Chantilly Cream and Fruit Cake

This is a pretty simple cake recipe that I pieced together and tweaked to mimic the chantilly cake sold at Whole Foods. We love that cake so much that we had to try and replicate it ourselves. It is a butter cake with a light cream cheese frosting and loads of fresh fruit dotted throughout the cream and atop the cake.

Basically, it is a two-thirds recipe of Stella Parks's Classic Vanilla Butter Cake Recipe combined with a customized cream cheese frosting recipe adapted from a couple sources. You cut the two cake layers in half horizontally to get four layers, and layer on the frosting and fruit like a delicious dessert lasagna. For a more detailed overview of how to bake the cake layers, check out the original recipe.

Equipment

Two 8-inch cake pans, stand mixer, parchment paper rounds, and use a scale to measure!

Ingredients

For the cake

• 273g sugar (this is 90% sugar of the original recipe)
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 5.3g salt (1.33 tsp kosher salt)
• 10.67 Tbsp butter, soft but cool
• 2 eggs, closer to room temp
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1.33 cups whole milk
• 303g all-purpose flour

For the cream

• Note, there should be a little extra but you could make more if you definitely want to add a piping design.
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 4 oz cream cheese
• 8 oz mascarpone cheese
• 2.5 cups heavy whipping cream
• 0.5 tsp vanilla extract
• 0.25 tsp salt

For the fruit

• A pack of blueberries
• A pack of strawberries, sliced thinner than a blueberry's height
• Raspberries and blackberries are also great additions.

Instructions

1. Oven rack to lower-middle and 350°F (180°C). Put a parchment round inside both pans and lightly grease.
2. In stand mixer, add sugar, baking powder, salt, and butter. Mix on low with paddle attachment briefly, then mix on medium for about 5 minutes (yep) until fluffy. Stir halfway through.
3. Add eggs one by one while mixing. Add vanilla. On low speed, alternate adding 1/3 of the flour and then 1/3 of the milk until all is used.
4. Scrape and mix for 3s.
5. Add to pans--each pan should get about 550g batter.
6. Bake about 32 minutes--toothpick inserted into center should be clean.
7. Cool for an hour and remove from cake pans, using a butter knife to loosen sides.
8. Mix the powdered sugar, cream cheese, and mascarpone in the stand mixer with the whisk attachment. We want the cheese to lighten up and get evenly mixed with the sugar.
9. Add the vanilla extract, salt, and heavy cream to the mixer. Mix on medium speed until stiff peaks form.
10. Cut the dome tops of the cakes off, then cut the cake layers in half horizontally so you have four layers.
11. Put one layer on a cake stand, and spread frosting to cover the top of the layer, not the sides. I want to say 1 cup of frosting, but use your judgement to save enough frosting for the other three layer tops and the sides.
12. Arrange a single layer of fruit on the frosted top. It's okay to have some gaps, but don't be skimpy.
13. Repeat the cake, frosting, and fruit layering until you reach the top. But at the top cake layer, hold off on adding fruit till the very end.
14. When you frost the top of the top cake layer, now add and spread frosting to cover the side of the cake.
15. Finally, arrange fruit to top the cake aesthetically and if there's extra frosting, you could pipe a design or something.

/cooking/