TWD: Berry Surprise Cake

I'm so glad I decided to make this cake! I really love baking with Tuesdays with Dorie, I know I've said this before, but it nudges me (I don't want to say forces because I really love doing it!) to bake things that I really wouldn't consider baking if I were not in the group! This cake was selected by Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen and you can find the recipe on her blog and of course in Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.


Ok let me just say that as anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows- I dislike cream cheese...strongly. So that's the number one reason I might not have tried this cake on my own- another reason is that I'm very childlike in my tendencies toward visual aids and this recipe does not have a beautiful, full page, color picture with it- so it was hard for me to visualize the steps of building the cake. Well, the cream cheese in the filling was a little bit strong for me- but luckily I had my fearless and ever-hungry assistant to aid me in eating my cake:

Seriously- Helen Mae could not get enough of the decadent, creamy filling- and my family concurred- so I have to believe that it was in fact an excellent filling for the non-haters of cream cheese. As for building this "surprise" cake- it really wasn't bad at all. The cake was made up of five components: a genoise cake, a cream cheese/whipped cream filling, fresh berries, a syrup, and a whipped cream covering.

The genoise cake came together really beautifully. My biggest concern was whipping the egg and sugar mixture to the appropriate consistency and then maintaining the fluffiness as I incorperated the dry ingredients and butter- but this was honestly not difficult at all.

The filling, berries, and whipped cream topping were all extremely easy to throw together. The syrup, while extremely easy to make, didn't really seem necessary in my opinion. Now, I feel like I shouldn't say this with any kind of authority, because I must admit that it did nothing to hurt the cake- but I did use it- so I don't know if something might have ended up differently if I did not use it...I guess I'll have to try it sans syrup next time to know for sure.

Anyway, the part that was a little nerve wrecking was hollowing out the cake for the berries and filling. Because the cake was so easy to work with, I had no problems cutting the top off or hollowing out the middle and the cake held up beautifully once it was filled and frosted.


I kept thinking about how this would be such a great dessert for 4th of July- you can fill it with any berries and strawberries and blueberries would look very festive amidst the fluffy white filling.