SMALL STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE is basically fluffy sponge cake with a layer of sliced strawberries filling sandwiched between whipped cream. Then the entire cake is covered in whipped cream and piped with decoration patterns. Strawberries are put on top as garnish, and brushed with strawberry conserve to prevent moisture loss and gives a glossy finish. I will also teach you how to make striped chocolate garnish pieces if you would like to make it the way I've made it. The small sized cake will add a sort of cuteness to the gift if you are giving it to someone special :) The size of the pan I used is roughly around 15cm in diameter I think... It's a mini spring form cake pan that you sometimes see at grocery stores or cookware stores.
SPONGE CAKE
2 Large Eggs
63 grams Cake flour
63 grams White Granulated Sugar
25 grams Unsalted Butter
Preheat Oven to 170C.
Cut up baking paper for the bottom of the pan, and another slice for the sides of the pan. Lay the baking paper pieces in place.
Put the butter in a small glass or heat safe container/bowl. Melt the unsalted butter either in the microwave, or boil some water in a bowl over the stove, and sit the bowl containing the butter in the water until it melts. Remove and set aside.
Sift the cake flour over a large sheet of baking paper. Set aside.
Using an electric mixer, roughly beat the 2 whole eggs first like you would before you make scrambled eggs. Then adding half the white granulated sugar and beating until combined, then adding the rest and beat until at least double in volume, and the egg mixture is pale in color. Another test is to use the attachment on your mixer to grab a bit of the mixture and drop from mid-air back into bowl. If it is in the thickness where it would flow back into the bowl forming obvious ribbons that slowly and seamlessly return to the batter then you are done.
Fold the two longer edges of the baking sheet with cake flour on it together, and pour a tiny bit of flour into the egg mixture. Switch to a wooden spoon or rubber spatula for easy folding. Gently fold the flour in so you don't deflate the flour. It doesn't have to be completely mixed in without any trace of flour before you add more. Add the rest of the cake flour at about 1/3 at a time and continue to gently fold the flour in so you dont deflate the mixture. The spongy texture of sponge cakes comes from how well you keep the cake from deflating, so don't over mix. You can exchange for some slicing motion down the center of the batter once in a while. Make sure there is no flour at the bottom or the sides. Only fold until the ingredients are JUST incorporated. Drizzle some melted butter in and fold in. Add rest of the butter 1/2 at a time and fold in as well.
Gently pour the batter into the prepared baking mold, using rubber spatula to scrape the sides of the batter if need to. Once batter is in pan, drop the mold couple times to reduce large air bubbles.
HELPFUL BAKING TIPS:
I tend to find that whenever I bake sponge cakes no matter how well I bake them I would have some form of crust and dome over the top. And a softer one around the sides too. Here are some helpful tips that will prevent this from happening.
- This is probably the 100% working tip for me. Basically you line the cake pan with baking sheet WITHOUT any butter or oil spray. The cake comes out nice and spongey on top, and all around. I remembered this as I watched another video recipe I used a long while ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmLkPBut8nI
- Place a sheet of baking sheet over the top of your cake pan whilst it bakes and this should prevent doming and the formation of crust at all.
- If your oven is fan forced, sometimes they have tendency to dry out uncovered food. Consider adding a bowl of water on lower rack to add moisture.
- Make sure the butter is at room temperature and soft enough to cream. Mix until light and fluffy and kind of pale - basically enough to make the sugar melt in.
- There may be a bit too much sugar, try reducing the amount a little.
- You may have greased the pan too much. Since I spray mine, I would suggest either spraying only a little and brushing it around the pan with a pastry brush, or just use gently press and drag some butter across the pan before laying your baking paper or parchment paper on top.
TIPS FOR CAKES SINKING IN CENTER
- Over beating batter is a common problem, in this case you incorporated too much air into batter.
- Oven temperature too low and/or too short a baking time. Invest in a oven thermometer. I am considering to do so since my oven is very old and I suspect its temperature may be incorrect.
- Over or under measurement of either dry or wet ingredients.
- Using too small or large a cake pan.
