How to make ★Strawberry Shortcake★いちごショートの作り方（EP9）
Today, we are making a Japanese Strawberry shortcake.
Layered soft and moist sponge cake and sweet and fluffy whipping cream, tangy and juicy Japanese strawberries inside, go so well together.
This is the most popular cake in Japan, as a birthday cake and even Xmas dessert.
This is a cake which developed uniquely in Japan. And the best-selling cake in any pastry shop, no doubt!
So moist and fluffy and light. This is the cake we love so much. Give it a try!
Strawberry Shortcake
The most popular cake in Japan
Equipment
- oven, bowl, hand mixer
Ingredients
Sponge cake (15cm)
- 2 large eggs
- 85 g sugar
- 75 g cake flour
- 20 g vegetable oil (neutral flavor)
- vanilla paste or essense
Whipped cream
- 250 g heavy cream
- 20 g sugar
syrup
- 1 tbs sugar
- 2 tbs water
- ½ tbs liquor ( cointreau or dark rum) ※optional
strawberry
Instructions
Preparation
- Preheat the oven to 170℃Line the 15 cm cake mold.
Sponge cake
- Crack eggs into a large mixing bowl and beat until the egg white and egg yolks combined. Add sugar and mix well. Place the bowl over a simmering water to warm up the egg mixture. Whisk until the sugar dissolves and the eggs gets watery.
- Use your hand mixer, set on high, whip the eggs for 5 minutes. First 2 minutes of whipping makes eggs double in volume. Continue whipping until very thick and firm enough to draw a line.
- Shift your flour into a bowl. Shift again into the egg mixture bowl. Start folding. Lift the mixture from the bottom to the top. Continue folding until no flour to be seen. Then, combine the mixture in cutting motion. I named this mixing method "Cut mixing." This will combine all the ingredients thoroughly. If the cake batter is not mixed enough, the final cake will taste dry and sandy.
- Add 2 scoop of the batter and vanilla into oil bowl. Mix one direction to emulsify. Then let it back into the rest of the batter and mix until well homogenized.
- Pour the batter into prepared cake pan and tap to the working surface to remove the air bubbles. The batter should come to halfway up is good. Pop this into the oven for 25 to 30 minutes or until done.When you push the center of the cake and spring back, it's done.
- If you are not sure it's done or not, Stick a skewer comes out clean it's done. Tap onto the working surface to remove hot air so it can not be shrinking. The cake should swell to fill the cake pan.Take out onto the wire lack upside down and let it cool.
Whipped cream
- Put heavy cream into a medium size bowl, add sugar. Put the bowl on a smaller bowl filled with icy water. Make sure the smaller. If you use bigger bowl, water comes in easily. Start whipping with electric hand mixer on low speed, you don't want to scatter cream all over the counter. When the cream starts to thicken, mixing on medium speed until soft peaks form.
Strawberry and syrup
- Mix my syrup and liqueur and set aside. Wash clean the strawberries and wipe off the water. Choose good looking strawberries to garnish and set a side. Slice 5 strawberries to go in between the cake.
Assemble
- Put the sponge cake onto a turntable. Take off the bottom so that tastes better. Mark 2cm from the bottom, while rotating the cake. Slice the cake along the line horizontally. Keep cutting along with the line in front of you and the other side.
- Soak my brush into my syrup and put and soak. Put and soak. Do not brush your syrup otherwise, your cake surface will get soggy. Just put and soak.
- Drop 1 to 2 scoops of whipped cream and spread from inside to the edge. Do not over work otherwise the cream loses it's fluffiness and becomes hard. The more you work, the more cream becomes harder.
- Line strawberries 1cm inside from the edge stem outside. Do not put on to the center. You Can't cut the cake beautifully if the strawberries in the center. Drop more whipped cream and spread to fill the space in between the strawberries.
- Layer the cake and soak the syrup. Repeat the process one more time.
- Fill the gap between the layer. Drop the generous amount of whipped cream on top, save about 2 scoops of cream for garnishing. Spread the cream around the side. Again, do not overwork. The less is better.
- Finish working while the cream shiny and glossy. Run your palette knife vertically and smooth the side.Run the palette knife horizontally to smooth the surface. Insert the tip of the knife to the bottom to remove the cream touching the turntable.
- For the final touch, drop saved cream on top, and cover the surface of snow capped mountain. Garnish with pretty strawberries and mint leaves. I don't want my students to pipe the cream for garnish.