A perfect summer tea and cake treat

I recently spent a weekend entertaining some out-of-town guests from Ottawa. We had a "girls' day" planned for the Saturday - a light brunch followed by a Billy Elliott matinee at the Canon Theatre (which I highly recommended), a little shopping, and then a break before dinner at Osteria Ciceri e Tria. I thought it would be nice to whip up a special treat for our down time - after all, shopping can take a lot out of a girl! 

We launched our Chatelaine Summer Cookbook last month, so I decided to make one of my favourite recipes from it - the Maple-Strawberry Cream Cake. It's a show-stopping cake that's heavy on the whipping cream and fresh strawberries (in season now) - just the way I like it! The recipe says to halve the cake to make a layer cake, but I decided to load everything over top. Simple, easy, really delicious - it was the perfect tea-and-cake snack we needed.

The Chatelaine Summer Cookbook features 109 of our favourite summer recipes and it's available now (for a limited-time) at selected bookstores and online.

 
The Chatelaine team (Lyn, Claire and me) with our new summer cookbook.