TWD- French Strawberry Cake

For years, I have been perusing food blogs for recipes, cooking tips and techniques. I have come across the symbol (TWD) on many occasions. It stands for Tuesday’s with Dorie. Dorie Greenspan is the author of 10 cookbooks and has won numerous awards. Tuesday’s with Dorie is an online baking club that originally baked it’s way through her book, Baking from My Home to Yours. They are now onto another one of her cookbooks, Baking with Julia. I have always admired Julia Child. She would roll with the punches and she always had a smile on her face.

I love the idea of baking the same recipe as hundreds of others and seeing how they all pan out. Each month, two recipes are nominated and chosen. The rules are simple; you have to own the book, conquer at least one of the recipes per month and have a blog of which to post your quest.

My first recipe from this extraordinary book is the French Strawberry Cake. It is a genoise cake, which is like the French version of sponge cake. I must admit, my first attempt at genoise was not very successful. The cake did not rise properly. The leavening for this cake is in the form of whipped eggs. The recipe calls for whipping the eggs until they are airy, pale and tripled in volume, taking 4-5 minutes. I whipped and I whipped and I whipped, for 20 minutes! I’m not sure if my eggs weren’t quite warm enough or if I just had faulty eggs but it still tasted divine.

We went strawberry picking last weekend and got just under 4 lbs of strawberries.

As I said, the cake didn’t rise properly…I think it should have been double the height.

But the strawberries were delicious. After thinly slicing, they were mascerated with sugar and then mashed to use for the filling of the cake.

 The final result was beautiful and tasted very fresh. Believe it or not, this was the first time that I had made whipped cream from scratch. It was sooo good.

 

The recipe for French Strawberry Cake can be found at this week’s host blogs: Sophia’s Sweets  and Allison of Sleep Love Think Dine.

I am looking forward to all the wonderful recipes that I will be baking alongside a bunch of talented people. Check back for other Tuesday’s with Dorie recipes.