I never imagined a cake could be so difficult to re-create. We have it every year, in December, on the birthday of my fiancé's grandmother. It is a tall, airy white cake slathered in whipped cream and stuffed with strawberries. It comes from my fiancé's hometown of Wellesley, from Quebrada Bakery, a bustling little downtown storefront. His grandmother adores it; she's turned 92 with that cake, 93, now 94.

It is the kind of cake that makes another year worth living.

It is heavenly, like walking on air with your tongue. It is rich and decadent yet light all the same, and it slides down into your belly like a cloud. It is soft, supple, willowy--the type of cake I normally push aside; there is no frosting, no ice cream, no heavy sauce. And yet it is so perfect, it almost makes you cry.

I wanted to re-create the cake for you. I spent an entire week--baking one, two cakes a day--trying to conjure it to life. When strawberry season arrived, I wanted to have something truly magnificent to offer you. I wanted you to experience the cake that can bring a 94-year-old woman to her knees.

I knew that if for you I could perfect it, the cake would be even better. You would make it in June, when the strawberries are sweet and ripe. They would be tiny, dimpled, firm, nothing like the woody versions we'd tasted in December. They would bring the whole thing from ethereal to divine, bridging that last flight into the empyrean.

The bakery would not squeal on the recipe. They offered the cake in its parts: yellow cake, pastry cream, strawberries, whipped cream. This was a start, but it revealed nothing much. Yellow cake could mean anything. I consulted Web sites, cookbooks, friends. I baked three flat, moist rounds, none of which tasted the part. They were too heavy, too dense, too chewy. I toyed with making the cake from a box. That was the texture I was looking for--that springy Betty-Crocker yellow.

Finally, I remembered angel food cake. That was it. I whipped up egg whites and cream of tartar, flour, sugar, vanilla. In the oven they puffed into a cloud, perfectly moist, airy, and light.

The whipped cream was next. Whipped cream from a can, which I'd used the first time in a pinch, was a disaster. It melted into a pool, slid from the cake and eventually off the plate, yielding the nickname strawberry disaster cake.

American whipped cream, with its soft peaks and gentle spread, also failed to do the trick. My father stepped in. The whipped cream ought to be the type they used for pastries in France, he advised, créme Chantilly. We chilled the metal mixing bowl, the beaters, the cream. We added powdered sugar, vanilla, and beat heavy cream, not whipping cream, which has too low a fat content. It grew stiff, then firm. It didn't collapse, even when we scraped it from bowl to bowl. The next morning, in the fridge, it still sat in shapes. He'd been right.

The pastry cream was less trying--a few of the egg yolks left over from the cake, a bit of milk, sugar, flour, and vanilla took care of that. I did my best to let it thicken, working not to overcook it too much, but just a bit, just enough so that it would set.

That left only the strawberries. Of course in February, when I was testing this for you, those had no hope of being right. But head out today--to the farmers' market, pick your own, a roadside stand--and I am certain you'll find them just right.

Elspeth Pierson lives in Wellfleet, where she works as a freelance writer for regional publications.