Fraisier - Strawberry and Cream Cake

 A fraisier is a strawberry (fraise, in French) cake made of two thin layers of genoise sponge, sandwiched together with creme patissiere (also known as pastry cream), with the strawberries arranged around the edge of the cake, and topped with a thin layer of (often coloured) marzipan. And no, you're right, that's not marzipan on top of my cake - more on that later.

I first came across a fraisier cake on the Great British Bake Off; it looked beautiful but extremely difficult to make. In fact you can see one of the less successful ones from the show here. But I like a challenge and really wanted to have a go at making a fraisier myself. My boyfriend's mum's birthday was coming up and I thought this would be a good opportunity, as she likes strawberries; also, when I make cakes I very often have to transport them on the train when I go to see family and friends and wasn't sure if the cream in this cake would hold up to a long and possibly warm journey. Whereas my boyfriend's mum only lives a few minutes away! The main reason for making it though was that I thought it would be an impressive, beautiful cake, and just right for a birthday treat.

I didn't go through absolutely all of my recipe books (as that would have taken hours) but the ones I did look at didn't have a fraisier recipe, so as I often do, I turned to the internet. I looked at a lot of pictures and websites until I found a fraisier I thought looked particularly impressive, with a recipe that I thought I could follow. I recommend this one by Jo the Tart Queen - I used her recipe and followed her steps for the bake. For that reason I'm not going to put the recipe here in its entirety and instead redirect you to her website.

To start with I made the genoise sponge which is a very light sponge cake where most of the volume comes from whisking the eggs. There is comparatively little butter and flour in the cake (100g of each). The recipe called for 240g of eggs so I weighed them out - I was determined to do this by the book as I was already worrying about how it would turn out! And you don't just whisk your eggs, oh no... you place the eggs and sugar in a bain marie for the sugar to dissolve.

Then whisk the eggs for 6-8 minutes until the volume has roughly tripled.

Melt the butter, and fold in to the mixture.

Fold in the sifted flour and pour the mixture into an 8-inch loose-bottomed cake tin.

Bake at 165C for 28-30 minutes. The recipe I used instructs you not to open the oven within the first 20 minutes or the cake will collapse. Mine turned out nicely.

Next I tried to make the marzipan to go on top of the cake; I thought that by making my own I could add some pink or red food colouring. I've never made marzipan before or even used a sugar thermometer before. It seemed to be going ok, but then it seemed very dry so I added more egg white than the recipe called for - so it's my own fault! Afterwards the mixture was too wet to roll out and kept falling apart. So I decided to abandon that idea and use fondant instead.

The next stage was to make the creme patisserie, also something I'd never done before. I actually found the quantities given in the recipe made far too much - I used two thirds of the 1800ml cream recommended, and even then I had a bowlful of whipped cream left over at the end. So it's up to you if you want to follow the recipe or make a smaller quantity - I'm not sure why I ended up with so much.

To make the creme patisserie, boil the milk with seeds from a vanilla pod. In the meantime, whisk the egg yolks, caster sugar and cornflour in a separate bowl. When the milk comes to a boil, pour it over the egg mixture and whisk. Then pour the mixture back into the pan and whisk over a low heat until the mixture thickens. It was at this point I realised I had pretty much made custard for the first time! Then add the diced butter and whisk in until the butter is melted.

Pour out the creme patisserie onto a tray and cover with cling film, and chill in the fridge until completely cool.

Now whisk your cream until thick, and gently fold in the creme patisserie.

Assembling the cake wasn't as hard as I expected, though slicing the genoise sponge in half was a little tricky as it was a pretty thin cake. That's why you can see a brown patch in the middle in the picture below - that's part of the top layer of cake!

Put the base layer on a cake board and take off the bottom of the loose-bottomed cake tin you used to make it, and place the ring of the cake tin over the cake. Then put a strip of baking paper all the way around inside the ring.

Brush the cake with sugar syrup - you can make your own or buy it in a bottle. I happened to have one from a cocktail party.

Slice some strawberries, trying to choose ones of a similar size, and stand around the edge of the cake with the cut sides facing outwards. Try to make sure there are no gaps between each strawberry.

Fill the cake with the creme patisserie, pushing down gently so it fills the gaps between the strawberries.

Add more chopped strawberries into the middle of the cake

Place the top layer of cake on top, brush with sugar syrup and cover with more creme patisserie

After my unsuccessful attempt at making marzipan I coloured some fondant pink, rolled it out and used the base of the cake tin to cut out a circle of the right size. Place gently on top of the cake.

I took a cookie decorating class before Christmas and learned that when piping you should use royal icing - if you make it quite thick (and add whatever colour you want) it's actually quite easy to control as you pipe. I also bought some mini piping bags which are just big enough to pipe a few words, and give much better control than using a large piping bag that you'd use for buttercream.

