GBBO Translation: Mary Berry's Fraisier Cake

I've lost track of how many times I've rewritten this introduction paragraph because I just haven't gotten my ducks in a row and published it. I baked this back in March for my husband's birthday, and it was a hit. And now that it's summer, strawberries are in season and this cool refreshing dessert is a beautiful, refreshing, and delicious treat for you to try for yourself.
The Fraisier cake was a technical challenge featured in the same season of Great British Bake Off/Baking Show as the doughnuts that I made previously. It appeared on week 9, patisserie, of series 3, available on PBS as season 5 and on Netflix as Great British Baking Show: The beginnings. This recipe is also featured in a Masterclass episode, also available on Netflix. Because the cake is from week 9, or the semifinal, it is probably going to be quite a bit more difficult than the bakes I've done so far. It also features crème pâtissière, which I have never made before. We might end up just going out for ice cream if this doesn't turn out to be an edible birthday cake.

Maybe you've just stumbled upon this page and you've never watched Great British Bake Off/Baking Show; you were just looking for a cake with strawberries in it. If that's the case, hello and welcome! This isn't my recipe but I'm going to try it and you don't have to have seen the show to follow my baking adventures. But it's a great show. You should watch it. You get to learn fun techniques and terms that you might not see in a lot of other places and everyone is so nice to each other. It's lovely.

Speaking of learning fun techniques and terms, I am always grateful to my past self for taking a couple semesters of French in college when it comes to patisserie week. If you haven't had a smattering of French, I'll clear up a couple things for this week: The cake is not named after a popular 1990's television character, but rather comes from the French word for strawberry (fraise). The stuff that goes in the middle of this cake is crème pâtissière, which simply means pastry cream. Bakers on the show often shorten this term to "crème pât" because it's less of a mouthful (pun intended).

Okay, that's enough catch-up. I've seen the meme about "how come every recipe blog has to talk for three days about the writer's kids and dog and husband first, just give me the damn recipe!" I see your frustration, and share it. (But I'm still going to give intro before each recipe).

Mary Berry's original recipe can be found here. I've also copied and pasted it below with my conversions and notes in mauve. Mary's instructions are also rather long and detailed, so I have also pared them down a little bit, but if you find that what I've done doesn't make sense you're not alone you can check out the original recipe as linked above.

Ingredients
125g/4½oz/0.5 cup caster sugar (superfine or bakers' sugar)
4 free-range eggs
2 lemons, zest only, finely grated
125g/4½oz/1 cups self-raising flour, plus extra for flouring
50g/1¾oz/3.5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly, plus extra for greasing

For the crème pâtissière
600ml/20fl oz/2.5 cups milk
vanilla pod (vanilla bean)
4 free-range eggs, plus 2 free-range egg yolks
180g/6¼oz/0.75 cups caster sugar (superfine or bakers' sugar)
1 tbsp kirsch
100g/3½oz/0.75 cups cornflour (corn starch)
150g/5½oz/11 tablespoons butter, cut into cubes and kept at room temperature

For the lemon syrup
75g/2¾oz/0.25 cup caster sugar (superfine or bakers' sugar)
2 lemons, juice only

To finish the cake
200g/7oz marzipan
200g/7oz dark chocolate, for decoration
600g/1lb 5oz medium sized strawberries

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

Grease, flour, and line the base of a 23cm/9in spring-form or round loose bottom cake tin.

Place the sugar, eggs, and lemon zest in a large bowl set over a pan of simmering water.

Using an electric hand whisk, whisk the mixture over a medium heat until doubled in volume, pale in color, and forms a ribbon trail when the whisk is lifted out of the mixture. Remove from the heat.

Sift in two-thirds of the flour and gently fold into the whisked mixture with a metal spoon or spatula. Add the remaining flour and fold again. Try to keep in as much of the air as possible. Make sure all the flour is incorporated into the mixture.

Gently fold in the melted butter.

Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 25-30 minutes or until the sides of the cake begin to come away from the tin and it is pale golden-brown.

When cooked, allow the sponge to cool a little bit in the tin, then carefully turn out onto a cooling rack. It should be just under 5cm/2in in height.

To make the crème pâtissière, pour the milk into a wide based pan, split the vanilla bean along its length using a sharp knife, and add it to the milk along with the vanilla seeds. Bring the milk to a boil, then remove from the heat.

Whisk together the eggs, sugar, kirsch and corn starch in a medium sized bowl until blended.

Remove the vanilla pod from the milk and pour the hot milk through a sieve into the egg mixture. Whisk to combine.

