6.19.2012

TWD Baking with Julia: French Strawberry Cake


.  It's time for Dorie!  No, not the cartoon.  Dorie Greenspan.  Or Tuesdays with Dorie to be more specific.

This month, I decided to try out the French Strawberry Cake.  First, because it's fruity.  And Summer.  And those two things go hand in hand, right?  So my selection seemed fitting.

As you [may] know, things have been crazy around our neck of the woods for the past week and will continue to be madness for the next week until the CWS is over, so I had to strategically plan out how I was going to get this here cake finished.  I decided to make the cake one day, freeze it, and assemble the following weekend when all of our guests would be in town.  And I will assure you, breaking up recipes really does make it easier.  Regardless that this cake is rather simple, making the elements on different days definitely cut down on time. Hooray!

So what's there to say about this treat?  Well...


It was a bit of a botch.  To no fault of the recipe, but I've come to the conclusion that I just didn't make the cake right.  The cream and strawberries were absolutely wonderful, I could have eaten those two together all night long [which I may or may not have done] but that dang cake.  Not quite sure what happened but it turned out extremely dense and eggy tasting...basically a mess.  Robbie was so bold to say that it was one of the worst things to come out of the oven.  Ha!  Oops.

I would actually give this recipe a second go around though because it must have had something to do with the way I mixed the cake batter.  I'm assuming I wasn't careful enough.  And the not so pleasant cake may have had something to do with the fact that I froze the cake, thawed it thinking I was making it one day, and then threw back in the fridge because I didn't have time.  Hmm... I also struggled with actually cutting the cake into three layers, so I opted for two.  Blah!  All in all, the cake turned out not so pretty.


Oh well.  Failures make you better, right?!  Well, I hope so.  Next time around, Dorie!

But head on over to our hosts for this month, Sophia's Sweets and Think, Love, Sleep, Dine, for the French Strawberry Cake recipe!  .

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9 comments:

  1. Still looks good to me! :)

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  2. I feel your pain - this cake was probably one of the worst things that ever came out of my oven too. But yours looks very pretty with the strawberries and cream and that's half the battle right? I know it was that I wasn't careful enough with the folding but it almost makes it worse to know exactly what I did wrong rather than saying it was the recipe. Ha!

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  3. I have read several posts that had your similar issue. It's interesting how we all have different outcomes. Is it due to weather, altitude, or a mis-print in the recipe? Any consolation your photos are great!

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  4. sounds like you needed to beat your genoise a bit more and taken a bit more care with folding the flour into your batter. we had bits on one layer that was dense and hard, and we found pockets of flour that didnt get folded in properly. You can do it again and I bet you will have better luck! You are armed with all sorts of knowledge from what you did and what you've seen other people doing :)

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  5. new to your site and wow, this looks beyond amazing! gorgeous photos!

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  6. hhhmmm, the photo's sure look yummy, bummer it didn't taste like it looks...

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  7. I really like the picture you took of the flour in the light...
    There were quite a few struggles with genoise on this one - I guess we are all learning together. Next time, we will have it down, right?

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  8. It still looks beautiful, sorry to hear it tasted eggy. Thanks so much for linking up to Creative Thursday last week. I can't wait to see what you link up this week. Have a wonderful weekend.

    Michelle

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  9. It's a gorgeous cake, no matter how it tasted!

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