweetest part so it was nice to have little bursts of it every now and then.

For next time:

• Make sure the cake is actually leveled properly.
• Do 3 layers instead of 2 to get more fruit in the cake.
• Instead of a design on top, decorate it with strawberries.
• Could possibly even put more whipped cream in/on it.
• I don't think the custard would be missed, so possibly add whipped cream to the filling.

Bonus: I practiced piping words with the leftover frosting!