Sooo, here comes the birthday cake number two. Because March is the month where I get to live out all my cake making dreams. This one is a delicious strawberry cake with a lot of white chocolate and whipped cream. Oh, and a vanilla bean. Because vanilla beans make everything better. I know that strawberries are not really in season right now but what am I supposed to do when my sister dearly wants strawberries for her birthday? But if you wait until summer to make this cake, you won´t regret it. It´s delicious!

The recipe is a mixture of combining two recipes and adding my own ideas. I´ve tried both recipes before and both were really good. But each felt like there was a small thing missing. So I decided to take the best from both recipes and create something new. The result was perfect! I used the dough from the German recipe because I love sponge cake (is that really the correct translation?). Anyway, here in Germany, cakes are usually made with a dough called “Biskuit” which is really soft and fluffy. I´ve tried other recipes that used a rather normal cake dough for the layering and they were good but just a bit to firm and stiff for me. Then I added a lot of strawberries, mascarpone, whipped cream and white chocolate. The best thing about the white chocolate decoration is that you don´t have to worry about messing up the frosting of the cake. Just add little pieces of white chocolate and everybody will think you´re a cake-decorating expert.

So grab some strawberries and your scale, pans and whatever else we might need and let´s make us some cake!

For 1 cake:

4 eggs

100 g + 4 tbsp. sugar

2 tbsp. vanilla extract

100 g flour

30 g corn starch

2 tpsb. baking powder

100 g white couverture

250 g mascarpone

200 g plain yoghurt

300 g cream

1 vanilla bean

Fresh strawberries

200 g white chocolate

1) Separate egg yolks from the egg whites. Whip egg whites with 4 tbsp. of water until stiff, meanwhile adding 100 sugar and vanilla extract. Fold in the egg yolks. Sift flour, corn starch and baking powder and carefully add to the egg mixture.

2) To bake the dough you could either use one cake pan (20 cm Ø) or two. If you use one the dough needs more time in the oven. The problem with “Biskuit” is, that you are not supposed to open the oven while baking because that will cause the whole thing to collapse. So it might be easier to use two cake pans and divide the batter. Bake the cake for 20-30 minutes until light brown and let cool completely. If you used one pan, cut the cake horizontally so you get three cakes. If you used two pans, divide each cake horizontally.

3) Chop and melt the couverture. Spread evenly onto parchment paper and let cool.

4) Mix mascarpone, yoghurt and 4 tbsp. sugar. Whip 100 g cream together with the core of the vanilla bean. Add whipped cream to the mascarpone mixture.

5) Now it´s time to decorate. Place one cake on a cake stand or a cake plate. Spread 1/3 of the filling on top, add strawberries and chopped white chocolate and add another cake. Spread with filling, white chocolate and strawberries and add another cake, until the whole cake is assembled. (Spread the filling accordingly if you use four cakes).

6) Whip 200 g cream and spread alongside the cake. Use some strawberries as decoration. Break the cooled couverture into little pieces and decorate the cake.