Japanese strawberry shortcake recipe

I'm so excited that I can't wait to tell everyone I baked a cake today! And the cake is a Japanese strawberry shortcake. Well, this is not the first time I have baked a cake but this is the first time I have ever frosted the whole cake! How exciting!

As usual, there are so many recipes around. The recipes that I have short listed are from ochikeron, cooking with dog and dailydelicious. Actually, I would love to try out kitchen tigress's recipe but I don't have glucose in my pantry. As I couldn't decide which recipe to follow, I decided to do some experiment.

Both cooking with dog and dailydelicious used a 18cm round cake pan and ochikeron used a 16cm cake pan but the smallest I have is 20cm. Hence, I decided to bake the sponge cake using the ingredients and the respective ratio from daily delicious but following the steps from cooking with dog simply because it looks easier! LOL. I expected a shorter cake given that I was using a 20cm cake pan. The sponge cake turned out to be about 1.5 inch tall and the sponge was soft.

Considering that it might be tedious to slice the sponge cake into half due to its height, I thought why not bake another sponge cake for another layer using another recipe! I used ochikeron's recipe for the second sponge but I increased the ratio to be the same as dailydelicious which uses 3 eggs. To my surprise, this sponge cake was very much shorter then the former - only 3/5 of its height! And it isn't as soft and moist but dry. Oh well, I thought maybe I didn't beat the eggs and sugar long enough so I decided to bake another one using the exact same recipe and steps. Guess what? The result was the same. The cake was still not as soft. I suppose this is because ochikeron's recipe doesn't contain milk and the method in beating eggs is slightly different? Anyway, I continued to prepare the syrup and whipped cream using ochikeron's recipe. Both were pretty simple.

Well, when came to assembling the cake, I was in a dilemma whether to use the second sponge cake for the other layer or try to slice the 1.5 inch soft sponge cake. Worrying I might fail to slice the cake properly, I decided to use the second sponge which was a tad dry as the bottom layer. It became quite a big cake and the whipped cream was actually meant for a 6 inch cake not 8 inch. Luckily it was just enough to frost a thin layer of cream all over the cake. Besides that, I only have a 250g pack of strawberries which I need to use it prudently or else it won't be enough.

It was fun to assemble the cake. I am quite happy with my first cream frosted cake although it's not perfect. Taste wise, it was good as the cake was not too sweet and the cream tasted great with a hint of rum. However, the dryer sponge cake layer was a bit disappointing. It brought down the overall quality of the cake. A good sponge is very important to make a good cake. I will certainly try out kitchen tigress's recipe when I make this cake again. Her sponge cake recipe is supposed to create a soft, fluffy and moist cake.

Recipe:

Sponge cake (adapted from dailydelicious and cooking with dog):

3 eggs

90g granulated sugar

90g cake flour

20g melted butter

20ml milk

The steps I followed to make the sponge cake are from cooking with dog with slight alteration when adding the flour. I added them in a few batches to avoid deflating the mixture. You might check out the video as a video says more than a thousand words.

Syrup (adapted from ochikeron):

20ml hot water

1/2 tablespoon granulated sugar

1 teaspoon rum

Dissolve the sugar in the hot water. Add rum and mix well. Leave it to cool.

Whipped cream/icing (adapted from ochikeron):

300ml whipping cream

1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar

A few drops vanilla extract

1 tablespoon rum

Pour whipping cream onto a chilled mixing bowl over a bowl of ice water. Add in sugar, vanilla extract and rum. Beat until the cream is stiff.

To assemble the cake:

250g or more sliced strawberries

1. Slice the sponge cake into two.

2. Lay first sponge cake layer on a plate. Brush syrup on the sponge cake layer before spreading whipped cream on top of it evenly.

3. Arrange a layer of strawberries. Cover the strawberries with a layer of cream.

4. Brush the other sponge cake with syrup before adding it on top of the cream layer.

5. Frost the whole cake with the remaining whipped cream.

6. Decorate the cake with strawberries.

7. Store in the fridge for 1-2 hours.

8. Cut and serve while it's cold.