I’m not having a particularly good run of cooking recently. Perhaps it is the maternal figure continually nagging me to go learn how to do things properly, or the numerous ‘I told you you should have done this’ (and not from my own head, I’ve long learned to block that out).
Anyway, this sad attempt looks pretty, and the strawberries were awesome – heady scents, and sweet, straight from the farm. On the downside, the genoise was dense, with large rough crumbs and eggy, while the mousseline…well…where to begin with the mousseline.
My first attempt at making the pastry cream flopped. It resulted in a pastry cream so bouncy and thick, I could imagine it talking back. Yes, it had that much attitude. I tried salvaging it by adding milk a little at a time, and it eventually smoothed out again. Which made for a decent pastry cream, but didn’t come together as a mousseline upon adding butter the next day.
The second attempt looked reasonable, but was possibly undercooked, and ended up too runny, and not setting. So, it went into the freezer so I could get a reasonable shot, but someone tilted it before it had frozen, so that the surface wasn’t smooth anymore.
Once out of the freezer, it melted really quickly, and was too sweet for my liking (which says a lot, seeing what a sweet tooth I have).
I don’t want to give up, it’s such a beautiful cake, so I’m putting a call out – Any suggestions, recipes, tips and hints to make this work?
December 5, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I still think it looks pretty! Especially in the first photo, the strawberries look very decadent.
December 24, 2008 at 8:48 pm
I totally agree, it doesnt look like a failure at all to me. I’ve never made one of these before so I would have no idea where to start, sorry.
February 27, 2009 at 6:47 am
In order to help you reattempt the cake/torte I would need to know the exact procedures and recipes you used.
I have a couple of Le Fraisier Torte recipes but before attempting those I would try correcting whatever went wrong with the one you originally did.
Email me if you like
P.S. Pastry cream is very thick. Pastry cream is used for many pastrys like eclairs and it needs to be thick – if it werent it would just make the pate a choux soggy and would drip out of the holes you made to fill them. So … your pastry cream might not have been bad at all but still would like to know what recipe and procedures you used for that as well.