A new Be Conspicuous chapter with Yigit Pura's fun cookbook, sweet alchemy: dessert magic!
There are some things in this recipe I cannot find in Ipoh, like the ground green cardamom. To be honest, I had never heard of cardamom, let alone know how it tastes like, not so sure about putting it in. Life went on without the ground green cardamom.
This cake is so much fun to work with. Let me start by saying I had had no previous experience nor the skills needed to make ANY of the pieces of the Strawberry Shortcake, except for the crème fraîche chantilly.
This cake requires a lot of preparations. The pieces can be prepared a day or days before, if you are busy working person.
Strawberry Shortcake has 3 different parts: crème fraîche shortcakes, crème fraîche chantilly and the pinot-noir strawberry sauce.
Crème Fraîche Shortcakes:
Making this shortcake is kind of like making scones. First I sifted the dry ingredients, the flour, salt and baking powder together, then combined crème fraîche, vanilla beans and orange zest in a separate bowl and left them aside.
Then I rubbed the chilled butter into the dry ingredients, just like how I did it with the scones and shortcrust pastry. So much fun to do it! I stopped when the mixture looked a bit like fine "Parmesan cheese".
Then I added the crème fraîche mixture into the a well I made with the "Parmesan cheese". I did not follow the instruction in the book, because it writes "Continue to stir until the batter is 75 percent combined" VERY ambiguous. So I just used what I knew, combining the wet and dry ingredient with a knife in a cutting motion until it formed a rough dough.
Yes, some dry flour and butter lined around the bowl, but really, it did not looked like it was the 25 percent left. Nonetheless, I floured the glass table in the kitchen lightly and just kneaded it ONCE! The dough was very sticky and I just added more flour and floured my palms and rubbed my hands until they fell off. I added the remaining flour and butter in the bowl, but it did not help, I kept on adding flour until the dough stopped sticking! Rolled the dough into a ball and cut them into half and patted lightly until they were flat on top and added more remaining flour and butter left in the bowl then stacked them together. Repeated this about 4 times.
It says here, "The secret is to not overwork the dough - be willing to walk away". And I did.
Wrapped the soft cutie with plastic wrap and let it chill in the refrigerator for about 1 and a half hour, though it says "at least 2 hours" OPPS! =P
While waiting, I moved on to make the pinot-noir strawberry sauce.
Pinot-Noir Strawberry Sauce:
I might have forgotten to mention that I used Merlot instead of Pinot-Noir! =P
A kind cousin of mine has given us a Merlot some days ago, instead of buying a 1 litre Pinor-Noir for RM 69.90, I chose a free Merlot.
This was rather easy. I just put the orange zest, black peppercorns, vanilla beans and sugar into a bowl and started rubbing them. Playing with food using your own fingers is so much fun! It is not very often that one get to play with food, ENJOY IT WHILE YOU HAVE THE CHANCE! It seems that doing so will "release the fragrant essential oils into the sugar".
Then just poured the bottle of pinot-noir into the sugar mixture and stirred it a little, covered the bowl. Then cooked it on a water bath (bain-marie) on medium heat for 1 hour. DONE!
I must say I have cut out a lot of processes due to time constraint! LOL Whatever~
Then I got back to the crème fraîche shortcakes.
I used 2 sheets of baking paper and floured both sides of the dough and started rolling it into half inch thickness.
Not so fun BEAUTIFYING part! =[
I did not know how big I wanted my cake to be, so I started cutting triangles like how Yigit Pura said, but HUMONGOUS triangles were what I created. I did not want to overwork with the dough, though it was not what it meant, overworking the dough, overall, I was just too lazy. =P
But I did cut out a trapezium shape, which I LOVE, along with 5 HUGE triangles. INTO THE OVEN THEY WENT!
Due to the size of my shortcakes, they had to be in the oven longer than what is written in the cookbook. Anyhow, they came out great! Crispy on the outside and tender on the inside! AWESOMENESS!
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| Freshly baked crème fraîche shortcakes! |
I did not make the last part of the Strawberry Shortcake, the crème fraîche chantilly until I served them to my precious guests because chantilly just do not last long.
Crème Fraîche Chantilly:
Chantilly is always the easiest and the last thing to do. I just dumped in all the ingredients, whipping cream, sour cream and honey, and whipped for 5 seconds, literally. It did not require much whipping due to the presence of sour cream, which had already been whipped and added stabiliser. The chantilly was firm enough to work with.
I cut the trapezium-shaped crème fraîche shortcake horizontally using a serrated knife. A spoonful of the pinot-noir strawberry sauce, or in this case, merlot strawberry sauce was slowly dripped onto a small bowl. I then placed the bottom half of the cut crème fraîche shortcake on top of the merlot strawberry sauce and placed a strawberry with the stem chopped on the four corners of the crème fraîche shortcake.
Using a spoon, I scooped a quenelle of crème fraîche chantilly onto the middle of the crème fraîche shortcake, in between all the strawberries. Then covered the top with the crispy and sugary half of the cut crème fraîche shortcake. Lastly, dusted a bit of icing sugar on the top and DONE! It looks JUST LIKE THE ONE IN Yigit Pura's cookbook!
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| Tada! Awesome looking Strawberry Shortcake! |
Look: (10/10) IT IS A 10 OUT OF 10! This looks exactly like it is in the cookbook!
All scores are based on the similarity of my attempt to duplicate the original creation by Yigit Pura. Feel free to leave your comments! XOXO
