French Strawberry Cake-TWD Baking with Julia

How could I resist this recipe ? Anything that has the word strawberry in it goes straight to the top of my list.  Especially this time of year when strawberries are showing up at the farmer's markets and look so pretty in their little green baskets.  I discovered the Hood River variety of strawberries on a recent jaunt to the Portland State University Farmer's Market-sad to say I have not been able to find them locally so far (too fragile to transport) , I continue to look.

 I purchased Albion strawberries this weekend from the West Seattle Market-they are very sweet, but still nothing comes close to the Hood River berries I covet.  I'm also in search of Shuksan strawberries,another one with a short shelf life and difficult to transport.  I think I have convinced J that a road trip to Portland is in the cards to search for my beloved Hood River Strawberries! If and when I find either variety you can count on my buying several flats and then it will be strawberrypalooza at our house for a while.

This recipe is a basic genoise with whipped cream and strawberries.  A genoise is a whole egg sponge cake that instead of using leavening,it uses air suspended in the batter to give volume to the cake. You handle the egg batter very gently as you are whisking so that you create enough volume but not too much.  And again a gentle touch  is needed when folding in the dry ingredients. If you are gentle and follow directions and keep an eye on the oven you should easily succeed with your genoise.  I made a few little changes to the basic recipe-I used my rhubarb simple syrup that I had on hand instead of creating the one called for in the recipe.  I also used  the home made mascarpone I brought back from my cheese making workshop at Quillisascut Farm in place of the cream cheese in the recipe.

Thanks to Sophia at Sophia's Sweets  and Allison at Think,Love,Sleep,Dine for hosting this delicious recipe. You can find the recipe on Sophia's blog or even more fun,buy the book: Baking with Julia and join the group, Tuesdays with Dorie. Head over to our TWD blog to see how everyone's cakes turned out.