Fraisier (French strawberry cake)

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 1 Fraisier (French strawberry cake), you will need:

• 1 300 g strawberries
• 2 100 g caster sugar
• 3 350 g confectioner's custard (crème pâtissière, or french pastry cream)
• 4 150 g butter
• 5 1 génoise (genoa sponge)
• 6 500 g strawberries
• 7 150 g marzipan (almond paste)
• 8 30 g apricot glaze (optional)
• Total weight: 2,050 grams

Times:

Preparation	Cooking	Start to finish
1 hour 45 min.	1 hour	2 hours 45 min.

Step by step recipe

• 1: Begin by preparing the strawberry syrup:
  Put 300 g strawberries, cut into pieces, in a bowl which can be used in a bain-marie. Add 100 g caster sugar.
  Cover with stretch cooking film to seal the container well and place in a bain-marie over very low heat for one hour.
• 2: At the end of this time, you will have a delicious strawberry syrup. Strain through a sieve.
  The pieces of strawberry left will not have much flavour, so you can either eat them or throw them away.
  Note: French chefs call this "clarified strawberries", rather than a syrup.
  Set aside.
• 3: Prepare 350 g confectioner's custard (crème pâtissière, or french pastry cream). When it is made and has cooled a little (wait 15 minutes), incorporate 150 g butter very cold and cut into small pieces, beating thoroughly until the butter is well mixed in.
  This cream is a "crème mousseline".
• 4: Prepare 1 génoise (genoa sponge). When cooked and cooled, cut this to the shape of your cake, round or square.
  You can see that here I have cut it round using a dessert ring. If you do not have one, you can cut round a small plate laid on the sponge.
• 5: Split the genoa sponge in two through the middle.
• 6: Place one circle of sponge on the serving plate and place a dessert ring over it.
• 7: Soak the the top of this sponge circle with half the strawberry syrup.
• 8: Spread a thin layer of crème mousseline over the sponge.
• 9: Arrange straberries cut in half around the circle with the cut side towards the outside.
• 10: Then fill the circle with whole strawberries, placed upright.
• 11: Spread the remaining crème mousseline over the strawberries; ideally, they should be completely covered.
  Tap the plate gently on the worktop to settle the cream.
• 12: Lay the other circle of genoa sponge on a wire rack and soak with the remaining strawberry syrup, using a brush.
• 13: Then turn this over onto the dessert inside the ring.
  This is a tricky operation, so I advise you to turn it over smartly onto a baking sheet to (along with the rack), then slide it onto the top of the cake.
  Press gently on the top to make sure it is flat and even.
• 14: Roll out 150 g marzipan (almond paste) thinly (see this page on the subject), then use it to cover the top of the strawberry cake and trim off any excess.
• 15: Decorate with a half strawberry and brush with an apricot glaze. This is not essential, but adds an attractive finish and prevents the marzipan from drying out.
• 16: At the last minute, gently remove the cake from the dessert ring. Your "fraisier" is ready to be served and enjoyed.

Remarks

If you do not have a dessert ring, use a circle of strong card, lined with a piece of stretch plastic film, held in place with a paper clip.
For a quicker finish, you can simply sprinkle the top of the cake with icing sugar in place of the marzipan.
For Gaston Lenôtre, a strawberry cake should be made with butter cream rather than mousseline, and he called it a "Bagatelle".

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