Time to use my favorite fruit, the strawberry. I re-interpreted the Strawberry Parfait in the Bouchon Bakery Cookbook by turning it into an individual dessert.
The cake is an Olive Oil Cake. The middle layer consists of a ring of halved strawberries and a creme moussoline, which is a rich filling that combines pastry cream and Italian buttercream. After another layer of cake, I finished piped little flourishes of creme fraiche.
Assembly:
1. English Muffin Ring– I didn’t want to purchase cake rings so I just used my 4″ English muffin rings. The clear acetate keeps the dessert secure.
2. Olive Oil Cake– This is baked in a quarter sheet pan and then I cut out rounds with the muffin rings. The recipe says to freeze the cake before cutting out shapes which I ignored and it was a little messy but not horrible because the rings have sharp edges.
3. Raspberry Jam– I didn’t make this from scratch. With so many components in this recipe already I took a shortcut here and used a seedless raspberry jam that I had on hand, diluted slightly with water and heated to get it to a glaze consistency. Then I brushed it on the olive oil cake and the fresh strawberries.
4. Creme Moussoline– for the Strawberry Parfait recipe yield, I did 1/2 the Small Batch of Pastry Cream and 1 full recipe of Basic Buttercream.
Pastry Cream- for a moussoline, the pastry cream is made a lot stiffer to account for the addition of the buttercream. Only egg yolks are used (instead of whole eggs) and a good amount of flour, about 1/2 cup that needs to be cooked out for 4-5 minutes after the mixture is at a boil. Don’t be alarmed if you make this and it looks like rubbery paste. Note: even though I was only making 1/2 of the Small Batch, I still cooked it on the stove, just shy of the 5 minutes because regardless of quantity, you don’t want the taste of flour. Once I took it off the stove, I put the pastry cream over an ice bath to cool before placing it in the refrigerator. It was much too hot to go straight in.
Combining Pastry Cream & Buttercream- Per the instructions, I first whipped the pastry cream to loosen it. Then I added the buttercream and whipped until smooth.
5. Creme Fraiche– I love making this from scratch because it’s so easy. My how-to is here. The last time I made it I used pasteurized heavy cream as recommended, but this time I decided to try with ultra-pasteurized heavy cream. It still works but it takes twice as long. For pasteurized it was about 12 hours and for ultra-pasteurized it took 24 hours to get really thick.
Taking a bite out of my strawberry cake. I was crossing my fingers that the moussoline was stiff enough to hold it’s shape and am so happy it worked. There is no gelatin so it won’t be perfectly in tact but enough that the cake doesn’t collapse. There are so many components that need to be made so I wouldn’t recommend tackling it all in one day, even though I did. It really isn’t very difficult when everything is done ahead.
The olive oil cake is really moist and has great texture. On it’s own the olive oil is a little strong for me so I like that it’s paired with other components. Overall the flavors are pretty mellow and the strawberries and raspberry jam provide that nice tangy contrast. With this cake concept, I would put a whole layer of strawberries in the middle because the ring on the outside is not enough. I’d also be more generous with the raspberry jam coating on the olive oil cake. With that extra tang, the cake would be perfect, great for a summer picnic.
Week 22 of the Bouchon Bakery Book Project
Read the Project recap on the Strawberry Parfait
Bake with us!
2 Comments
What did you think of the pastry cream/buttercream? I have been thinking of making a buttercream with pastry cream — I love Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Silk Meringue Buttercream, but thought a pastry cream, vs. a Crème Anglaise would make it a stiffer buttercream. I don’t mind regular Italian Meringue Buttercream, but can only do small doses – and some people do find it overwhelmingly buttery. I don’t have this book, but should consider purchasing it, if not for that recipe alone!
Sorry for the delay in reply! I like the pastry cream recipe in this book. I prefer mine richer and eggier so I always look to recipes that have just yolk as opposed to some combination of whole egg + yolk. It’s also a bit stiffer which works well for items that require layering and you don’t want it to spurt out. And if you need to thin it you could with some heavy cream.
For the buttercream, I have not tried Rose’s version to compare. I’d say this is a pretty classic recipe. I personally do not like a lot of buttercream in general so I usually apply only as much as I think is necessary. I did not find this to be overly buttery.
Good luck!