Buttermilk Cake with Fresh Strawberries and Cream

We have strawberries coming out our ears (NOT complaining), and today I made my 5th strawberry pie in less than a week, so this cake was a nice change of pace and a great way to use up more of our berries. This cake is really a glorified strawberry shortcake, but it looks a lot fancier and would be great for a large summer dinner party.

I cut the recipe in half because I knew if there were leftovers, I wouldn't make it past midnight before I was in the kitchen, fork in hand. I used a single 9" square pan. The cake baked perfectly. It was so flat on top that I didn't have to level it at all. It was a little tricky keeping the two layers from breaking after slicing the cake in half horizontally, but I managed. Since I only used two cake layers, I had leftover cream, even after halving the recipe, (I realized too late that half the recipe would mean spreading cream on one and a half cake layers instead of three, which would look pretty ridiculous), so I opted to spread cream on the top cake layer, too. I also loaded on top more strawberries than the recipe called for to use up as many as possible.

This half a cake still served 8 and we like our desserts big. So when they say the full recipe serves 12-16, you can believe it. It's a lot of cake.

One final note: with only cream holding the layers together, I was worried that the layers would shift with the cake sitting in the frig for 3 hours, but the recipe says it can be made a day ahead. Not to worry -- the cake layers didn't budge a bit. It looked just like it did when I finished it. I sifted confectioner's sugar on top before serving. We all loved it.