Strawberry Cream Cake (Happy New Year Instructables.com!)

This is a great cake that my family love so much. I have done it in various flavour of vanilla, green tea, chocolate, berries, lemon, etc. The possibility is endless.

I know New Year’s Eve is still a couple of days away, but I prepared this to wish everyone on instructables.com a great coming New Year ahead of us, and especially to the editors for keep featuring my posts (granted only 2 so far, well 3 with this one!)....and there is the Sweet Tooth contest to take part too ;-)

There are quite a few recipes on the net, but for the life of me, I have no idea why I keep failing when using any of them. I remember the first time I saw this cake on a cookbook, it used 30 eggs, and I failed. Then I searched the net (because seriously, it is a pretty cake inside and I so wanted to try my hands on it), there are some that used 24, I failed again, and 16, and failed again.

So, after so many eggs and butter and sugar, I decided to use my go to recipe for two separate cakes, and they haven’t failed me at all. It requires a little bit of work, but it is not a hard cake to make.

This recipe below can be easily doubled for a bigger cake, isn’t that awesome?

Happy New Year 2015 every one!

Step 1: Strawberry Cake Recipe

4 eggs

63 g sugar

½ tbsp TBM (this is a sponge cake emulsifier, if you cannot find it, you can use Ovalet or even SP. Chinatown is your best bet to find these ingredients. If not, you can use sweetened condensed milk or even omit it)

½ tbsp corn starch

60 g AP flour

100 g solid butter from the fridge, melted

2 drops strawberry oil (flavouring) and a little red food gel coloring (optional)

Place eggs, sugar, TBM, corn starch and flour into mixer, mix until fluffy and thickened

Drop in the oil and food coloring and mix a little bit more (like a minute long)

Pour in melted butter, fold batter with spatula, and combine well.

Pour batter into 25x30 cm baking sheet that has been greased, lined with parchment and greased again. Bake on preheated 390 F for 15-20 mins max.

While baking, line a clean cloth towel on a table then line a new parchment paper on top of the towel, and sprinkle with some sugar.

Once cake is out of oven, flip cake over the sugary parchment paper, and roll slowly (watch out, it is hot). Let rest to room temperature. Meanwhile, let’s make the chocolate layer.

Step 2: Chocolate Cake Recipe

1 ¼ c AP flour

1 c sugar

3 tbsp cocoa power

1 tsp baking soda

A pinch of salt

1 tbsp vinegar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 c water

Mix dry ingredients and into the center, pour in wet ingredients, stir well.

Pour into 2 greased, lined with parchment and greased again, 9 inch round pan (you can use 8 inch or even 7. For doubled recipe, you can use two 9 inch or 1 10 inch – then halved the cake).

Bake on preheated 350 F for 20 mins.

Let cool on rack.

Step 3: Cream Recipe

For this cake, you can use any cream you like, whipped cream, white chocolate buttercream, ABC (super easy but too sweet IMO), ganache, yolk based, or meringue based.

I used meringue based and whipped cream for this time.

5 egg whites (pasteurized)

1 ¼ c sugar

500 g butter, sliced into 5 parts

Vanilla essence and a pinch of salt (optional)

Place sugar and egg whites on a heat proof bowl, heat on double boiler on low medium heat. Keep stirring until sugar dissolved and mixture is hot to the touch.

Pour into mixer bowl, and beat on low speed until cool to room temperature then beat on high speed until fluffy.

Beat in butter, 1 part at a time, until cream is ready.

Strawberry Cream

Take enough butter cream and mix with 2-3 heaping tbsp of strawberry preserves (either homemade or store bought)

Whipped Cream

1 c cold whipping cream

1 envelope whip it (stabilizer)

1 – 2 tbsp icing sugar

Step 4: Assembling

Unfold the strawberry layer. Spread strawberry cream, and sliced as shown on picture, then roll one at a time.

Place 1 chocolate layer on serving plate, spread buttercream, and start placing strawberry rolls as shown on picture.

Spread buttercream on top of rolls, and then top with another chocolate layer.

Crumb coat the whole cake, then decorate as you please!

Step 5: Decorations

As for the cake on the picture, after crumb coating, I covered it whole with buttercream, leaving the chocolate layers untouched. Then I piped whipped cream and decorated with sliced strawberries. As for the very top, I covered with whipped cream, decorated with OREO clocks (authentic decoration for New Year’s cake) and strawberry flowers.