summer cakes

My favorite past time this summer, staying cool while enjoying these light and fruity cakes :-) I'm still baking despite the seriously hot and humid days we've been having even in the early mornings. Instead of making regular banana bread, my over ripe bananas went into this banana chiffon cake, shown below. I found a good banana chiffon cake recipe at Chew Out Loud website.

One of the first chiffon cakes I learned to bake was pineapple chiffon cake, shown below. It has been my personal favorite for many years. The white mountain frosting may be optional but it just works so well with cake. I very seldom omit the frosting when I make this cake :-)

a slice of the light & fluffy pineapple chiffon cake

This Japanese strawberry shortcake version with a basic sponge cake base was just perfectly refreshing for summer. However, in Japan, this is called Christmas cake. It's traditionally made or sold during the Christmas season. I've seen pictures of other versions of it online. I also learned that the cakes in Japan are usually less sweet. The bakeshops get very creative with the fruit toppings. They use cantaloupe, honeydew melons and other fresh colorful fruits.

Japanese strawberry shortcake