To finish off I decorated the top with some fresh strawberries.

The finished cake went in the fridge overnight and was transported to the house still in the cake tin. I almost held my breath as I gently eased the ring of the cake tin upwards... here you can see the baking paper still around the side of the cake. I carefully peeled it off, and was very pleased to find the strawberries and cream all stayed in place - unlike this example from one unlucky contestant on the Great British Bake Off!

Here's the finished cake with a side-view; I really like the way the strawberries look around the edge.

Not as entirely neat as it could be - it was hard to get the fondant on top completely flat as I was putting it onto whipped cream. I would recommend only spreading a thin layer of cream on top of the cake for a better result.

I also could have distributed the chopped strawberries through the middle of the cake a little more, as you can see from this slice. But overall I was really pleased with it - I wasn't sure I would be able to bake a fraisier at all and was worried I would make a total mess of it, but it tasted very good and I was happy with the way it looked.

Strawberries are in season, so I am sending this to Simple and in Season, hosted by Ren at Fabulicious Food, in an effort to encourage us to use seasonal ingredients.

Calendar Cakes, hosted by Laura of Laura Loves Cakes and Rachel of DollyBakes, is encouraging us to "bake brave" this month in conjunction with World Baking Day, and make something outside of our comfort zone. Well, this fraisier is certainly that - it's one of the most technically difficult things I've baked and I was quite worried it would be a disaster, but I gave it a go anyway - and I'm really glad I did!

Afternoon Tea at the Victoria Falls Hotel, Zimbabwe

The Victoria Falls Hotel in Zimbabwe is apparently popular with royalty, heads of state and the discerning traveller - so I'm not sure what I was doing there! In 2011 I spent a few days on safari in Africa - it cost a fortune but I also feel very privileged to be able to have done that. I decided that since it was all costing so much anyway, I may as well stay somewhere nice - and at the time I thought I would be travelling alone so wanted somewhere I would feel safe. In the end I had a travelling companion for three of my five days but I was still glad when I was alone to be somewhere so central and secure.

The colonial-style hotel was built in 1904 and is set in beautiful gardens within sight of the Victoria Falls. The hotel is the height of luxury, which to me seemed a little incongrous with the local area, but at the same time I guess it is providing employment and boosting the local economy. The service is top-notch and the rooms are beautifully decorated, with four-poster beds (complete with mosquito nets) in the bedrooms, and animal heads and furs decorating the communal areas.There's a swimming pool, beautiful gardens, dinner entertainment (local musicians and dancers), and is generally fabulous. It's one of the most upmarket places I've ever stayed, and certainly the poshest hotel I've ever paid for myself.

Afternoon tea at the Victoria Falls hotel is apparently something of an institution so one day when I was alone (after my friend had left to fly back home) I decided to treat myself. I sat on the terrace, from where I could actually see the awe-inspiring Victoria Falls (more on this later) and ate a selection of sandwiches, cakes, scones and pastries. This was quite a traditional afternoon tea, with no real surprises, but it was still impressive. I loved the placemat too, which you can see at the bottom of the photo - it has a drawing of the Falls.

This is the view from my seat on the terrace as I had afternoon tea. If you look closely in the middle of the photo you can see a small bridge - this is the Victoria Falls Bridge that crosses the Zambezi river and joins Zimbabwe and Zambia. The 'clouds' to the right of the photo is actually spray from the waterfall - the Victoria Falls are also known as Mosi-oa-Tunya, or 'the smoke that thunders'. The first European to view the Falls was David Livingstone, of "Dr. Livingstone, I presume" fame - there's a statue to him and one of the big hotels is named after him. He named the Falls after Queen Victoria, and the Victoria Falls is the largest waterfall in the world (taking both width and height into account). It really is an amazing sight.

 

Here's a close up of the bridge, which I took from walking across the grass to the edge of the hotel's property.

Visiting the Falls itself - you can often see a rainbow

 

I also decided I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see the Falls from the air, so my friend and I paid for a short helicopter flight. Each helicopter takes four people - there are three seats in the back and one in the front next to the pilot. I felt very lucky to get the front seat as I had a much bigger window all around me - and, I suddenly realised, underneath my feet, as part of the floor was transparent! This is one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen and it will stay with me always.

So getting back to the topic of food rather than my holiday snaps, the other meals we had in the hotel were delicious though not cheap. There was an evening buffet option, which I think cost £35 (or was it $35?) and also a separate restaurant that was very beautifully decorated. We ate in the restaurant once, which wasn't actually much more expensive than the buffet, and I remember feeling distinctly under-dressed and as if I should talk in a hushed voice!

The buffet restaurant was much more informal and featured several cooking stations with chefs who would cook whatever you wanted to eat from the raw ingredients they had in front of them.