Pour the custard back into a clean saucepan and set over a medium heat.

Stir the custard constantly until the mixture thickens, about four minutes. Whisk until smooth.

Cook the mixture until the crème is very thick, so that it can be piped and it will hold its shape. Stir in the butter until thoroughly melted and combined.

Allow to cool slightly, pour into a shallow dish and chill in the fridge for about an hour until really cold and set firm.

Place the ingredients for the lemon syrup in a small saucepan with 70ml/4½ tbsp water. Heat gently until the sugar dissolves, then boil rapidly for two minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, roll out a thin disc of marzipan to fit a 23cm/9in circumference circle, using the base of another loose bottomed tin as a stencil. Chill the marzipan circle in the fridge until it is needed.

Slice the sponge in half horizontally, creating two even, slim discs of cake.

Place a strip of acetate plastic around the inside of the springform tin, or line the base and sides with cling film or parchment lined foil.

Place one layer of sponge cake in the bottom of the cake tin. Then liberally brush the sponge with half the syrup. With the back of a spoon, gently squash the edges of the cake down so that they are pushed directly against the sides of the tin, creating the defined edges necessary for the Fraisier cake.

Rinse, hull, and halve about 12 strawberries of similar size.

Place the cut sides of the strawberries against the plastic on the inside of the tin. The strawberry halves should be sitting snugly beside each other, so it looks like a little crown inside the tin.

Take the chilled crème pâtissière out of the fridge and spoon two thirds of the crème into a piping bag, fitted with a 1cm/½in nozzle.

Pipe a swirl covering the exposed sponge completely in the bottom of the tin.

Then pipe between each of the strawberries so the gaps are filled right to the top with the crème pâtissière.

Set about 3-5 strawberries to one side for decoration, then hull and quarter the rest of them and place on top of the crème.

Pipe another swirl of crème pâtissière on top of the cut strawberries to cover the whole surface, and then smooth with an offset spatula.

Place the other disc of sponge on top of this, cut side up, creating a flat top. Brush with the remaining syrup.

Gently press the top down quite firmly, so that the cake and filling push against the acetate to create the distinctive smooth and defined sides of the Fraisier cake.

Lay the chilled marzipan circle on top of the cake and put the whole thing back in the fridge to set.

Make some pretty decorations of your choice with melted dark chocolate.

When ready to serve, remove the cake from fridge.

Very carefully release the spring tin/loose bottom and remove the cake from the tin and from the acetate or cling film.

Place onto a serving plate and decorate with reserved strawberries, chocolate decoration and a dusting of powdered sugar. Serve chilled.

On Your Marks, Get Set, Bake!


Most of the time, I rewatch any episodes featuring a recipe in order to prepare before tackling a new bake for Beyond the Box, but I didn't do that this time. I baked first and rewatched second. If you watch the Masterclass episode, you'll notice that Mary does things a little differently than in the supplied directions. I followed the written directions, though, and started with the cake. The fraisier features a Genoise sponge, and similar method to that used in the tiramisu cake I made a while back. This recipe, though, directed me to whip the eggs over simmering water, which I did. In the Masterclass, Mary Berry says that you don't have to do it over the water if you have a good powerful stand mixer (like a KitchenAid, which I do have). But I didn't know that beforehand, so I did the hot water thing. It worked fine, but it wasn't something I had done before, so it threw me for a bit of a loop. Like the tiramisu cake, though, I beat the eggs, sugar, and lemon zest until they were beautifully pale and thickened, and then stirred in the flour and the butter.


This recipe does say to use self-raising flour, so I added about a half teaspoon of baking powder to the flour. Traditionally, a Genoise sponge doesn't feature any leavening agent, but relies on the air in the batter (that you spent several minutes whipping into the eggs) to raise the cake. Knowing that, if you don't have self raising flour and forget the baking powder, your cake will probably still be okay. The baking powder just gives it a little extra boost. Once all the ingredients were mixed in, I gently poured the batter into a cake pan and put it in my preheated oven.

While the sponge baked, I got started on the crème pâtissière. (By the way, you never truly appreciate the simple beauty of copy/paste until you have to type something with that many accents!) I did actually have a vanilla bean on hand for this, as I bought a two-pack last time I saw my vanilla extract was getting low (Make your own vanilla extract by steeping a split vanilla bean in vodka for a minimum of 30 days). So I split my spare vanilla bean and put it in a pan of milk to begin steeping while I mixed together the sugar, corn starch, eggs, and kirsch. I understand the need for corn starch in the recipe to help thicken the creme so that it has sufficient structure to support the cake without oozing out everywhere, but even after everything was done, I wondered if the amount of corn starch could have been reduced a little.