- Opening oven door before cake sets. A good rule to follow is to never open door until 3/4 pass the specified time on recipe.
- If you need to fold in egg whites, make sure you beat it to full volume, and don't fold too harshly or you deflate the batter and cause it to fall.
- Too much or too little creaming of sugar can cause problems too.
Bake at 170C for 25-30 minutes. Test by inserting skewer into center of cake at around 25 minutes and if it comes out clean it is ready. If there is still sticky batter on it wait for 5 more minutes before testing again. The cake should be springy to the touch. Gently and quickly press down with a finger and it should spring back, be careful not to burn yourself though. I haven't tried baking a bigger version of this recipe, but I may bake a large rectangular size in the near future. My suggestion for this is to drop the temperature just a little as the cooking time will be longer.
Once done baking, remove the cake from oven and drop on table once to prevent shrinking. Put on wire rack to cool for a few minutes. When cool enough to handle or completely cooled, remove cake from the pan and gently take off the baking papers and place back on wire rack or set aside on a plate.
WHIPPED CREAM
1 cup (240 ml) heavy whipping cream (35-45% butterfat content) - (I use whipping cream since double cream is the closest equal to heavy cream but is higher in fat content so its yellowy and whips more thick so I don't like that. Makes the cake look stale LOL)
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon (15 grams) granulated white sugar
Cover and chill the bowl and wire whisk in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. In a large mixing bowl place the whipping cream, vanilla extract, and sugar and stir to combine. When chilled, beat the mixture until stiff peaks form. Which as its name suggests, when you lift up the cream it will form a stiff peak and not fall back into the cream.
GARNISH
Filling -
About two small packs of strawberries or one large pack. Roughly around 20 strawberries will be more than enough, unless you wanted some sliced ones to be garnished around the outside of the cake then you may need a bit more.
Soaking Syrup -
2 tbsp Sugar
3 tbsp Hot Water
OPTIONAL 1 tbsp Kirsch - a type of brandy made from fermented cherries
Strawberry Glaze -
1/2 cup (120 grams) Strawberry Jam/Conserve (Basically jam without the fruits lumps)
1 tablespoon water
Chocolate Garnish
50 grams White Chocolate (I like using Nestle Plaistowe's White Chocolate)
50 grams Bittersweet Chocolate (I like using Nestle Plaistowe's Dark Premium)
Filling: Wash and dry each strawberry with cloth or paper towel. Remove stems and leaves. Set aside 6 good looking strawberries for top garnish. Slice each into just a bit less than 1cm slices and set aside on a plate covered with glad wrap to prevent moisture loss.
Soaking Syrup: Dissolve the sugar in the hot water, add Kirsch or Rum if you want some flavor to compensate the cake. I just leave it out since it's unnecessary and always good in case someone needs to drive or don't like any trace of alcohol in their desserts :)
Strawberry Glaze: Heat the strawberry jam or conserve (also known as preserves) and water in a small saucepan over medium heat until liquid (melted). (Can also heat in the microwave.) Remove from heat and strain the jam through a fine strainer to remove any fruit lumps.
Melt white chocolate over double boiler- a boiling bowl or saucepan of hot water over the stove on low heat. A glass bowl bigger than the bowl containing water, sitting on top of it and using the steam beneath to melt the chocolates in the glass bowl. OR microwave at small time intervals to prevent scorching. Firstly roughly chop the White chocolate into small pieces - this speeds up the melting process. place in glass bowl over bowl of boiling water on low heat stove, stirring once in a while when edges of chocolate start to show sign of melting. Once melted completely remove from heat and set aside to cool down for around 1-2 minutes. Lay a rectangular sheet of thin plastic on top of a bigger sheet of baking paper to prevent spills, then pour some white chocolate onto the plastic sheet and spread across evenly as a thin layer using a spatula or long knife. Let dry a for maybe 1-2 minutes so its not as runny but still liquid state, then using an edge side scraper (basically a scraping tool with zig zag edges so you can scrape uniform lines on cake frosting or cream for decoration) to scrape straight lines across the white chocolate horizontally. If its too runny you can let it dry a bit longer then try again over the same lines. Then just let the chocolate set until its kind of hardened, melt the dark chocolate and let it cool to room temperature. Pour over the white chocolate lines and very gently using a spatula spread over evenly across to cover the white chocolate lines. Since the layer is very thin, once they set hard, which you can put in the fridge to speed up the process, simply use a sharp knife to slice up into shapes that you like, but make sure you look on the other side of plastic sheet to decide what direction you like the pattern of the chocolate to run in your shapes. Gently bend the plastic sheet and the shapes should come off easily. I usually lay them out on glad wrap and wrap them up without touching each other to prevent finger prints or things smudging on them etc for later use.