There was also an impressive dessert table - I think the tall thing you can see is a pile of profiteroles or probably a croquembouche. You can also see a selection of cheeses at the front of this picture.

I can't even remember what anything was on this plate apart from the small item at the front, which looks like a piece of chicken - it's actually crocodile! Funnily enough, it tasted a bit like chicken...

Breakfast was served in the same buffet restaurant area and was delicious. Among other things I had this kiwi, museli and yogurt concoction which was beautifully presented in a glass.

One of the other lovely things about this hotel is the proximity to the wildlife... one day there was an elephant right outside, and as I ate breakfast I saw this warthog wandering nonchantly across the lawn.

Speaking of animals, I also visited a lion sanctuary and met some friendly lion cubs - these were born in captivity but will gradually be weaned off human contact and when they are older be able to go and live in the wild and hopefully breed. For the moment though, they love having their tummies tickled!

Despite being scared of heights I managed to get on an elephant without having a panic attack - but I'm sitting in the middle as I decided that was where I was least likely to fall off! Of course, I needn't have worried.

I also went on a game drive in Botswana and saw all sorts of animals including giraffes, lions, hippos, and elephants. This is one of my favourite photos - the elephants were having a mud bath and you can see this one is scooping up mud with its trunk and flinging it across the river. We were so close we actually got splashed!

Sunset boat ride on the Zambezi

 This was intended to be a review of afternoon tea at the Victoria Falls hotel but I've gotten rather sidetracked, it has brought back some amazing memories! If you ever get the chance to go to Africa, you must.

Russian Dolls Matryoshka Birthday Card

Just to finish off my recent run of Russian doll-themed posts, here's a cute birthday card I made for my sister. You could also use this design as an invitation to a Russian doll-themed party. The stickers came in a pack from Morrisons and as far as I remember the bird sticker was in the same pack with the dolls. I covered a white card blank with polka dot paper and stuck two pieces of sticky ribbon along the bottom to make a double border. I put a 'happy birthday' outline sticker in the middle.

Review - Zookeeper for a Day experience at London Zoo

This is a slight departure from my usual blog posts but it does involve a review, a restaurant and preparing a lot of food - but not for me. I was lucky enough to spend my birthday this year on the 'Zookeeper for a day' experience at London Zoo. It was an amazing day - hard work but great fun and for an animal lover such as myself, the perfect present. My boyfriend did good!

It was an early start, as I needed to be at the zoo for 8.45am, so left home at 6.30. It took me a couple of attempts to find the correct side entrance and as I was early was invited to sit in reception until the keeper was ready for me and the other two participants on the day. At 8.45 sharp we met senior zookeeper Karen, who would look after us all day. We were offered the choice of putting on zoo overalls or a black t-shirt saying 'zookeeper for a day' - no prizes for guessing which we chose - and since I had dressed for the occasion in jeans and trainers I wasn't too worried about getting messy.

We were taken to the giraffe house, handed shovels and forks and told our first duty of the day was cleaning! The three giraffes strolled around outside in their paddock (is that the right word?), occasionally sticking their heads through the door to check up on us. We had to put on face masks as there was so much dust, and sweep hay, sand- and yes, giraffe poo - then shovel it into huge bins. We had to then sprinkle fresh sand over the floor and break up some fresh hay, and try to put a bale of clover in a high-up feeding trough, which involved swinging a fork and flinging the bale upwards - the trough was at least ten feet off the ground - something none of us managed! It doesn't sound like much but this was exhausting work and we got covered in straw and dust. I was glad of the mask!

As our reward we went outside to meet the giraffes and up onto a walkway so we were eye-level with them. We fed them carrots which the giraffes took with their tongues - quite a different experience to when I fed llamas last year and they snapped off the carrots with their teeth (making me a little worried for my fingers!). The giraffes seemed such lovely, docile creatures and I really enjoyed feeding them, though we were told not to try to stroke them!

After that we went to the aquarium, which I think Karen said is the largest in the UK and almost 100 years old. We went in a side door and upstairs, and along a walkway that looks down on all the tanks - that's how the fish are fed, of course. We also saw a seahorse breeding programme and got to feed some hungry piranahs!

Next stop was lunch - but not for us! We were told we would be preparing lunch for the zoo's bearded pigs, and went into a large set of store rooms that contained all sorts of fruit and veg and animal feed. There were blackboards all the way around the room detailling what each type of animal liked to eat, with a few comments about their personalities thrown in. It was quite eye opening and interesting to know what kind of diets the animals are on. For the pigs, we had to gather a certain number of apples, oranges, potatoes, carrots and beetroot, weigh them and get more if necessary, then chop everything up into small pieces. I told you this blog post would involve preparing lunch!

Our last task of the morning was to scrub the penguin pool - with some little helpers! We each had a long-handled brush and went around the edge of the pool scrubbing off the (poo) stains. A couple of friendly penguins followed us around to keep an eye on us.

