As a child who hated
sport, born into a family of sport lovers, having my birthday in the opening
days of July was pure torture. If my birthday was at the weekend, it fell on
the same day as either the women’s or men’s tennis final at Wimbledon. While
other children would have spent the afternoon being sung ‘Happy Birthday’ and
eating cake, I was constantly told to be quiet or asked to go and play with my
toys in the other room. And every four years, there would be a couple of World
Cup football matches thrown in like the bonus ball.
Ironically, it was a
tradition associated with Wimbledon that was the one shining light for me: the
tradition of strawberries and cream. Late June, early July is the season for
English strawberries, plucked fresh from the Kentish garden of England and, in
my opinion, the sweetest, most fragrant strawberries on the planet. These would
be served on my birthday weekend, either with an oozing blanket of double
cream, or more deliciously, with an oblong of Wall’s dairy ice-cream—vanilla
flavor—which looked like a golden stick of butter melting into a frosty crème
anglaise.
My love of
strawberries has remained with me all my life, and even though they are
available earlier in the countries where I have lived as an adult, I often wait
for my birthday to eat the first strawberries of the year. So when I moved to
Paris, and started to frequent the pâtisseries, the first cake to catch my eye
was the fraisier or French strawberry
gateau.
Rather resembling a
drum, the fraisier shouts ‘look at these lovely strawberries’ which are
displayed, cut in half, all around the outside, standing to attention like the
guards at Buckingham Palace (or should that be Versailles?) Held together with a white crème mousseline—crème
patissière with added butter—the whole is usually topped with green marzipan
and decorated with strawberries.
Cutting into the gateau
you discover two thin layers of genoise cake and a centre literally packed with
more strawberries. In fact, a good fraisier
is really a vehicle for strawberries, the other elements being just enough to
hold it into a cake shape. There is a debate as to whether you should be able
to see the genoise layers or not from the outside, with the consensus being
that if the genoise is hidden it looks more professional; however I have seen
genoise clearly on display in some of the top pâtisseries in Paris.
I always imagined that
a fraisier would taste like cake with strawberries and so was pleasantly
surprised to discover it actually tastes like strawberries with a little cake,
in fact, like strawberries and cream. Notwithstanding the large amount of
butter, the crème mousseline tastes like fresh clotted cream, a trick performed
by adding the butter in waves rather than all at once.
Late April is when the
first French strawberries of the season arrive in the markets of Paris. The
variety, known as la gariguette, is
produced in the south, mostly in the region of Aquitaine. So as this is the
current fruit of season, I decided not to wait until my birthday, but to
attempt a fraisier now.
For my first fraisier, I followed the traditional
recipe which can be accessed here (in French). This was the recipe used as one
of the technical challenges in the last series of Le meilleur pâtissier (the Great French Bake Off). It was
surprisingly easy to replicate and I was delighted with the result. I did find
the addition of the marzipan a little sweet and so next time will experiment
with some more original toppings. I have two months to get it right as I will
definitely be enjoying a fraisier on my birthday, which happily falls midweek this year—no
tennis finals—and on a rest day for the football World Cup. It seems for once
that I will be the only winner that day.
