Fresh Strawberry Bundt Cake

It’s strawberry season in Louisiana and the Ponchatoula Strawberries are amazingly sweet. I bought a flat at the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival and wanted to show them off. This strawberry cake is moist and tender and the berries pop with sweetness.

ingredients:

¾ cup/170 grams unsalted butter (1½ sticks), softened, plus more for greasing the pan

3 cups/385 grams all-purpose flour, plus more for the pan

1½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1¼ tsp kosher salt

1¾ cups/350 grams granulated sugar

Zest from 1 lemon (about 1 tsp)

3 large eggs, at room temperature

1¼ cups/300 milliliters whole-milk yogurt, not Greek

¼ cup fresh lemon juice

1 tsp vanilla extract

2¾ cups fresh strawberries hulled and chopped into ½-inch pieces

For the Glaze

Ingredients:

¼ cup/40 grams strawberries

2 cups/245 grams confectioners' sugar (unsifted)

2 to 3 tsp fresh lemon juice

Directions:

Make the cake: Position a rack in the center of the oven and heat oven to 325 degrees. Carefully butter and flour a 16-cup Bundt pan, making sure to get in all of the cracks and crevices.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the butter and sugar until combined. Add lemon zest, and then cream the mixture until light and fluffy on medium-high speed, about 5 minutes.

With the mixer on low, add the eggs one at a time, making sure each egg is completely incorporated before adding the next. Add the yogurt, lemon juice and vanilla, and stir on medium speed to combine, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary to incorporate all the ingredients. The mixture may curdle a bit, but don’t worry too much about it.

Add the flour mixture all at once and mix on low until almost completely combined.

Remove the bowl from the mixer, scrape and fold any excess flour into the batter, and scoop out roughly ½ cup/100 grams of batter. Drop tablespoons of batter into the bottom of the prepared pan, and smooth into the bottom of the pan. (This batter will prevent the strawberries from sinking to the bottom of the pan and sticking.) Add the chopped strawberries to the remaining

batter in the bowl and gently fold in until the strawberries are evenly distributed. The batter will be thick.

Spoon the batter evenly into the pan, smooth the top and tap the pan firmly on the counter a few times to release any large air bubbles. Bake the cake until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean (a few small crumbs are O.K.), about 70 minutes. Cool the pan on a rack for 15 minutes, then turn the cake out onto the rack to cool completely.

When the cake is cool, make the glaze: In a medium bowl, use a fork to mash the reserved ¼ cup/40 grams of strawberries. Whisk in the confectioners' sugar and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice. The glaze should be thick but just pourable. If it seems thin, add a bit more confectioners' sugar; if it is too thick to stir, add a bit more lemon juice. Pour the glaze evenly over the cake (you can glaze it over a rack if you prefer to let the excess glaze drip off), let it set for a few minutes and serve. Once the glaze has dried completely, refrigerate any leftover cake, loosely draped with plastic wrap.