- Hey, everyone.

Welcome back to another episode of "The Baking Journal."

Today we are making strawberry shortcake, and you are really going to want to watch this one.

We start with yellow cake with a wonderful, delicious layer of whipped cream, topped with fresh strawberries and a delicious strawberry basil compote.

Let's get started.

Combine one cup of chopped strawberries with one cup of granulated sugar, some lemon juice, and two tablespoons of chopped fresh basil.

As the strawberries start to break down, add one teaspoon of cornstarch.

Keep that going for about 20 minutes until the compote starts to thicken and then set it aside to cool.

Now that the compote is cooling, we're ready to get started on the cake batter, but first I wanted to share that this episode is produced with support from "Edible Ohio Valley."

"Edible Ohio Valley" is a quarterly magazine dedicated to the people who grow, raise, and produce food close to us.

Their link is in the description below.

Now, let's make some cake!

In the bowl of a stand mixer, I'm adding all-purpose flour with sugar, instant pudding mix, baking powder, and salt.

Give that a whisk.

We are shaking it up today, and I'm gonna show you something called the reverse creaming method where I have all of my dry ingredients in, and I'm gonna put butter in there next and get that all mixed up and then do our wet ingredients.

Add the butter a little at a time and mix it until it looks like coarse crumbs.

Trust me, just when you think that it's not going to look like coarse crumbs ever, it all of a sudden starts to come together.

And it's coming together now.

Next up are the wet ingredients: four eggs of room temperature, 2/3 cup of buttermilk, and two tablespoons of oil.

Now we're gonna add our liquid ingredients to the mix, and we're mixing just till it comes together.

Even though you don't wanna mix the batter forever, it is way more forgiving using this method.

You'll see some small lumps in the batter when it's ready, but I just wanna be sure I don't have any huge clumps of butter remaining.

Okay, that looks great.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and prep two eight-inch cake pans.

So I am using a magic cake release to line these pans and I will put the link below for the short and the recipe.

The cake release is perfect for keeping the cake from sticking to the pan.

What's the point of baking a cake if you can't get it out of the pan?

Level out the batter and bake for 25 minutes.

So while our cake is baking, let's go ahead and get our whipped cream started.

Now, on "Tips & Tricks," I showed you how to do a stabilized whipped cream using gelatin, but today we're going to try a stabilized version of whipped cream using cream cheese.

I put my mixing bowl in the freezer for 15 minutes to get it really cold.

This helps the cream to whip up quicker.

Add in softened cream cheese, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract.

It comes together fairly quickly, so keep an eye on it.

Look at this deliciousness!

Now that our cakes have cooled, we're getting ready for the fun part, which is assembly.

But before we start working on putting it all together, I wanted to remind you guys, remember our compote that we made?

So what I'm going to do first is take some of that compote and I sliced up some fresh strawberries.

So I'm just going to add the compote to the strawberries and that's what we're going to spread on our beautiful cake.

Start with a layer of our luscious whipped cream and spread that over the top of the cake.

Next, spread all of the strawberry basil filling over the whipped cream and top it off with a whole strawberry for that final touch.

Doesn't this look great?

I can't wait to slice it up and give it a taste!

Oh my goodness.

The cake is moist and fluffy.

That whipped cream is just totally creamy with that little bit of cream cheese.

It really gives it like a little kick, as well as the fresh strawberries in the strawberry basil compote.

This is delicious!

You have got to try it.

If you enjoyed this recipe, please make sure to like and subscribe, and I'll see you again soon on another episode of "The Baking Journal."