A few years ago, my son asked me to make a strawberry cake for his birthday.  Unfortunately, every recipe that I could find at the time included strawberry-flavored gelatin mix.  Since I presumed that most of those mixes would include red dye #40, I found another way to give him a strawberry cake which would go along with the diet we follow, called the Feingold Diet.

When my eldest child was diagnosed with ADHD, a specialist that I took her to recommended that I put her on it.  All artificial flavors, colors, and sweeteners are eliminated, along with the chemical preservatives BHA, BHT and TBHQ.  In the first stage of the diet, some natural foods called salicylates are also cut out and slowly reintroduced to test for a reaction.  Since this recipe contains strawberries, which are a salicylate, it would be considered a stage two recipe.

My son loved this cake so much that he requests it for his birthday every year now.  I start with my grandmother’s pound cake recipe, which can be made in two loaf pans or as a 9×13 sheet cake.

Mama Jeane’s Pound Cake:

• 3 sticks of butter (at room temperature)
• 3 cups of sugar
• 5 eggs
• 3 cups of all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon of baking powder
• ½ teaspoon of salt
• 1 cup of buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Grease and flour 2 loaf pans or 1 sheet cake pan (I like to use coconut oil for this).  Cream butter and sugar with a mixer.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Sift flour with baking powder and salt.  Add to cream mixture; alternate with buttermilk.  Add vanilla.  Bake 1½ hours.  Let cool on a wire rack.

Next, I make a strawberry glaze, which I pour on top of the cake:

Strawberry Glaze:

• 7 – 8 fresh strawberries
• 1½ cups of 10x confectioner’s sugar
• 4 tablespoons of softened butter

Cream butter with one cup of sugar.  Puree strawberries in a food processor.  Add puree to cream mixture.  Gradually mix in remaining sugar.  Drizzle over cooled cake.

Since we don’t eat artificial colors, I usually make a simple butter icing or chocolate icing, so this was a nice change of pace and splash of color.  I added some Doctor Who characters because he loves the show.  The second time I made this, we sliced some fresh strawberries and decorated the cake with them.

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do!