#7 Cake fails: whipped cream + sea salt strawberry chiffon
Chiffon sea salt roasted strawberry
Howdy everyone,
It’s been so hot lately. It’s 27 degrees outside as I write this, and I’m melting in my apartment. To me, summer gives off a creative, lazy energy. I can feel it when the sun sets close to 9. It takes its time, stretching its light indolently, like it’s not in a hurry to leave.
To be honest, I hate being hot. The sun burns my calves as I squint my whole walk home, and I can feel my back get all sweaty. But there are still lots to enjoy about summer. Like picnics in the park, hotdogs around a campfire, and summer strawberries.
Someone I follow (@hotjamnpreserves) makes a sea salt strawberry jam, and my artisan-crafted algorithm was telling me to make roasted strawberries. So I thought I’d combine the two to make Sea Salt Roasted Strawberries.
I used Stella Park’s recipe but put my own spin on it. The idea of roasting strawberries is that you could take grocery store strawberries and make them taste like they’ve been picked at peak ripeness. I wanted to add an essence of a sea salty summer, and like salt acid something something salt brings out sweetness you know?
The result are these tender berries that are more strawberry than strawberries alone: super tart, salty, and sweet. I was a little unsure what to do with it, but I put it in this cake I was making. The combo of cream + strawberries is so classic right, but the combo with the sea salted strawberries is insane.
The cream dampens the tartness, and there’s just such a bright, fruity flavor. Usually these cream cakes are so cream-forward, but here, it’s like 1:1 equality of cream and strawberry flavor. I feel like I’ve reached new heights of strawberry flavor like there’s something so great here.
My version of the recipe is available on my website! Sorry to add another external link, but I guess this post isn’t really about the strawberries.
It’s more about my uggo cake fail.
I was so sad that it collapsed, but I kind of knew it would.
It was my own indecisiveness that did it. I thought I wanted to make a dome cake, so I cut the edges. But then I changed my mind and frosted it like a straight cake. The cake didn’t have enough structure and ending up collapsing.
I have uglier pictures (of the back), but they’re so graphic. I can’t show you1. I shoved the rest of the cake into a container and stuffed it in the freezer to forget, but it greets me every time I grab ice cream. It’s awkward and painful and comical how I feel guilty towards it. It’s not like I was going to sell it or do anything with it...maybe I thought I could give a slice to a neighbor. But I must have still harbored expectations, and I felt crushed. If only it were easy to laugh it off how many times I’ve gotten angry at a cracked cheesecake or really sad (that I give up to sit under a blanket with chips) at a dense genoise. I feel so insane when I respond so emotionally to desserts of all things. Baking should be this youtube video experience: I dawn a frilly apron in my sunlit newly renovated kitchen, and everything is neat and clean. I smile the whole time, and nothing goes wrong. At the end I have a beautifully decorated cake that no one eats.
Baking is just a messy, painful, wasteful process sometimes. I go through rounds of recipes that mostly don’t work out. And I don’t really have much to show for it either because I’m like who wants to see all the projects that never reached their rightful end. It feels like the internet is full of projects that executed perfectly while my process is all full of crap like macarons without feet, split buttercreams, runny pastry creams, choux that doesn’t rise. It really gets to me that I’m human, and I have to fuck up to learn, only to learn that I have a long way to go. Most times I just have to accept what I’ve made. But sometimes I get lucky, and I get close to the vision. I’m not a perfectionist, ok? I’m ok with falling a little short. But when you get really close, that feeling at the end, just like extreme satisfaction that I did a great job, is worth all the trouble.
And then what? I don’t really know what comes after—upload on instagram and get external validation? That’s so shameless and cringe, and I’m not and never have been shameless and/or cringe. I’d rather be the eccentric inventor that perishes in a great fire along with their life’s work [see: cringe in my own bubble]. But according to my therapist, I think the answer is: be seen, connect, and create community. And I want that too, but I don’t know what I want to show. I guess here I’m showing you that cakes don’t always work out but it’s not for nothing.
