As everyone I have some devotions when it comes to food. If you are frequent reader of Taste of Memories you could already realise that with any kind of yeasted dough and honey zserbó slice I could save the world. Almost.
Now I would like to share my third favourite with you for which I would even run a half marathon: strawberry cake. Eduska, my sister knows exactly how much I love it so she bakes one at every Christmas- khm…for me but I share with the others of course…So at Christmas’ Eve after dinner I am looking into direction of the fridge with strong hope in my eyes that she didn’t forget it.
This cake was published in the Jamie Oliver Magazin Hungary together with the mézes zserbó slice and since now strawberry season starts I thought it is time to share this cake on the blog as well. I have another reason why this recipe popped into my mind. Soon we will visit my relatives in Germany, who were expelled after the second world war. This is their recipe. As a child I didn’t understand what expulsion means and I thought it was their own will to choose Germany as home. Now I know that this is a very dark and sad part of history and only unpredictable turns of life and maybe my grandmother’s stubbornness and fighter personality are the reason why she could stay in our little village and didn’t have to leave her home with a few kilos of personal belongings and food in a cattle-truck. I was 7 years old when we first visited that part of my family in the former DDR and I tasted this cake the first time. That was in the good old times when families stopped working for a short time in the afternoon for “Kaffee und Kuchen” which meant drinking coffee, eating cakes and being together. For this special reunion they set the table with highly esteemed Herend porcelain, which were were hand-painted by uncle Feri, my grandmother’s brother, who was a painter at the Herend factory before. “Kaffee und Kuchen” was a real heaven for a child: on the table there were coffee and tea and different kinds of cakes and sweets. We liked this cake so much that we asked for the recipe.
Now that we will see uncle Feri’s son, Franz and his wife, Renata I thought they would be glad to have a copy of old photographs from that time when his parents and my grandparents were still with us. I find some photos of the nicely set table as well, and I realise that on each photo that were taken in this family reunion I can be seen with a fork in my hand.
I must say I have kept this old habit, when there is a strawberry cake around. 
Strawberry cake according to family recipe
Ingredients:
3 eggs
4 tbsp sunflower oil
6 + 2 tbsp confectioner’s sugar
3 tbsp water
6 tbsp flour
1 package of baking powder
200 ml cream
500 g strawberries
1 package of powder gelatine
For the vanilla cream
450 ml milk
50 ml cream
3 eggs
150 g sugar
25 g corn starch
15 g flour
1 kk. vanilla essence
Preheat the oven to 200 °C, grease and flour a 25 cm round baking tin, or if it is a non-stick one, line it with baking paper. Beat egg yolks with the 6 tablespoons of confectioner’s sugar, mix flour and baking poder. Add oil to egg yolks and half of the amount of water, add the other half to the egg whites and beat it until stiff peaks form. Add flour and egg whites alternately to egg yolks and fold in gradually and carefully. Pour the dough into the baking tin and bake it until it is golden brown, but reduce heat to 180 °C after 10 minutes. Pin test the sponge. To make the cream bring milk and cream to boil. Mix eggs with the rest of the ingredients, except vanilla extract. Add boiling milk-cream mixture to the eggs while stirring continuously thank cook it slowly at low heat until it thickens. Add vanilla extract. Cut strawberries into half. Make the gelatine by following the instructions on the packaging. Spread vanilla cream over the sponge cake, decorate with the strawberries and brush with gelatine so strawberries remain shiny and don’t dry out. Whip cream with the remaining confectioner’s sugar and serve the cake with the whipped cream. 
