WITH THE WARM WEATHER COMES A TASTE FOR STRAWBERRIES... AND, SOMETIMES, FOR A DELICIOUS STRAWBERRY CREAM CAKE! FROM SPRING ONWARDS, THIS ICON OF FRENCH PASTRY-MAKING IS PROUDLY DISPLAYED IN THE WINDOWS OF CERTAIN ARTISANS AND ON THE DESSERT MENUS OF TOP RESTAURANTS.
Text by Eric Birlouez (Featured in the May 2025 issue of Pastry1 Magazine)
Visually, the strawberry cream cake is also very appealing, with its strawberries, cut in half and decorating the edge of the dessert.All these factors make the strawberry cream cake one of France's favorite cakes: during the spring and summer seasons, it tops the pastry sales charts (its freshness and lightness are particularly welcome during heatwaves).
There are many grey areas in the history of this cake... At the end of the 19th century, Escoffier proposed several recipes based on raw strawberries in his Culinary Guide, and described in a few words a dessert that is thought to vaguely resemble the strawberry cream cake of today. Added to this statement is the fact that the famous chef was the inventor of Sarah Bernard strawberries, created as a tribute to the great actress: this new dessert, first offered in 1912, was tasted by over 4,000 guests in 37 countries across Europe in one day!
At the beginning of the following century, pastry chef Pierre Lacam created a cake based on a sponge cake, soaked in a small amount of kirsch and garnished with wild strawberries. However, it wasn't until 1966 that the strawberry cream cake as we know it today was created by the expert hands of Gaston Lenôtre. In addition to strawberries, the latter takes Lacam's kirsch sponge cake but adds a buttercream. He named his creation Bagatelle, after the splendid garden in the Bois de Boulogne.
These days, a number of pastry chefs are revisiting the classic strawberry cream cake, creating new versions that are lighter and less sweet. Some mix both strawberries and wild strawberries, or add new ingredients such as strawberry vinegar. Mousseline cream lends itself to all manner of interpretations and variations. The trend is to flavor it with high-quality vanilla (sometimes pistachio) and make it creamy and airy. It is sometimes replaced by a simple Chantilly, crème diplomate or pastry cream.
For some chefs, the sponge cake - which can also be a dacquoise or a Joconde sponge cake - incorporates a homemade almond paste, which enhances its density, softness and slightly oily texture. Others simply soak it in strawberry juice or, for extra acidity, raspberry juice. Pastry chefs who don't want to break with tradition continue to enhance the strawberry flavor by adding a dash of kirsch.
The strawberries themselves are used in a variety of ways: either whole, or cut in half. And they're not the same from one month to the next, depending on the varieties available.French varieties - Gariguettes, Ciflorettes, Mara des bois, Charlottes, Rondes come one after another throughout the season.The top of the cake is often covered with almond paste, as in the classic version, but strawberry jelly is also available.
The chefs' creativity seems limitless. This is expressed through colors and shapes ("deconstructed" cakes, sphere-shaped cakes, etc.), combinations of textures (almond sponge cake and creamy mousse) and flavors (strawberry-yuzu coulis or sorbets, chestnut-matcha or rhubarb-wild strawberry), as well as the ingredients used (jasmine gel for a floral note, caramel with balsamic vinegar for a touch of acidity).
You can't have a strawberry cream cake without strawberries
Until the Renaissance, the one and only strawberry known to the inhabitants of Europe was the small wild strawberry. In the 16th century, explorer Jacques Cartier discovered a slightly larger strawberry in North America, which botanists named the Virginia strawberry. It is brought back to France, but its cultivation remained confidential.
Almost two centuries later, in 1712, a Marine Engineering officer was sent on an espionage mission to Chile to study the fortifications of Spanish port cities. There he notices strawberry plants with very large fruit, but white in color and rather bland in taste. This spy-explorer is called (par sheer coincidence) Amédée-François... Frézier!
He managed to bring five of these Chilean strawberry plants back to France, which produced flowers but no fruit! Without realizing, Frézier had only brought back female plants which, because they were not fertilized by pollen from male flowers, remained sterile. During this period, the mysteries of plant sexuality had not yet been solved... Planted in the village of Plougastel, near Brest, these Chilean strawberry plants remained in situ... waiting for a miracle. And a miracle occurs! Local farmers find that strawberry plants from Chile eventually bear fruit... when they're located near strawberry plants from Virginia. The latter had pollinated their Chilean counterparts, naturally creating a hybrid species. Luckily, this one combines the best elements of both its parents: the fruit is as large as a Chilean strawberry, and as red and delicious as a Virginia strawberry!
These are the ancestors of the majority of today's strawberry plants.So, thanks to a Savoyard spy with a fateful name, we are able to enjoy strawberry plants with large red fruits to delight our taste buds. And completing the title of this paragraph: there's no strawberry cream cake without strawberries... and no strawberries without Frézier!