French Strawberry Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is the French Strawberry Cake. The hosts for this week are Sophia of Sophia’s Sweets and Allison of Sleep Love Think Dine . You can visit their blogs and get the recipe for this cake. The ingredients are simple but the technique is a little more involved. This cake is a genoise, which is made without leavening. The rising of the cake completely depends on how well you whip the eggs and how well you can incorporate the other ingredients without deflating the eggs. I, apparently, am not very good at that.

We made a similar cake to this when we were baking through Baking from My Home to Yours. My cake there didn’t turn out all that well, and it seems as if fate repeated itself. I thought everything was going so well and then when I tried to add the second third of the sifted flour, all the flour dumped in and I knew that my cake wouldn’t be light and lovely. I tried not to give up by my batter was dense and not completely smooth when I put it in the oven to bake.

It came out looking fine, but hadn’t raised much. I knew I wouldn’t be splitting it into layers, and instead opted for a strawberry shortcake-like cake. The cake is kind of dry, but it’s ok paired with the strawberries and whipped cream. This cake isn’t too sweet, and despite being a little dry, it’s quite nice. I don’t practice this cake enough to really get it right, so I try not to feel too bad. At least it looks ok!

Recipe from Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan