Strawberry drip cake with cream cheese filling - recipe

Hello and welcome! I’m finally blogging for you in English! This strawberry drip cake is the first blog post that I’ve prepared for you.

I will translate the rest of the blog as I go along. So if you click on any other posts and they are still in German, thanks for understanding! If you want to know what I wrote in them, I invite you to use Google Translate.

Today’s recipe for you is a fluffy strawberry drip cake with cream cheese filling, covered in white ganache and decorated with strawberry ganache, and fresh berries. Perfect for surprising your mom for mother’s day, a loved one for their upcoming birthday – or any early summer celebration!

I know it’s not quite strawberry season yet. But the weather was so bad in the last few weeks, that I needed something to brighten my mood. As soon as our strawberries are ripe, this cake is going to be even better to eat than to look at.

Be warned: This project, although it looks deceptively simple, can easily take an entire day to make because there are many elements to it! The good news is that you can prepare most of the elements in advance: The sponges, the strawberry puree, the ganache, the Swiss Meringue buttercream, the sugar flowers and the meringue kisses. If you freeze the sponges and the buttercream, just remember to thaw them one day in advance. I’ve written some tips about scheduling your baking in this post.

The sponge is based on the very versatile Easy Genoise – this time with strawberry flavor. We’re adding strawberry puree to the batter. To make sure the batter has enough structure, I’m adding a little bit more flour. And the baking soda will combine especially well with the sour elements of the batter (fruit and buttermilk) and make it rise nicely.

White ganache is pretty sweet – we are countering the sweetness with a generous pinch of salt in the ganache. Salt is great at cutting through overly sweet desserts.

And a last trick I recently learned from Bravetart: You can optionally add a few drops of rosewater to your strawberry puree to enhance the flavor.

Decoration-wise, please be as creative as you like! On my strawberry drip cake, you’ll find chocolate bark made from candy melts, meringue kisses, handmade sugarflowers, fresh berries – and yes! Luxemburgerli by Sprüngli, the best in Zurich 🙂

Without further ado, here is the Strawberry drip cake recipe for you:

Strawberry drip cake by Minh Cakes

Servings: about 8
Time: 4-6 hours
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Ingredients

For the strawberry cake (15cm (6″) diameter, 3 layers):

100 g sugar
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
100 ml buttermilk (plain or strawberry-flavored)
94 g Alba-oil
120 ml strawberry puree (see below)
200 g flour
1.5 teaspoon (8 g) baking powder
0.5 teaspoon (4g) baking soda
Optional: Pink food coloring

For the strawberry puree:

500 g strawberries
250 g jam sugar (sugar with pectin)
1 tablespoon rosewater (optional)

For the Cream Cheese filling:

160 g Swiss Meringue Buttercream
40 g Philadelphia
40 g Mascarpone
2 tablespoons instant vanilla pudding powder (containing modified cornstarch, as a stabilizer)

For the white ganache:

300 g white chocolate, chopped
100 ml heavy cream
1 large pinch of salt

For the strawberry ganache:

100 g strawberry puree (see above)
leftover white ganache from above, after covering the cake

Decorations: Fresh strawberries Sugar sprinkles Chocolate bark (homemade or store-bought) Meringue Baisers Macarons Sugar flowers etc…

Preparation

Make the strawberry puree Wash the strawberries, dry them well and cut them in fours.

Put them in a saucepan with the gelling sugar and bring to a boil, stirring from time to time.

Lower the heat and leave to simmer for 10-15 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the rosewater, if using. Strain the strawberries through a meshed sieve. You can freeze the pulp for a future buttercream, today we are only using the reduction. Let the puree cool down.

Bake the cake Preheat the oven to 180 C (350 F). Line a 15cm (6″) baking pan with baking paper, or grease and flour it.

Mix flour, baking powder and baking soda in a separate bowl and set aside. Place sugar, eggs and salt in the bowl of your mixer and whip them together for at least 10 minutes on high speed.

In a separate bowl, stir together the buttermilk, oil, strawberry puree and food coloring (if using – without the food color, your cake will be brown). Turn your mixer to the slowest speed and add the liquid to the eggs and sugar (not too fast, not too slow). Mix for 30-60 seconds, until just combined.

Now take your flour mixture and fold it very gently into the egg cream. Your mixer should be going at minimum speed, or you can even do it by hand. Fold gently until just combined.

Immediately pour the batter in your baking pan and place in the oven for approx. 40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave on a cooling grid to cool, remove from the pan after 10-15 minutes. Wrap in cling film as soon as the cake has cooled down. Chill it prior to torting and filling.

Make the ganache Chop the white chocolate.

Heat the heavy cream and the salt in a saucepan until it is just below boiling point (do not walk away from it!). Pour it over the chocolate and let it rest for 1-2 minutes, stir by hand and then use a stick blender to emulgate. Be careful to not create too many air bubbles. Leave the ganache to cool at room temperature, until it has the consistency of creamy peanut butter.

Make the cream cheese filling Make 160g (or more) Swiss Meringue Buttercream, following my recipe.

Bring the Philadelphia und Mascarpone cheese to room temperature and mix together briefly. Add the instant vanilla pudding powder and wait a few minutes for the mixture to thicken. Fold the cheeses into the SMBC gently, by hand. Do not stir too long.

Torte and fill the cake: Torte the chilled cake into three layers and fill it with two layers of cream cheese buttercream. You will need approx. 120g buttercream per layer. Chill it for another 30 minutes.

Cover the cake with ganache: Mask the cold cake with the white ganache. A turntable and an angled spatula are really helpful tools to have for this. Chill for another 30 minutes.

Make the strawberry ganache Briefly melt your leftover white ganache (you should have about 100g left) and stir in 100g strawberry puree. Whip the mixture on high speed in the mixer for a few minutes, then drip it over the cold cake (you can find a video with my dripping technique in this post).

Assemble! Now comes the fun part! Place all your decorations on a large plate, so you don’t have to run around looking for them. Place them on the cake, however you like. There is no right or wrong here! Start with the largest elements, then add middle-sized ones, and the smallest last. The ganache stays soft for quite a while, so you have time to adjust your decorations. Put the sprinkles on last, so the don’t sink into the liquid chocolate.

Note

This cake keeps 1-2 days in the refrigerator, but it is best enjoyed at room temperature – so take it out of the fridge at least 4 hours before serving.

http://www.minhcakes.ch/en/strawberry-drip-cake

Mmmmh… enjoy!