Strawberry Charlotte

During the last week, I have been spending most of my time in the kitchen, mixing ingredients by hand and giving my oven a workout. Halfway through my two weeks off from work and school, it is a welcome break to spend time away from the everyday grind, a chance to relax and get my thoughts back in order. Though I like to imagine that I will be productive with my newly found time, the last week has proven otherwise, as reality TV shows and sleeping in have sucked away more time than I would like to admit.

Maybe it is okay to let myself be lazy every once in awhile.

With more time in the kitchen, I have been playing around with elaborate, multi-step desserts, including cakes. While I love a good layered cake, I could not decide on a flavor, arguing back and forth with myself between fruit and chocolate based cakes and fillings. While fruit is lovely, it had been so long since I cut my fork through a thick chocolate cake that the thought grew tempting.

Nevertheless, after a walk outdoors with the weather still settling into early spring, a chocolate cake suddenly seemed too heavy for this delicate time of year. With buds just forming on the bare tree limbs, a sweet, light fruit cake seemed to fit the bill. After a walk through the local market, with pounds of red, ruby strawberries on sale, the deal was sealed.

Charlotte cakes originated in France in the early nineteenth century. They traditionally involve fruit purees, sponge cake, and custards or whipped cream frosting. This particular Strawberry Charlotte is not quite as the original cake, but the spirit is just the same. Instead of layers of sponge cake, I used my favorite light vanilla cake recipe and used a strawberry mousse to fill it. Lined with ladyfingers, either homemade or store bought, the cake becomes quite the sight.

While I did not have one on hand, a white or red ribbon tied around the middle would add a gorgeous finishing touch.

This Strawberry Charlotte is a spring cake that is perfect for all of life's celebrations. Layers of light vanilla cake are filled with an airy strawberry mousse and fresh strawberries and topped off with a coating of whipped cream icing. The strawberry mousse is made from pureed strawberries, which gives the cake a bright fruit flavor. The cake is lined with ladyfingers and graced with whole, fresh strawberries making this a simple, but impressive cake to decorate.

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French Silk Pie

In high school, for one brief day, I fancied myself a pastry chef. There was no reason for me to believe this bold statement; this was four years before I discovered a passion for baking (and six years before I baked professionally). Even so, as a friend and I were sitting bored on the couch on a Saturday afternoon, I imagined inventing new recipes couldn't be that hard. Up until this point, my only experience with baking was with box mixes, but I didn't let this simple, though glaring, fact deter me.

Not when I was craving strawberry pie, anyway.

My friend and I set out to engineer our own strawberry pie from scratch. For the crust, we pulled out butter, flour, and sugar, wildly throwing amounts into a mixing bowl without regard to measurements (or consulting a real recipe). The dough was greasy and sticky but, with a little elbow grease and a lot of flour, we managed to roll it out into two round circles. It wasn't perfect, but it gave us the confidence we needed to move on to the next step. See? I told you this wouldn't be hard, I remarked to my friend.

We grabbed a package of frozen strawberries for the filling. I wondered how I could elevate the simple pie. Chocolate, I thought wistfully. Chocolate covered strawberries were delicious, so shouldn't they be delicious in a pie? I relayed this to my friend and she agreed. Though unusual, we had high hopes for our little pie. We filled the bottom crust with filling, but, as the juice from the thawing strawberries pooled in the bottom of the pie pan, we thought it may need something more. Would marshmallows soak up the juice? Maybe. We threw a few in for good measure and sealed the top crust with the remaining dough.

As it baked in the oven, the house began to swirl with wonderful scents of butter and strawberries affirming our sincere, but completely wrong belief that baking could be done without recipes or any honest knowledge of how ingredients interact to create sinful treats. The first warning sign came when the top crust held the unusual shape of the marshmallows that jutted out from beneath, leaving us to wonder if the marshmallows simply weren't melting. The second warning sign came when the top crust was completely browned only twenty minutes into the oven. Did pies bake in only twenty minutes?, we wondered. Maybe. We pulled the pie from the oven, let it cool for an agonizing length of time, and finally cut into our masterpiece.

The pie immediately sunk. Once the first piece was removed, the strawberry juice began to pool in the bottom of the pan. Our marshmallow trick hadn't worked, it seemed. We hesitantly took our first bites. Though the top crust was overdone, the bottom crust hadn't even begun to bake, leaving raw dough to form the base of the pie. The strawberries were good, but the chocolate flavor wasn't right and the hint of marshmallows was really too much. My friend managed two bites before tossing it out; I managed three.

It seems we weren't quite the pastry chefs we imagined. Despite this obvious setback, I have gotten much better at baking and inventing recipes since then, thank goodness. This French Silk Pie is a little dream, completely worth the effort of putting it together and waiting for it to emerge from the refrigerator in it's subtle, but charming glory.

French Silk Pie is a classic for good reason. A flaky pie crust is filled with a seemingly impossible smooth chocolate mousse and chilled until the mousse sets and the flavors develop. The chocolate mousse is just rich enough for this pie to taste sinful and chilled enough to make for a fitting summer dessert. Topped with whipped cream and chocolate curls, this is a pie to share with the boys (and girls) in your life.

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