Episode 27-2 – Strawberry Spiral Cake and French Buttercream

Episode 27-2
December 6, 2010
Strawberry Spiral Cake and French Buttercream

This had to be one of the most fun times I’ve had making a cake.  I first found this cake in Rachael Ray’s magazine (Every Day with Rachael Ray) and it immediately caught my attention because the layers were vertical.  We’ve never done anything like that before in class so I definitely dug a little deeper and read through the recipe to see how they did it.  Turns out they form the cake jelly roll or roulade style – brilliant!  It’s such a simple solution to create such an awesome effect.  I’m so excited to be sharing this recipe and technique with you all – and yes, this was my first time making this cake!

The cake itself is a very firm and sturdy cake (Sallee at Fran’s Cake and Candy told me to stop using the word tough; it sounded like a piece of meat).  Much more firm than the jellyroll recipe and the pumpkin roll recipe, so it really stood up to rolling very well.  You can roll it fairly tightly and not have it tear on you.  This may have be attributed to the fact that my cake was a little over-baked.  Usually I have a second empty sheet pan in the oven to help even out the temperature to prevent burning and slow the baking process down slightly, but because I had two sheet pans I didn’t really have the option.  If I were to do this cake again (and believe me sometime in the future I will) I would definitely have the temperature in the oven around 300-325 degrees F.  Another interesting point is: the amount of whipping we did to the egg whites and egg yolks makes it very similar to a chiffon genoise cake.

Assembly of the cake was a lot easier than I thought.  Keep your icing on the thinner side so you don’t have icing oozing out each side as you roll it up or piece it together.  You also want to make sure to keep your icing cool.  In the winter months that’s easy because our houses are just naturally cool, but in the summer icing cakes is such an uphill battle.  You also want to make sure to have a turn table or a friend handy.  You can probably do this cake alone without a turn table, but a turn table certainly made things a lot easier for me.

Before I made this cake I carefully read over the directions and made sure I understood the process – which is something you should always do when you get  a new recipe.  You don’t want to be halfway through following the directions and something not make sense to you.  What if you’re at a time sensitive critical point like heating sugar to a specific temperature?  I also paid attention to the comments on the bottom of the recipe on Rachael Ray’s site.  Most of them felt the icing was just not working for them.  The recipe does make a french buttercream as well but the way they achieve strawberry flavoring is different.  They use frozen strawberries which are cooked down as a reduction and pureed and then added to the egg yolks.  I was a little wary about this, even though it sounds like a good idea, because strawberries hold a massive amount of water – even as a reduction.  The more water in your icing, the more watery it gets.  Plus strawberries vary in flavor so much that even if you reduce it sometimes the flavor just isn’t there.  It just depends on how strong the flavor was originally.  I decided to go to Fran’s Cake and Candy and get a natural strawberry oil flavoring (the brand name was LorAnn Oils if you were wondering) which allows for consistent flavor each time and adds a small amount of moisture, if any.

I also decided to use my French buttercream recipe from school since I was already familiar with that recipe.  A French buttercream is almost the same as Italian buttercream except than in Italian buttercream egg whites are used and in French buttercream egg yolks are used.  Both recipes cook sugar on the stove to 250-255 degrees F and is slowly drizzled into the whipping egg.  Then the egg is whipped until cool and the butter is added.  Oddly though as you saw in the video my egg yolks, after the sugar was added, became hard and pasty.  I wonder if the sugar crystallized because I whipped it so much?  Whatever the case was once I added the butter and beat it with the paddle attachment the paste was well blended and it became icing again.  At least if this ever happens to you, you know that your icing isn’t ruined!

It’s been a while since I’ve made French buttercream but this icing was definitely one of the best icings I’ve made in a while.  It was dense but still light and the melt-in-your-mouth texture was perfect.  What’s even more amazing is that it iced so well and piped perfectly – it didn’t sag or lose it shape, and it was easily lent to detailed designs such as the basket weave I did on the side of the cake!  If you remember I attempted to do the basket weave design on the side of the Yellow cake with fudgy frosting but I didn’t have the proper border tip so I tried to use a rose tip.  I didn’t put it in the video because it was such a massive failure and it didn’t look right but in this video I used the proper tip (Wilton #48) and because the icing was so well made it really made the decoration look great.  I think a lot of that had to do with the fact the house was so cool now because it’s winter as well as my sugar being cooked to 255 degrees F.  I’ll have to experiment with this recipe in the summer and see how it holds up to heat – my guess is because it has just as much butter as Italian buttercreams it’ll probably show it’s melty side.

What I also really liked about this cake is that it used cigarette / pirouette /pirouline cookies to decorate the sides.  It was such a simple idea but made an awesome effect.  I like cakes that cover up the side because you don’t have to be so perfect about icing the sides since they are going to be hidden anyway!  Definitely takes some stress out of the equation.

People who tried this cake absolutely loved it.  The sturdy texture didn’t really leave a bad mouth feel.  It was chewy and had some body to it, but it was still light and easy to eat.  Some people compared it to an angel food cake.  My cake was a little dry since I didn’t add simple syrup to put moisture back in but I was concerned about the way it was assembled that if I did add simple syrup the cake would melt or fall apart.  The next time I make this cake I’ll add it some syrup and let you know how it went on here.

In total the cake took me about 3 hours to make (I started around 6:30-7 and finished around 9:30).  That includes making the cake from scratch, baking the cake, making the icing, and assembling/decorating the cake – it doesn’t include the time it took me to make the gum paste flowers since those have to dry overnight to be used.

Anyway, that’s all I can think of to tell you about this cake.  I hope this cake makes you as excited as it made me!  Here’s the link to Every Day with Rachael Ray’s strawberry spiral cake recipe and here’s my version of the strawberry spiral cake recipe.  Essentially they are the same except the directions are different and I used a different icing recipe – the cake recipe is exactly the same.  I also have the french buttercream recipe available separately if you just want that.  Enjoy the videos below and thanks for watching!