Fromage Fraise

It is officially Spring!!! The weather has been gorgeous the whole entire week last week, too bad I'm stuck in an office on weekday, but I did manage to get a few sunlight on my skin when I had lunch outside for a few times last week. I wish the weather could stay this way and never change :D. Other than that, I was super busy too, you can probably tell that I didn't update this blog for two weeks now. Work has been busy, there are a few gatherings and also I got to watch "Wicked", the broadway show! It was my first time for me watching that kind of show and I was so excited! The show we chose was on Thursday night, there were so much things happening that day that I didn't think we're gonna make it to San Francisco on time for the show. But thank God, we arrived exactly at 8:02, while the show is supposed to start at 8pm. It was warm too at night at SF, very rare occasion if you know the weather in SF.

For the whole week, I couldn't wait for the weekend to arrive so that I could catch up on my sleep, which I proved on Saturday when I woke up at 10am! This was the first time in so long that I woke up this late, especially on Saturday. It was a lazy Saturday, I did not make any plans on going out, I was planning to catch up on my errands too. It seems like a few months is too long to postpone stuff :D. I was determined to do a Spring cleaning for my freezer and my fridge. The refrigerator at our house has always been so full that it would be a challenge to organize the groceries almost everytime. So there I was making a cake as a result of the freezer Spring cleaning process. More on this on the next post.

For today, I'm just going to talk about this simple cake. The name might sound complicated for you but it's only a fancy name for cheese mousse with red berry gelee, topped with a bunch of fresh strawberries and cream. It was Saturday afternoon when my friend, D, called me up and asked if I would be able to make a cake for her coworker's birthday on Monday, and it needs to be ready on Sunday morning, because that's the only time I would get to see her to give her the cake. Hmm... as much as I don't like last minute thing, and as much as I advised her to get a cake from a bakery, I couldn't stand firm due to her sweet talk :D, I guess I don't have much ground to begin with :). So I agreed, and that I couldn't make the particular cake she asked for and I suggested her this cake instead. The reason? well, because I think it's simpler and I think I could manage it in a day, because I have frozen berries from last summer, and because I have been wanting to try this (the last reason might weigh more than the others :P), but she did say that it has to be some berry-type cake. So, I did grant her wish.

I used cotton sponge that I have on hand because I didn't want to or I didn't have time to make a sponge cake. In the future though, I don't think I would use cotton cake as it it too light for this kind of cake. And since I was on a Spring-cleaning madness, I was happy that a few more things are gone from my fridge :). I had some frozen raspberries and strawberries as well, a quick trip to Trader Joe's and Lucky for heavy cream, cream cheese, and a few other things, and I was ready to go to make the cake. I couldn't help to squeeze in an afternoon nap in between as it seemed to be a perfect quiet afternoon.

This cake has an 8" round cake as a base (moistened with Grand Marnier), pate-a-bombe base cheese mousse, a mixture of raspberry and strawberry gelee in the middle of the mousse, 6" sponge cake, covered in Grand Marnier whipped cream, and strawberries. It smelled so good when I pureed the raspberries and strawberries, they are really sweet, frozen when they were at their peak last summer, oh the smell of Spring. I got excited just by inhaling the fragrance of it. There were no mishaps in making the cake other than that I wasn't really satisfied about the overall look of the cake, it might be the white chocolate, I don't know. The pictures are poor, but I guess I'm lucky to still have a picture at all as I was rushing this morning. I think this cake is a perfect Spring/Summer cake as berries are plenty and succulent and not to mention the lightness of it, nothing close of being too sweet. Too bad I don't get to see the inside of it as this wasn't for me.

Speaking of berries, I saw the first harvest of strawberries today at the farmers' market. Usually, the first pick doesn't taste as sweet as I'd like it to be, but surprisingly, the one that I sampled today was very sweet. The color was vibrant (no orange, green, or white tip), tastes very sweet, and the texture is firm. Too bad I bought a case of strawberries the day before at the supermarket already for this cake, which left me feeling heart-broken seeing not-so-ripe strawberries being sold. It was a relaxing Sunday, I was torn between spending the day outside in this gorgeous weather, up and awake in the kitchen, or just take an afternoon nap. Yup, you guess right, I chose the last option. It was a very quite, warm Sunday and I was just too weak to resist.

Happy Spring everyone! Cannot wait to see what everybody makes to welcome the warm weather :)