It is not summer yet. In fact, it's been raining for more than a week, and another week - the one in which, I presume, we'll be introduced to our new mosquito overlords - is promised. It's almost like summer looked at New York and said, "pbbbblt!"

But I know it's coming, because strawberries appeared at the Greenmarkets (a New York farmers' market) last week. Strawberries - the kind that really taste like strawberries - are always promised for weeks before they appear, and I go overboard when they arrive, bringing home pounds, plural, when a single box would get us through the weekend. When Monday rolls around and the strawberries are on their last legs, if you listen closely to them, they'll tell you that this cake is how they'd like to go out.

I've adapted it, only slightly, from a Martha Stewart recipe by adding the barley flour, which I have recently fallen in love with. We tend to associate whole-grain flours with heartiness and heaviness, but this is neither - it's silky and delicate, and it has a subtle creamy nuttiness to it that goes fantastically with berries. This cake works like a dream with 100 per cent all-purpose (plain) flour but if you've got barley flour, swapping it in for half the volume is beyond delicious, adding a real depth to a deceptively simple cake.

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