Although we are not supposed to post pictures of our French Strawberry Cake creation until June 19, what I can tell you is that I baked the cake layer today and took liberties. Those of you who know me well will say--well we are not surprised. The cake batter is a genoise and it is supposed to be intimidating. Well it really is not as long as your follow the instructions. Where folks often go wrong is not beating the egg and sugar mixture until it triples in volume. With my KitchenAid standing mixer that took about 10 minutes. After that you just fold in the butter and flour. Then get that pan in the oven pronto.
Here is where I took a different path. The recipe calls for an 8 inch cake pan. I wanted to use a 6 inch spring-form that is 3 inches tall. Let me just say that the spring-form is wonderful because this cake has a tendency to not want to come out of the pan even if you butter and flour it and use wax paper on the bottom. The spring-form makes it a breeze to remove the genoise from the pan. However, since I was going down in size I had to calculate the amount of batter to use--which was just under 4 cups. Then I had to play around with how long to bake it. This is a cake that you do not want to open the oven until it is somewhat firm or it will deflate. I estimated that 20 minutes would work for the first check on this little beauty.Baking time was almost 30 minutes in our over at 350. It looks fabulous. Next comes the lawyers of strawberries and cream. Stay tuned for that post.
I too used a springform pan. Worked beautifully! Though a cake pan would be fine. My cake did pull away from the sides as mentioned in the book. Can't wait to see your finished product!
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