French Strawberry Cake (TWD)

 

This recipe was bound to happen in June, I realized after a few days of nominations. So, right after they were posted I set out to buy some berries, in case they disappeared just as I needed them. French Strawberry Cake, by contributing master baker Flo Braker, is all about the strawberries. There was no place for substitutions here.

I reached the fruit place on a bleak, grey afternoon. In the few minutes as I waited for another customer before me, I eyed fresh figs, radicchio, tangerines, white and purple eggplants and red pears. I bought everything besides the strawberries, so the cashier asked if I needed help to carry the three bags to my car.

`I walked here´ I said

`But the bags are heavy ´ he answered, a bit concerned

`Never mind, I carry bags all the time, I´m used to it ´ I said

`But it´s raining´ he replied, with even more concern in his voice

`I know, it was raining when I left my house, but I need to make a strawberry cake… and besides, I like to take this kind of walks and see what fruits and vegetables I find´

`But it´s raining ´ he said, not without an extra dose of pity in his voice now

I was probably that night´s family discussion over dinner, you know, the crazy ladies that keep his shop going no matter what.

This turned out to be the perfect cake for several reasons.

First, my fall strawberries are juicy with a nice color, but they don´t have the sweet, sun-kissed summer taste. They taste like autumn that´s been having some unexplainable very warm days. So making a mash (in my case it didn´t really happen since they remained stubbornly half whole and I didn´t want to use my processor) with sugar, as required by the recipe, was the perfect way to use them. Second, it was nice to bake this colorful cake after 4 days of continuous raining, which alternated between the most annoying thin drizzle to unexpected half hour storms. And third, I realized as I was deciding when to finish the cake, that I had a friend´s party to go to that night and didn´t have a gift. So the cake got finished, the pictures taken in a hurry, and the piece that had been cut was artfully replaced and covered with extra cream. By the time I got to my friend´s house, I blamed it all on the car trip.

The fact that I don´t care much for this type of cakes became irrelevant. I don´t like genoise very much; maybe because I have the idea of it being dry and needing syrup, which for me is old-fashioned but not in a good way. The soaking liquid here was the resulting syrup of the sliced strawberries being mixed with sugar and left to do their thing for more than two hours. Nature has a way of perfectly taking care of things on her own.

The cream was given a bit of structure with some sour cream, which really works every time. And it adds a bit of sourness that balances the whole white, fluffy thing.

Why I don´t care for this cake? Because I like summer strawberries on their own. Juicy and sweet with no added stuff, whatever that might be.

But now, I do have a use for it, anytime one of the three reasons I explained before comes up.

The recipe can be found in our host´s blogs, Sophia of Sophia´s Sweets  and Allison of Sleep Love Think Dine
Or in he book Baking with Julia, by the fabulous Dorie Greenspan. The rest of the group´s posts are here.