TO ASSEMBLE
If you cake has a dome on top, just gently using a long enough pair of knife - especially good if it has serrated edges - to draw an even level line around it to mark the place you want to cut. Then as you start to cut through the cake following the guide you made, gently place your palm on top of the cake and slowly twist the cake in a sort of rotational motion as you slice into the cake in a very gentle sawing motion. If you press too hard into the cake you will end up with a lot of crumbs and will need to deal with it when you come to covering it with whipped cream. A handy tip that I personally prefer not to use is to chill the cake in the fridge for 30 minutes just before cutting - often used for shaping into 2D shaped cakes, this will also prevent crumbs. But I prefer not to chill the cake with no cover since I feel that the fluffy texture of the cake would be loss.
Depending on how many layers you want, using the method above just divide the cake into 2 layers or more. Usually for strawberry shortcakes its just one slice to halve it, giving you two slices. If you have a plate where the edges are high enough to near half of the cake, what I do is transfer cake into the plate, and just rest my knife on top of the plate's edge and do the cutting method above. This way you don't need a guide and ensures a straight cut.
Assuming you cut into two slices: Set aside the top layer top side up on either wire rack or another plate.
Using a pastry brush dip into soaking syrup and gently dab across the top surface of the bottom layer to soak the cake. Using a whisk drop a dollop of whipped cream on top and then using a spatula, knife or spoon spread across the surface evenly. It's a good idea to slightly turn the cake when you're doing so, and place the spatula or what you're using on a 45 degrees angle. Evenly distribute sliced strawberries on top of the whipped cream, then cover with cream with similar method.
Crumb Coat: Once covered with cream, place the top layer directly on top, and soak the top with soaking syrup. Drop a large dollop of whipped cream on top with whisk, then even out on top and along the sides with offset/normal spatula or knife. You can gently spin or turn the cake as you scrape the excess cream off the sides, but be careful to not expose the cake. Then you will find some cream peaking on the sides of the top surface, just gently brush them inwards towards the centre with your spatula to trim the shape of the cake. The idea is to make a thin layer that not only covers the cake evenly, but also seals the crumbs in. Put into the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.
Repeat process of coating with whipped cream. If you find that it's very hard to smooth the surface, you can heat up the spatula or knife under hot water, then wipe it clean with a towel and using the heat to smooth out the whipped cream. Or even using a clean sheet of paper, gently forming a curve with one end, and on a slight angle just scrape the cake from top to bottom, and work your way around. At this point I would put the bowl of whipped cream back into fridge to chill for maybe 15 minutes. Also chill the cake as well. In the photos you will notice I didn't whip my whipped cream enough and it was probably out of the fridge for too long when I piped it the designs mostly melt in my second cake.
Decorating & Garnish: Fit on desired piping tip to plastic bag or piping bag - reusable or disposable.
Pipe on either six round blobs of whipped cream around the cake even width apart, or make swirls. There are plenty of videos out there that provide some techniques you can use with certain tips.
Experiments are also fun :) Then place strawberries on top of the round blobs of whipped cream or rosettes you made. Stir up the strawberry glaze to make sure it hasn't thickened into one blob, and brush with some strawberry glaze. For my cake I just used random swirls for mine with a rather small star tip I think it was. I swirl around the top near the edges of the cake. And if you are doing bottom edges too, I suggest first transferring cake to whatever you are carrying it or transporting it in, then piping the design in. Then for chocolate garnish just gently push pieces into the cake in desired position and you're done!
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