A hard man I know made this dessert once out of supermarket cake and industrial strawberries, to serve small children who were maybe slightly afraid of him. They gurgled with delight when he slid bowls of it before them: the cake cut into large cubes and served beneath the macerated strawberries, with fresh whipped cream. This formed a bond between them all. In the crowd in which I run, poundcake and strawberries has since become a spring and summer standard, the cake home-made and, when we're lucky, the strawberries gathered from fields nearby. But not always. A supermarket version is a worthy substitute.

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