Serving Up London: Battle of the Royal Icing Masters and the Marzipan Enthusiasts

The Fraisier cake is as delicious as it is beautiful. With a layer of sponge cake soaked in Kirsch, strawberries crowing the outer rim, vanilla cream, strawberry jam, another layer of sponge cake, pastel pink marzipan, and finally the white royal icing decor on top, this cake looks like it was made just in time for Valentine's Day. Although we are still a few weeks away from the day of everything love and stuff, the Fraisier will make you re-think grabbing that iconic heart shaped box of chocolates and upgrade to this towering moment of decadence.

I wish I could say that everything went perfectly today, but sadly it did not. My morning started off to a late start. I was 20 minutes behind and had to be at the school getting all of my equipment in 10 minutes. It's times like these where that stash of 20 pounds in your wallet is put to good use with hailing a taxi. Running out the door into the freezing cold morning, with my cake box in one hand and my apron in the other, I literally yelled for a taxi. I made it to school on time, blue hairnet and all. You see this was a very important practical, because the Fraisier is one of the cakes we have to make for our final exam. Deep breath and off we go...I started making my sponge cake. While the chefs have let us intermediate students upgrade to using the Kitchen Aid for our mouse, sponge cake must be whipped by hand in the biggest bowl you have ever seen (round-bottom bowl) and the biggest whisk you have ever seen (balloon whisk...that is seriously the size of a balloon). I put my eggs and sugar into the bowl and start whisking vigorously over a bain-marie. You must mix the mixture until it is about 6x its original size...in the patisserie, it is called ribbon stage. When your arm is about ready to fall off, it still need about 5 more minutes of whisking. When the burning sensation turns into a numbing sensation, its probably about done. I slowly add my flour and melted butter (that must be the perfect temperature or the batter splits). Needless to say this isn't your Betty Crocker, add oil, and bake kind of situation. Onto the pastry cream...everything was grooving along just as it should, made my marzipan roses and leaves, then rolled out the pink marzipan topper, cut my strawberries, assembled my cake...it all looked perfect. With 5 minutes left on the clock, the chef shouting 'you're almost out of time, lets go, lets go' to all of us, I still had to pipe 'Fraisier' in white royal icing. In all the comotion I cut my piping bag too much and was left with a rather wide piping tip. 'There is no time to transfer to another piping bag', I said to myself, 'it will be fine, just keep going'. Well if you looked at my cake you probably can tell that it was not fine. The icing came out all thick and gloopy. I also haven't written in cursive in about 100 years, so I couldn't remember how to pipe the capital F...I improvised with lots of curly lines hoping chef would not notice. He did. Beside the fact that my rose was a little 'rough around the edges' literally and my piping 'was much too thick' the assembly was beautiful and my marzipan leaves were 'actually quite good', so there's something to write home to the parents about. The Fraisier cake is sweet, but left a little bitter taste in my mouth.