Last weekend we organized a weekend olympics of hosting two couples in two consecutive days over for dinner at our home. Both days, Friday and Saturday, we had a big Turkish meal, and I served French Strawberry Cake from Baking with Julia as desert. Allow me to tell you that this cake made a glorious end to our meals even though my execution of the recipe was sub par.
For this June finele recipe of TWD, I had to learn how to make a genoise cake (cornerstone of French patisserie, said Wiki), a strawberry filling, and a cream frosting. In theory the recipe sounded simple; bake the cake, cut it into three layers, spread the filling and the cream on each layer, and cover the whole cake with a final layer of cream. Also, the ingredients for the cake were simple and easy to find; flour, eggs, butter, vanilla, sugar. However, the process of mixing and folding the ingredients to form the delicate genoise batter was tricky. As I understand, what was essential here was to maintain a very light and airy batter throughout the whole process of mixing in the ingredients. I had to make sure that all the ingredients were well-integrated but not over-worked. Don’t tell me ‘So what?’, please. Because, this innocent looking batter really fooled me to believe that I had done a pretty good job with it until it came out of the oven with a spongy top (yay!) and a dense bottom (nay!). I believe that my mistake was not mixing the ingredients enough with the worry of over mixing them and ending up with unintegrated bits of flour which sank to the bottom as the cake baked. This is my theory of what went wrong anyway.
When it came out of oven my genoise was malnourished looking (only 1inch thick). Yet, I ambitiously cut it into three layers, with one layer being transparent like parchment paper:). However, once I dressed the cake up with fresh strawberry filling and the cream frosting, it looked like a star. I plotted that with some generous servings of wine during dinner, our friends would not even realize that my supposed to be spongy genoise had a brownie like bottom :).
Here is how my cake looked before and after I sliced it. In the second picture you can see how dense the bottom layer was. Overall, the flavor of the cake was very good but the texture was off. Friends loved it (not as much as my main dishes) but I was not totally satisfied with it. There will be a round two of me vs Genoise in this kitchen.
If you so wish to give this recipe a try, you can find it here and here.
French Strawberry Cake
French Strawberry Cake
Here are the pictures of two of the dishes David and I prepared for the Friday dinner.
Sun-dried Red Pepper Dolmas
Lamb Meatballs with Roasted Eggplant Tomatoes and Peppers
My little yellow cookbook 
I am impressed that you were able to get three layers out of this genoise. I too had a thin cake and made only two layers. Nice looking cake!
wow.. so impressed.. you cut 3 layers out of 1-inch cake!! and i agree.. this cake really demanded finesses and technique!! but hats off to you ..yours came out really well.. as i would have imagined after reading the recipe!!
Döktürmüşsün gene:)) Tatlı harika gözüküyor. Tam bir yaz pastası. Bu arada sabah sabah da olsa yemekler de aklım kaldı. Ellerine sağlık. Hamarat arkadaşım benim:) Köftenin tarifini yazsana bir ara. Belki yaparım:))
The cake looks beautiful! I know from experience that the Turkish dishes were delicious! I’m sorry this is the final recipe for the blog as I’ve enjoyed reading about and seeing the photos of your projects.
All of the food looks great! I agree the cake would be a light and tasty ending to a Turkish dinner. I am sure your guests were very happy.
My cake came out similar to yours and I have the same theory about the flour sinking!
You did the three layers! Way to go!
Sounds like this happened to almost everyone. At least you got the three layers out of it! :) Looks beautiful!
Well done for cutting 3 layers! As you say it looks beautiful all dressed up. It sounds like a wonderful dinner!
Eline saglik canim, ne guzel kremaladin susledin.. Kekten bende de var ama aklim diger yiyeceklerde kaldi :)
I can see what you mean about the dense bottom layer. Folding was tough with this recipe. They said not to fold too much, so it makes you nervous. (When I say “you”, I mean ME!). Anyway, the cake does LOOK good. But your Turkish food looks better. ; )
The fact that you cut three layers more than makes up for anything else :-)
Great looking cake & meal.
I too cut the cake into 3 layers and boy was it a challenge!! I like how you decorated your cake.
Looks like an awesome meal!