Strawberry Shortcake

Ok, so it’s supposed to be marionberry shortcake with the heavenly cake bakers this week, but my husband says “marionberry” is the mayor of Washington, and there was no mayor of Washington to be found in my grocery store’s freezer section, so I used fresh strawberries from Herrles, supplemented with a handful from my own patch of 5 everbearing plants. How can you beat that?

I have to admit my scepticism about a shortcake that had no biscuits or scones involved, and instead used a génoise, but since a génoise is pretty quick and easy to make, and it lets me use my husband’s shiny new stove again to heat the eggs, I wasn’t going to argue.

As I alluded to above, the first step is to heat the eggs over a double boiler. As far as I can tell, this gives them the ability to hold the bubbles better. What bubbles?

These bubbles:

Like all the other heavenly cake bakers, I love watching the eggs and yolks transform from a bright yellow foam to a fluffy, almost white, creamy thick um.. batter? meringue? I’m not sure what you can call this.

After a bit is sacrificed to the beurre noisette, and then the flour is folded in, followed by the butter mixture, you pour it into your molds. I had to use a bit of a hodge podge, because I don’t have a maryanne pan, nor do I have pyrex custard cups.

Then put all of them into your new oven, and watch them carefully in case they bake differently due to the different sizes. Luckily, somehow, mine all were done at once.

I had cut cavities in the 4 small ones, and served them with whipped crème fraiche, when we had a couple of friends over, but I completely forgot to take a picture of that. So, I assembled another one on my way out the door this morning, snapped a picture and shoved it in my lunch.

Can’t beat that for a mid-morning treat!

PS: can anyone tell me, do marionberries taste anything like mulberries? A couple of the pictures from the other Heavenly Cake Bakers’ blogs made me think of mulberries, and I know where I can find vast quantities of those, it just requires a visit to my uncle’s house to pick them before the baby skunks get to them.