le fraisier

I can't help it--I'm in love with French fraisier cakes. The layers of fluffy genoise... Grand Marnier syrup... fresh strawberries.... rich pistachio cream... all topped with marzipan. What's not to love?

I also love the way they look. Building them is an exercise in patience, as my pastry students found out recently when they tried their hand at "le fraisier".

After you torte the genoise into two perfect layers (so far, so good...) you line strawberries of equal heights into lovely rows, so when the cake is cut, all sides have beautiful strawberry halves showing.

You then pipe in a massive quantity of pistachio cream to fill in all the gaps.

The really fun part comes when you set the top layer of genoise on the berries and cream, making sure it's perfectly level.

One of my favorite pastry teaching moments came when a student emailed me a photo of a fraisier cake he made at home, with a level sitting on top so I could see how perfect it was! (Thanks, Ray!)

Pistachio cream is piped all around, then a thin layer of buttercream is applied to the top, and of course, leveled.

A sheet of light green marzipan becomes the top layer, and chocolate writing and decor are the finishing touches.

My students did a beautiful job on these cakes--they were the challenging beginning to a week that ended in Opera cakes!

I learned fraisier cakes from the master--Philippe Delarue, owner of Patisserie Philippe in San Francisco. Day after day I would make fraisier cakes, small ones to serve 12, huge ones to serve 40! Each day Philippe would come by and do the final leveling before they were chilled and the marzipan layer was applied.

One day, he looked at my finished cake, and without touching it, simply picked it up and took it to the walk-in.

I had arrived!

Here's a gorgeous cake of Philippe's, complete with gold leaf.

Where's my fork?