TWD—Baking With Julia—French Raspberry Cake (Genoise)

French Raspberry Cake with Perfect Genoise from Baking With Julia

I kept putting off making the Baking With Julia recipe for this week and until Monday almost-afternoon I still hadn’t made it.  Then out of nowhere, I just decided to do it.  I wanted to try making a genoise cake, I can’t remember if we made one before with TWD-BFMHTY, probably, but after reading all the problems and questions on the TWD website, I wanted to prove to myself that this really was an easy cake to make—and it was!

This is one of my favorite recipes so far!  I’m actually happy with the way it turned out and that I was able to cover an entire cake with whipped cream, which I don’t believe I’ve done before.  And I’m happy with how it turned out.  Yes, those of you looking at it from TWD, it’s short.  It became apparent to me that there was no way I was going to be able to cut the cake into three layers, so I didn’t even try.  Two layers it was and it is/was just fine!

The cake for the recipe was supposed to be strawberry cake, with a layer of macerated strawberries in between each layer.  But I have just not been very happy with the strawberries we’ve had available here so far this season (grocery stores), and I have a freezer full of raspberries (plus we like raspberries more here anyway).  So I got some frozen raspberries out of the freezer and let them thaw.  Once they were about half thawed, added a quarter cup of sugar and let them sit for another hour or two.  As the recipe indicated, I mashed the whole berries with a fork and I actually drained the liquid (it made a great smoothie!), instead of spooning the fruit out with a slotted spoon. 

After slicing the cake (which I froze after it cooled as that was supposed to make for easier cutting, but didn’t for me), I topped the first layer with all of the raspberries, which was about a cupful.  Then I topped the berries with some of the whipped cream and for a little kick, I sprinkled some chocolate shavings on the middle layer.  As you can see, I also sprinkled some on top.  I didn’t have any pretty, fresh raspberries to put on top of the cake, so it only seemed natural to put chocolate! ;)

Good dark chocolate (70%) grated with a peeler and ready for the cake!

Mmmm!  While I think it could have used even more chocolate, this is a great cake.  Just perfect for my frosting-hating family.  I’ll be making more cakes in the future with whipped cream for the icing!

Word up (just for my own sake), I don’t like my photos and haven’t lately and won’t for a while—my precious camera has gone to the fix-it shop and these were taken with my phone.  Not really liking how photos are turning out with my phone, but at least I have it, right!

You want this genoise recipe and the French Strawberry Cake (though you can use any fruit you’d like and I’m sure it would be okay).  I’m really enjoying baking in this book, Baking With Julia.  What is really fun is that every Saturday our PBS station here has the episodes from Julia Child’s show, which Dorie Greenspan worked behind-the-scenes on with Julia.  I have been enjoying watching and recording the episodes—a few of which we’ve already made the recipes I’ve seen on the show. 

I say get the book if you don’t have it, but if you want this recipe, our hosts for this week will have it on their blogs.

Sophia from Sophia's Sweets and Allison from Think, Love, Sleep, Dine are the hosts.