Strawberries & Cream Sponge Cake

Valentines Day is 4 days away. Well, it’s also the day we welcome in the year of the Tiger. But Valentines Day was my EXCUSE to bake this sensuous looking cake. Although I must say I was disappointed with my decorating skills. I ran out of cream, so the sides of my cake were barely iced, as you can see in this photo. Grrrrr…
I made this out of spontaneity so I didn’t have enough strawberries which was my fault as I ate half a punnet the night before. Could have made some nice conserve or jam for the in between layers. Oh well, next time..

I made the sponge cake base following the recipe from my mixer’s (Kenwood Major) recipe guide which was slightly different from my usual approach but I actually prefer today’s result. It was more moist and had a more tender crumb as opposed to dry and gritty. But the best sponge cake recipe is still from my mom’s collection so I will pester her for it next time. So no conserve, but I briefly stewed some strawberries with sugar and reserved some of the syrup for drizzling over the sponge layers. I laced the syrup with a little orange liquer (it’s sitting in my pantry). I then made 500ml of stabilised whipped cream which is thickened cream whipped with dissolved gelatine and icing sugar, flavoured with a teaspoon of vanilla extract. As for assembling the cake, it was 3 layers of sponge cake, whipped cream, stewed strawberries, the tops and sides covered with more whipped cream ( in this case, insufficient) and decorated with fresh strawberries and halved squares of Lindt’s Excellence Chilli Dark Chocolate. I was too lazy to melt chocolate to make curls so I helped myself to the chilli chocolate (also sitting in the pantry). Kinda sounds appropriate. You know? Valentines Day: strawberries and cream, chocolate and chilli – Spicy! (chuckles)

J and I had a slice each, of the cake. As for the rest of it, he’s taking it to work tomorrow. Sharing is caring. I hope his colleagues will like it. Like I said, great EXCUSE to make strawberries and cream cake. 😛