Rose Fraisier

 

This is what I now know:

• Fraise means “strawberry”
• Le Fraisier is the French cake that celebrates the fruit…it is a classic and as close to a strawberry shortcake as the French get.
• It is a grand cake that heralds spring and the arrival of the first berries.
• For the classic Fraisier look, some berries are halved and stood up all around the outside of the cake, their cut sides facing out, and then whole berries are lined up snugly to cover the bottom layer of the cake.  The strawberries are then enveloped  in a pastry cream before a top layer of cake is added.
• This particular “Rose Fraisier” uses a rose syrup and rose extract to flavor the cake
• Rose syrup and rose extract are not easily found, are in large quantities, and expensive
• In the end, a little patience was all it took to pull my disaster back together and have a fantastic tasting dessert!
• Next time…and I can’t believe I can say there will be a next time after the pastry cream disaster, but next time I will firm up the cream longer in the fridge! :)…and use less.

This one gave me some trouble..beginning with the rose syrup and rose extract.  I am one to usually buy the odd ingredients because it is just part of being in this group…and I love baking the new projects..but I just couldn’t do it this time.  I looked at a few stores and online and could only find bottles too big and costing just too much to justify buying them,  Thankfully, I figured this would taste like a great strawberry shortcake with or without the rose flavoring so I went ahead and made it without.

I made the cake the night before thinking it would be easy to assemble the next day.  Whoa was I wrong.  I made the filling, cut the cake, and assembled my strawberry forest.

So far, so good.  I piped in my pastry cream filling…and following the directions..”when all the spaces are filled, pipe a generous layer of cream over the tops of the berries, taking care to leave the cut side of the outer berries cream-free, and smooth it with an offset spatula.  Settle the top cake layer rocking it gently so that the filling glues it in place”

Sounds easy but I have to be honest…this is what happened out the backside…the strawberries just couldn’t hold back the cream…ugggh….

Are you kidding me??  What a mess!!   I took a deep breath and scraped it all out and re-piped with the cream leftover.  I then finished the cake with a strawberry jam glaze and topped with strawberries…and rushed it into the fridge to help firm up the cream. 🙂

At this point I was just glad I had a finished product, but wasn’t too excited about it…until my first tasters got ahold of a piece.  Wow…they couldn’t believe how great it was!!

“Unreal”, “Delicious”, “Unbelievable”…”One of the best recipes you have made in this group”…wow…seriously after all that haha!  Funny how that can turn it all around for a baker!!  I was thinking, ok maybe I could make this again…now that I learned a few things!!  I have to say, it was pretty delicious!  It’s a keeper!