TWD: French Yogurt Cake with Strawberries and Cream

I hope that the fact that my French Yogurt Cake turned into such a tall and lovely creation will make up for the fact that I am making this post extremely brief.  I have been chasing two sick kids around to various doctor appointments today and, at this moment, one of them is beyond ready for a nap.  

I decided to take Dorie's recommendation in the playing around section and try this cake as a kind of Strawberry Shortcake version - only mine ended up being quite tall.  

I went ahead and baked the cake in the loaf pan, then I just cut 1/2-inch thick slices and used a 2 1/2-inch round cutter to cut some small rounds to stack with some lightly sweetened whipped cream and sliced strawberries that had been soaking in a bit of vanilla and sugar.  

The black flecks in my cake come from the use of some vanilla sugar I had on hand and the only other change I made was to use orange zest instead of lemon.

Overall, I really liked this cake, but funny enough, my favorite part was the caramelized outsides of the cake even more than the tender and moist insides seen here.  I think I would like these as cupcakes (without liners) to get even more of a 'crust' to cake ratio.  Cutting it the way I did left quite a few nice scraps for me to nibble on though, so who knows!

Don't forget to stop by and say hello to this week's hostess, Liliana at My Cookbook Addiction! , and to head over to the Tuesdays with Dorie blogroll to see all the other creations.

If you haven't already entered my apron giveaway, you have till midnight tomorrow (MST) (3/18/09) to enter.  Just check it out here!