Ever since I became a baking enthusiast, every single birthday at home has been celebrated around a homemade cake. Baked, assembled and frosted by myself, they often require days of planning and preparation. It was after much deliberation that I decided upon the classic génoise aux fruits for my brother’s special day. His request was a light, moist cake that would not be overly sweet or buttery and he says that I got it right!
This famous sponge cake is a basic in french pâtisserie and goes in the making of several desserts. Though you may shy away from the idea of whipping eggs to a ribbon over a pan of hot water or seeing your batter deflate as you ever so carefully fold in the flour, I would encourage you to keep trying. The technique of making the light, airy génoise came to me only after several failures but I’m happy to say that I finally mastered the triple tried-and-tested from Australian Women’s Weekly. Yup, the old adage is true – practice makes perfect!
GENOISE AUX FRUITS
Ingredients:
For the Sponge
4 eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup white sugar
2/3 cup all purpose flour
60 g butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla extract
For the Syrup
1 cup water
1/3 cup sugar
1 vanilla pod
For the Vanilla Cream
500ml whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
250 g peaches, sliced
200 g raspberries
100 g blackberries
1 kiwi fruit, sliced
100 g almond flakes
50 g chocolate curls
Method:
- Preheat oven to 180 oC. Grease a 20 cm round pan and line the base with parchment paper.
- Combine eggs and sugar in large heatproof bowl, place over a saucepan of simmering water.
- Do not allow water to touch base of bowl. Beat with an electric mixer for about 10 minutes.
- The mixture will turn thick and creamy. Remove bowl from saucepan.
- Beat mixture until it reaches room temperature. Sift half of the flour over egg mixture.
- Carefully fold in flour. Sift the remaining half into bowl and fold into mixture.
- Working quickly, fold in melted butter. Pour mixture into prepared pan.
- Bake for 20 minutes. Turn immediately, top side up, onto parchment covered wire rack.
- If you are making a layered cake, make a second sponge using the above recipe.
- For the syrup, bring water and sugar to the boil for 5 minutes. Add the vanilla pod.
- Cool the syrup to room temperature. Spread over the sponge to moisten it evenly.
- Beat cream, icing sugar and vanilla together with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form.
- Spread one sponge with a generous layer of cream and top with some peach slices.
- Carefully balance the second sponge on top of the cream layer and spread with more cream.
- Decorate with fruit, almond flakes, chocolate curls and remaining cream.
- Keep covered and refrigerate until serving time. Makes 8-10 pieces.
Happy Birthday Bro!
9 comments
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December 8, 2012 at 6:28 am
anmol narain
The cake looks absolutely delicious ! Will try it out 🙂 Haven’t made a genoise before , lets se how this turns out . Saw your post on the daring bakers forum , the one about the panettone . This is going to be my first challenge , hope it turns out well . Will get started on it as soon as I’m done commenting . Great post 🙂
greetings from India
Anmol
December 10, 2012 at 7:26 am
Bindu
This cake looks fabulous! I’m going to try this shortly. Can you tell me where to find raspberries?
December 10, 2012 at 10:12 pm
prerrnamirchi
Hello Bindu, I got the fresh raspberries from SikYuen and I have also seen them at the Food Lovers Market recently. Hope that you have no difficulty in finding them 🙂
July 7, 2013 at 3:32 pm
Sam
hi prerna can u give me recipe for chocolate sponge cake many thx,,, I tried this one and got a very nice result
July 8, 2013 at 8:58 am
prerrnamirchi
Hi Sam, I just did a chocolate mud cake last week. The chocolate sponge will have to be for later but do keep checking for updates. Cheers!
May 2, 2014 at 2:33 pm
Fariha
The cake looks so delicious, i am inspired! I usually measure 1 cup = 8 oz, is that the same measurement that you use?
June 26, 2014 at 7:42 pm
shaheen
I tried this and I loved it. Instead of making a syrup I used the peach syrup from the sliced peach:) Also the icing sugar is missing on the list( the one to mix with the whipping cream)
June 28, 2014 at 6:47 am
prerrnamirchi
Hi Shaheen, thnx for liking. You can use syrup from the can but I like making my own because I prefer vanilla flavour instead of peach. Guess I forgot to add the icing sugar to the ingredients list coz I dnt use any, it’s purely optional and u can add as much as u need to sweeten the whipping cream.
August 12, 2014 at 11:18 am
uzayfah
hi i would like to know cup = to how many grams plzzz