It has been a while since I baked and assem­bled a nice-looking cake from scratch. It was my mom’s birth­day last Fri­day, birth­days = cakes. I orig­i­nally thought of just mak­ing some kind of dessert but a cake is just much more cel­e­bra­tory. I wanted to make a fresh mango cake but man­goes were not in sea­son (too bad). Straw­berry it was. I didn’t really fol­low a spe­cific recipe for the whole cake except for the basic sponge cake. I used a Génoise cake recipe, the ingre­di­ents are very sim­ple but it is not the sim­plest cake to make. It is basi­cally just eggs, sugar, flour, but­ter and a lit­tle vanilla extract. The lay­ers con­sist of whipped cream, my own home­made straw­berry jam, fresh straw­ber­ries, and a honey syrup. I used chopped pis­ta­chios as a gar­nish on top and sides — makes a very good con­trast of colours with the strawberries!

Ingre­di­ents:

Génoise Sponge Cake (7″ cake):

• 3 Large Eggs (approx. 55 grams each)
• 100 grams Gran­u­lated Sugar
• 100 grams Cake Flour (soft wheat flour) — sift
• 50 grams Melted Butter
• 1 tsp. Vanilla Extract

Lay­ers:

• 450 mL Whip­ping Cream
• 3 tbsp. Gran­u­lated Sugar
• Approx. 6 Large Straw­ber­ries — wash, dry, hull and cut into halves + more for garnish
• 2 tbsp. Honey + ¼ cup Hot Water — mixed together (honey syrup)
• ¼ cup Straw­berry Jam + 1 tbsp. Hot Water — mixed together (I used home­made — def­i­nitely made a dif­fer­ence in taste)

Method:

Génoise Sponge Cake:

1. Pre­heat oven to 350°F/180°C. Pre­pare a 7″ cake pan — line only the bot­tom with parch­ment paper.
2. Sift flour and melt butter.
3. Break eggs in a medium sized mix­ing bowl and whisk with sugar. Set eggs over a water bath (sim­mer­ing, NOT boil­ing) until the the eggs reach about body tem­per­a­ture, stir­ring occa­sion­ally — avoid cook­ing eggs so be care­ful not to have the heat too high.
4. Mix with an elec­tric mixer or on a stand mixer on high speed until increases in vol­ume and becomes a creamy colour. *Impor­tant*: con­tinue beat­ing eggs on medium speed until eggs reach a “rib­bon” stage (test­ing with a whisk, draw the mix­ture up, away from the bowl and allow it to flow back to the mix­ing bowl, if it looks like you can almost write let­ters in the mix­ture with­out it being too runny then it has reached the “rib­bon” stage). It is dif­fi­cult to describe in words so I might con­sider doc­u­ment­ing the whole process in another post.
5. Add in sifted flour and FOLD in flour with a rub­ber spat­ula until just mixed in. (try to do this in a fast motion and DO NOT over-mix)
6. When flour is all mixed in, add but­ter + vanilla and FOLD until well mixed (DO NOT over-mix).
7. Pour bat­ter into cake pan and tap the pan the counter to remove any big air bub­bles, bake right away in pre­heated oven for about 30 min­utes. Try not to open the oven door dur­ing the bak­ing process. The cake is done when a knife is inserted into the cen­tre and comes out clean.
8. Cool cake, remove from pan — slide a par­ing knife around the pan and cake should come out eas­ily when pan is flipped over (metal knives are not rec­om­mended for “non-stick” pans).

Lay­er­ing:

1. Beat whip­ping cream with sugar until firm peaks form. Chill in fridge until ready to use.
2. Cut cooled cake into three even lay­ers. If the cake is shaped like a “dome” on top, cut off the excess to make a flat layer.
3. Brush honey syrup onto the bot­tom two layers.
4. Place straw­ber­ries on the bot­tom layer of cake and spread on whipped cream evenly, place sec­ond layer of cake on top.
5. Spread straw­berry jam on cake and top with a thin layer of whipped cream.
6. Coat the top and sides with remain­ing whipped cream.
7. Pipe cream for dec­o­ra­tion (if desired — might require more cream). Gar­nish with straw­ber­ries and chopped pistachios.
8. Chill until ready to serve.

It is not the best-looking cake but it is not bad. I didn’t take a pic­ture of the cross-section, I thought that it would be nice to see it in an illus­tra­tion. I didn’t sweeten the whipped cream too much because my mom is a not a big fan of overly sweet desserts. I also cut back on the cream (try­ing to be a tiny bit health­ier). The end result was VERY yummy, the cake had a rich egg flavour and the lay­ers had a very aro­matic straw­berry flavour — with fresh berries and the jam. Glad mom enjoyed it, she even had two pieces (she usu­ally stops at one).