If you want to know the secret to why French Women Don’t
Get Fat the answer is “Genoise.” Genoise is similar to a sponge cake and
this weeks building block for “French Strawberry Cake,” today’s recipe for the
Tuesdays With Dorie /Baking With Julia baking group. Dorie
describes genoise as a basic French cake used for a variety of French desserts
such as petites fours. She
cautions American bakers that the cake is dryer than American cakes, therefore,
may not be to their liking. As far as this American baker goes, Dorie is dead
on, since, I believe most Americans aren’t lined up outside bakeries longing to
gobble up the pettis fours.
Like many Americans, sadly, I am prone to excess. I like my
desserts decadent; I like butter and am not afraid to use it. The recipe for
Genoise, however, calls for a scant two tablespoons of butter, the equivalent
used on the average American’s morning toast. In all fairness, I will say that
the genoise is slathered with whipped cream (the other fat) and lightly sweetened
strawberries between the layers.
More whipped cream is applied to the sides of the cake and the top, but
I still found it dry. Perhaps readers, due to my American palette I lack the
sophistication to truly appreciate a good dry wine or a dry cake. The good news, however, is that given
Dori’s description of the cake, how it tends to be dry, I’d say mine came close
to perfection.
As for the layers:
The recipe calls for splitting an eight-inch round cake with a height of
one and three fourth inches into three separate layers. I believe it would take a skilled
surgeon with a scalpel to get three layers out of this cake. I didn’t attempt it; I settled for two
layers. Although, I suspect
some of the super-skilled, knife-wielding Dorie Bakers will dissect three
layers with exact precision.
As for appearances, like French women, this cake is a
looker, a showstopper. Here’s the
money shot:
Thankfully, French women have the croissant. Where they to rely solely on
pastries made from genoise with its paucity of butter they would be thin as
gossamer lace and blow like tumbleweeds past the Eiffel Tower, along the Seine
only finally coming to rest when the bumped into Notre Dame Cathedral.
While I don’t think I will make this recipe again, unless I
can borrow a stick or two of butter from last month’s “Pecan Sticky Bun”
recipe, I tried some new baking techniques that I may not have tried had I
ventured through the cookbook on my own. The cake was fun to make, and you too can give
it a whirl if you go to Tuesdays With Dorie/ Baking With Julia for the recipe
or better yet buy the book Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan and bake along with the group.
