whipped cream | Bewitching Kitchen

Strawberries are delicious right now, so I share two ideas to put them to great use (apart from just grabbing the fresh fruit and taking a nice juicy bite). Cake or macarons? You decide. You can always make them both!

STRAWBERRY LAYER CAKE

This cake was described by Helen as “a little slice of heaven”, and judging by the feedback I got, it is highly appropriate. For the full recipe with step-by-step photos and detailed explanations, visit her blog with a click here.

My only modification was in the technique, not the recipe. I used the food processor to make the whipped cream, as I was very intrigued about it and have been meaning to try it for the longest time. Basically, add the ingredients (exact amounts Helen used) to the bowl of a food processor and process for a full minute. Stop, check consistency. You may need a few more cycles of processing, each one no more than 20 seconds long. For me, nice piping consistency was achieved with 1 min + 3 cycles of 15 sec. I really like the way it piped.

I got slightly carried away with the sprinkles, as the lid of the bottle malfunctioned on me. There are worse problems in life, so I went with the flow. Literally.

STRAWBERRY MACARONS

For the shells, I used my default recipe, separated in two portions, most of it dyed with a mixture red and orange, a small amount dyed green. I piped the shells improvising a strawberry shape, waited five minutes and piped the leaf area with green. The filling was exactly the same buttercream from Helen’s cake, using freeze-dried strawberries. I made half the amount listed in the cake (so I started with 1/4 cup butter and scaled it all down).

“Seeds” were added with a brown food pen. However, I was not too happy with the look of the greenery on top. I skipped that for some shells and added Royal icing with a leaf tip after baking. I liked that a lot better, so I added the same detail to all shells.

Next time I won’t bother dividing the batter into portions. Will simply pipe all shells with strawberry color, and use Royal icing for the tops.

I hope you liked this duet of strawberry recipes, and in case you’ve missed it, check out my most involved baking project ever, which also centered on this wonderful fruit.