When the milk was heated (and smelled beautiful, by the way), I slowly poured it through a fine mesh strainer into the egg mixture. I did this a little at a time to avoid cooking the eggs too fast, but I think maybe the corn starch helps stabilize the egg and I could have done it in one portion rather than three or four. I then poured the custard into a clean pan and began stirring and heating it until it thickened.

This part got a little dicey. The custard did not thicken in the way I expected. It did thicken, but it kind of went in clumps until it was eventually all thick, but with some other lumps. I followed the directions, but I'm still not sure I did it right. When the custard was good and thick, but still kind of lumpy, I added the butter and thought about trying to strain it through my mesh strainer to catch the lumps, but it was too thick for that. I put it in a glass dish to cool and decided to give it one more good whip with my electric whisk (that is, the whisk attachment on my stick blender). I also put some plastic wrap on it before I stuck it in the fridge just in case it was prone to forming a skin. It was already lumpy, I didn't want to throw a skin in the mix as well.  It did taste alright at this point, a lot like vanilla pudding. It was definitely a custard, and I figured it would be better when it cooled, but I wasn't about to dunk fish fingers in it anytime soon...

After the crème pâtissière was cooling in the fridge, I made the lemon syrup, which was easily the simplest part of this recipe (except for maybe cutting up the strawberries). In go the ingredients, and heat, then boil, then let cool.

Next up was the marzipan. I have never used marzipan before, but I bought some a little while back from the King Arthur Flour website because I wanted to use it. If you've never had marzipan before but you know you like almond flavoring, you'll probably like marzipan. It's a sort of almond paste or candy that is about the texture of play-doh, but far nicer to eat. It can be a little difficult to find (which is why I ordered mine online), because almond is not as popular a flavor in the United States as it is in other parts of the world. It can also be made at home, but I've never done this, so you'll have to seek guidance elsewhere for that (but maybe I'll give it a try in the future).

I had kept my marzipan in the fridge, which may not have been strictly necessary, according to the packaging, so it was a little hard to roll out. If you keep yours at room temperature, it's probably quite a bit easier. I did also roll mine on parchment paper so that it didn't stick to the counter and deform the circle once I cut it out, and that worked well.

Avengers Fraisier, Assemble! On GBBO, the bakers lined their pans with acetate to produce the smooth outer edges of their fraisier cakes. I didn't have any acetate on hand, and instead I lined my springform pan with strips of parchment paper, which ended up working fine. I definitely do recommend that method. I did try to fasten my strips together with tape, which didn't work on account of parchment paper being inherently non-stick. But the cake held the paper in place on its own once I got started so it wasn't a huge issue beyond my feeling monumentally stupid for a couple minutes.

I cut the cake in half horizontally and lowered one half, cut side up, into the spring form pan with parchment around the circumference, and then brushed liberally with the lemon syrup. The next step is to sort of squash the cake into the corners with a spoon. I admit that I tried this, but my cake kept springing back out and it was so pretty that I didn't want to smash it with too much force and make it ugly. I muttered in disbelief, "That's whack, Mary Berry!" and proceeded to line the halved strawberries around the edge in a pretty little circle.

Then I got the crème pâtissière out of the fridge (it was mostly cool by this point) and scooped it into a big piping bag and then squeezed it right back out again, but in a nice even spiral inside the cake and in between the strawberries. This was topped with a layer of chopped strawberries and then another layer of crème pâtissière, and then smoothed out. The remaining layer of cake went on top of that, cut side up and brushed with the rest of the lemon syrup and finally topped with the marzipan circle. Et voilà!

I actually stopped at this point for dinner and put the whole thing in the fridge. I had already taken about three hours in the kitchen, but I don't know how much time the bakers were given in the competition because it wasn't announced. I saved the final decoration (chocolate designs on parchment until set and a couple more strawberries with a dusting of powdered sugar) until just before we were ready to eat.

The Judging

I must admit, I was reasonably impressed with this cake, especially for a first attempt. The flavors were light and delicate, making this an excellent cake for a summer celebration. It also cut and served easily without falling apart or squishing out. I still think I may have gotten the custard a little too thick, but if it were much thinner the cake would not have had the structural integrity that it allowed it to cut so easily. We enjoyed several sliced over several days, but I will tell you that the quality starts to decline sharply after about day three as the strawberries get a little mushy, the powdered sugar melts into the marzipan and chocolate and the cake begins to disintegrate from the extra moisture coming out of the mushy strawberries. 

But while it was fresh, it was delightful!

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