And they were happy to meet us afterwards! This is me saying hello to Ricky the Rockhopper penguin.

Finally we got to sit down and eat our own lunch. The zoo has a number of catering outlets, including a milkshake bar, a cafe and a hotdog kiosk, and this summer will be opening a new Terrace Restaurant. In the meantime it has a temporary restaurant called the Pavillion, which is where we ate. It had a really good choice of food - sandwiches and snacks, and several hot meals on offer, including pizza, pasta, meat and fish. I had fish in a pesto sauce with some roast potatoes (there were also new potatoes), though the only vegetable available was peas (which I don't like). There was a good selection of cakes including a 'tiger cupcake'; I chose a millionaire's shortbread. As with all on-site cafes in places like this, the meals aren't cheap - my main course was around £9 I think. Our meals were included in the cost of the day but Karen the zookeeper had to ring them up on the till - for the four of us, with drinks as well, the cost came to about £60. So I would always recommend to families visiting the zoo to take a picnic, though the food was very nice and I've had far worse for the same sort of cost when I've been out and about.

After lunch we discovered we had finished with the most tiring chores for the day and for the rest of the afternoon were just going to be feeding different animals. Well, 'just' isn't the word for it.... first we went to see the spider monkeys who are cheeky little things, reaching through the bars of the cage to grab us. Members of the public have to stay behind a fence, then there is a gap between that and the actual fence of the monkey enclosure. We were allowed into the gap so we went right up to the monkeys and fed them handfuls of nuts through the bars of the cage, much to the envy of some onlookers!

Our next job was to feed the zoo's two anteaters. While they were shut into their cages we went into the outdoor part of their enclosure and put down a bowl of food - a soup-like mixture that apparently mimics the nutrients they would get from eating ants in the wild. Then we retreated to the viewing platform as Karen let the anteaters out. They didn't seem all that hungry though - one of them stayed inside and the other only had a little food. Which was good news for us, as it meant we had to go inside and feed them by hand!

The anteaters get very messy noses from sticking their snouts in the bowl of 'soup' and they have to be cleaned off afterwards! You can see here that I am gently sponging one of them down! Their reward for enduring this nose-bath is to have a treat... of live mealworms. I'm really squeamish and didn't want them in my hand so they were placed in a plastic bottle. I wasn't sure how the anteaters would be able to get to the mealworms but they have freakishly long tongues, that whip around inside the bottles to get each last worm.

I was a bit disappointed to learn we wouldn't be working with the big cats, as it did say that on the website for the zookeeper experience (which I have suggested they change!). Karen explained it was because a new tiger enclosure had just been built and they hadn't yet assessed the best way of giving people on the zookeeper experience access to a safe part of the enclosure. It was a shame, though I was quite pleased that we were going to see the llamas and alpacas instead as I love those animals - but it wasn't quite the same as lions and tigers!

The llamas were quite friendly but the alpacas were much more shy. I have a bit of a thing about alpacas, I just love their crazy hairstyles! We fed them pieces of fruit and veg - they seemed to particularly like corn on the cob.

Onto the meerkats... I was a bit disappointed we couldn't go inside their enclosure as I know other zoos do offer 'meet the meerkats' experiences (so they can't be that unfriendly) but we fed them by leaning over the side of the enclosure. Don't ask me what we fed them, I still shudder.

Oh, OK. Live mealworms and locusts - the other girls were happy to put their hand in the bag of insects and scoop some out but I couldn't bear to do that. Karen the zookeeper gave me a plastic glove to put on, and put some into my hand, and I have to admit that I squealed and dropped them- at least I dropped them in front of the meerkats who gladly devoured them. I hate insects... think happy fluffy alpaca thoughts....

 Our last encounter was probably my favourite, as we went inside the glass-fronted lemur enclosure. The lemurs were really friendly - and greedy! We had handfuls of fruit, peas and nuts and the lemurs sat on our laps while they took food out of our hands. This is me with two lemurs!

 

They liked the apple pieces best of all, and were quite fickle - as soon as one lemur had eaten all the apple pieces you had, he would spring over to the next 'zookeeper' and see if they had any apple. Only when all the apple was gone did they come back and finish off the nuts! We also placed handfuls of food inside hanging balls that would swing backwards and forwards when the lemurs tried to get the food out, which I imagine provides more stimulation for them. Here I am with another lemur.

Overall I had a wonderful day. I thought the activities and encounters were good and well thought-through in terms of what we were able to do - we definitely took care of some tasks that needed doing so it wasn't all just playing with the animals. Not being able to see the big cats, or go in with the meerkats, was a little disappointing but I loved being able to feed the giraffes, anteaters and llamas, stroke a penguin and have a bunch of monkeys sitting on my lap!

The 'be a zookeeper' day is expensive but an amazing experience and I highly recommend it.