TWD: Berry Surprise Cake

January is nearly over and the TWD bakers are down to their last two recipes for the month. This week, Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen, chose Berry Surprise Cake, a simple genoise filled with cream cheese, whipped cream, and fresh berries. Since this isn't fresh berry season here in California, I substituted frozen blueberries, which I always have on hand. My daughter said it was the first time she's eaten something containing blueberries that she liked, so I presume it was successful.

I made this rather at the last minute, since life has been somewhat dramatic lately, and I did half the recipe so it wouldn't double me.

At first, I thought the genoise would bake up just fine, but in the last 10 minutes, I observed a huge crater had formed in the middle of the cake. Well, sometimes holes happen. Upon re-reading the instructions, I realized that we were going to remove the middle anyway, so it wasn't a big deal.




For carving out the center, I used a grapefruit knife. The slight curve made it easier to create the bowl-like center that would hold the filling and berries.




The cake went together very nicely and tasted just fine. I didn't change any of the ingredient amounts, and, while some people thought it wasn't quite sweet enough, we felt it was just perfect.


I would bet that fresh strawberries would be just the right berry for this cake, so when late spring comes, and the berries show up in the farmers market, I'll be giving this recipe another try.

For now, I'll be checking out how the other TWD bakers fared with their cakes.