I’ve made fraisier several times before, but just never got to make a blog post out of it. So finally, here it is! Fraise means strawberry in French, and as the name implies, this cake is a strawberry cake. When I was doing my internship at Dalloyau, everyone loved eating the remaining scraps of fraisier after the nice pieces were cut out. It is made with layers of sponge cake with mousseline cream and strawberries. A lot of times, it’s topped with a decorative marzipan layer at the top, but here I used meringue.
The sponge cake is imbibed with a syrup, often flavored with some kind of liqueur. In my case, I don’t have any liqueur, but I thought adding more strawberry flavor to the cake itself would be good. As such, I made a strawberry syrup. I just sliced up fresh strawberries and let it simmer slowly in just plain water. After some time, the flavor and color from the strawberries gets drawn out into the water, and I use that to make a syrup.
It’s always good when making a dish to time things out, so the things that take the longest time are made first. In this case, that would be the mousseline cream. It’s not that it takes a long time per se, but it needs time to chill before proceeding to next steps. The base of a mousseline cream is pastry cream, which is a base for a lot of different things. Pastry cream is made by beating egg yolks (or whole eggs) with sugar, then combining some flour and/or cornstarch. Then, heat up some milk and incorporate the hot milk into the egg mixture. After putting it back on the stove and cooking it out until thick - you have pastry cream. What makes pastry cream into mousseline cream is the addition of butter, and the whole thing is whipped until light and fluffy.
Next, the sponge cake. Sponge cake has very few ingredients - eggs, sugar, flour and butter. But it’s amazing what simple ingredients can do! First step - beat the eggs with sugar until it becomes super light, fluffy and increased in volume. I am still so amazed by how eggs can transform - it just never gets old!
You can see how the eggs transformed so much just by beating (top left picture). To finish the cake batter off, fold in flour and butter.
Have your baking sheet prepared ahead of time with parchment paper and then you can put the whole thing in the oven.
Sponge cake doesn’t take too long to bake, so keep an eye on it. You don’t want it to be overbaked and get dry. Once the sponge cake is out of the oven, remove it from the baking sheet onto a cooling rack.
Next - assembly. I used a cake ring with an acetate liner because my cake ring doesn’t come up high enough. It also allows for easy removal of the cake once its finished.
The first layer of the fraisier is a round of sponge cake, which I imbibe with my strawberry syrup. Sometimes it can feel like too much syrup, but the cake really needs it. Not only does it add more flavor, but it also helps prevent the cake from drying out.
Once the first cake base is in place, pipe a ring of mousseline cream along the outside to serve as a resting place for the strawberries. Cut strawberries that are of similar size in half and line them around the outside of the cake ring.
Then, fill the inside with more mousseline cream and load in more strawberries.
Using a piping bag to add the mousseline cream not only makes things neater, but it also helps you get the cream into all the nooks and crannies between the strawberries.
To finish off the cake, top with more cream, level it off with a spatula, and place the last layer of sponge cake on top.
Of course - don’t forget to imbibe! Once all the layers are finished, let it sit in the refrigerator (or freezer) until it’s completely set.
To finish off the decorative portion of the cake, I made an italian meringue and covered the top of the cake with it. I also used a serrated knife to create the swirly pattern, and piped some designs with a st. honoré tip.
Of course, you are free to decorate your cake however you like! That’s the time to get even more creative.
Letting the cake sit for a bit actually helps improve the flavor, as the syrup and mousseline cream and strawberries all meld together. On the other hand, you don’t want to let it sit in the refrigerator uncovered or else it will dry out.
Fraisier is relatively simple to make - there aren’t that many components, and yet the end result is quite tasty. It feels light and fresh to eat, especially with all the fresh fruit packed in throughout. And even though pastry cream is rich, and butter is even richer, because it’s whipped, all the air incorporated inside makes it feel much lighter than it actually is (which could be good or bad).
