A light and fluffy yellow cake filled with fresh berries and topped with a mascarpone whipped cream frosting! This chantilly cake is small enough to share with a friend or horde it for yourself!
I’m one of those OCD type of people who hates to have email in my inbox. In fact, I’m always looking for ways to clean it out and ensure that there aren’t any action items I need to take. I get the shakes when my work email goes into double digits and sometimes get made fun of (in a loving way of course) from coworkers. And I shudder when I hear of coworkers having inboxes with hundreds, or even a thousand plus emails.
One day, I was cleaning out my personal email box when I saw something from a baking-related company. The hero image on the email was of this beautiful chantilly cake. Why hadn’t I heard of one before, and how quickly could I get my act together to bake one?
Thankfully, it only took me a week after reading that initial email to procure all my ingredients and bake the cake. I didn’t have the springform pan listed so had to improvise with a smaller cake pan that I had in my pantry. Mine was oval and not round. Oh well.
I also didn’t have as many berries on hand than the recipe called for, so I halved the berry filling. I did manage to save a few to decorate on the top of the cake and think it was a good move.
My favorite part of this cake was the frosting. While I normally don’t like whipped cream, this version was combined with a cream-cheese-like frosting, only with mascarpone. And then it’s infused with two of my favorite extracts – almond and vanilla. Man, my eyes a-fluttered when I got a whiff of that almond!
Fresh berry chantilly cake
Ingredients
Cake
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup + 1 Tablespoon cake flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 4 egg yolks
- 1/3 cup milk of choice
Frosting
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract if you have vanilla beans, you can substitute this with 1 scraped vanilla bean pod
- 8 ounces mascarpone cheese room temperature
- 1 cup powdered sugar
Berry mixture
- 3/4 cup berries of your choice can do a mixture of raspberries, blackberries, blueberries or strawberries
- 2 teaspoons orange juice
Topping (optional)
- 2 Tablespoons jam of choice
- 2 Tablespoons hot water
- Berries of your choice for garnishes
Instructions
Bake the cake
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Generously grease and flour two 4" springform pans (I do not own any and used small oval cake pans instead). In a small bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder and salt.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or in a large bowl if using a handheld mixer, beat the butter and sugar together on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Add the vanilla. Add in the egg yolks, one at a time, until well incorporated.
- Alternatively add the flour and mix, beginning and ending with the flour. Mix until everything just comes together.
- Evenly distribute the batter between your two pans and bake in your preheated oven for 35-40 minutes or until it lightly springs back if try to make an indentation with your finger (since I used a different shape and sized pan, my baking time was closer to 25-30 minutes so make sure you keep an eye on your cake). Allow the cake to cool for about 15 minutes before removing from the pan and allowing to cool completely on a wire rack.
Make the frosting
- In the (clean) bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the cream, almond and vanilla extracts together until you achieve stiff peaks.
- Meanwhile, whisk the mascarpone and powdered sugar together until smooth and creamy. Gently fold the whipped cream mixture into the mascarpone until well blended. Set aside.
Prepare the berries
- Combine the berries and orange juice in a small bowl and set aside.
Assemble the cake
- Slice each cake layer in half horizontally. Place the bottom of one cake layer on a cake stand or plate. Put a generous amount of frosting on top. Top with half of the berries. Place the top half of the cake on top. Spread some frosting on top and repeat with the second cake (place the bottom of the cake on top of the frosting, top with frosting, berries and then the top half of the cake).
- Note that because I used a different (larger) pan, my cake layers were thinner and I did not half the cakes. I included frosting and berries to the middle of the cake halves and moved on to the next step.
- Frost the entire cake with the remaining frosting. Garnish with berries, if desired, and top with a mixture of the fruit jam and hot water glaze.