The Whipped Cream Berry Cake

A midsummer dream. A cloud. A pile of fruit.

During this dreamy season, the height of summer, I get the pang to bake with every ounce of fresh fruit at the market. But sometimes perfect fruit is best served raw atop a blank canvas. Think of a perfectly ripe raspberry. You just want to pop it in your mouth. Or a peach. Slice it up, maybe macerate it with a sprinkling of sugar, and serve it alongside a scoop of vanilla ice cream or swimming in heavy cream. Or you can serve it with simple, classic cake: pound cake or angel food cake. But how about this light-as air but not-as-sweet hybrid: The Whipped Cream Cake.

This cake strikes the balance of richness and lightness. It’s basically made of equal weights of sugar, eggs, flour, and heavy cream. It comes together like a classic genoise sponge cake, but with whipped cream folded in instead of melted butter. The cream gives the cake some of the dairy richness of butter, but it's lighter, moist-er, and less heavy than a traditional pound cake. It's much more moist than a genoise. Plus it’s way eaiser. Te whipped cream lightens the batter, and I also add some baking powder to ensure that if you deflate the batter a bit, it will rise again!

The deeply caramelized golden crust and the downy interior are a perfect bed for a pile of whipped cream and fresh summer fruit.

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Getting nerdy

The loftiness this sponge cake comes from the eggs and sugar and the whipped cream. You whip a ton of air into the cake by beating the eggs with sugar for a long time. Then you fold in your flour. To finish this cake, you fold in whipped cream, creating the one of world's fluffiest cake batters.

I've made genoise sponge many times. You whisk whole eggs and sugar in a stand mixer for 8-10 minutes on high speed until you get lovely ribbons of aerated batter. But my finished cakes often has large air holes and a somewhat coarse texture. Well, the wonderful Nicola Lamb of Kitchen Projects (the first Substack newsletter I ever subscribed to) wrote a treatise on foam cakes and improved on the method. She first wrote about how to avoid big holes and coarse crumb on foam cakes in this post, and I've used this technique for making egg-foam cakes (genoise, jaconde, etc.) ever since. Essentially, you whip the eggs and sugar on high speed until voluminous, then you reduce the speed to medium for a few minutes, then down to low speed for a while. The high speed creates volume, and the low speed ensures that there are no large bubbles, only lots of tiny ones. The consistent and tiny bubbles give you a velvety, even texture to the cake, and a more stable foam.  Ok. Nerdiness over. Onto deliciousness.

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I finish this fluffy cake with swoops of lemon verbena whipped cream and a cascade of fresh berries. Fall raspberries are my favorites, and I snagged some fabulous red and black raspberries this week, plus some blueberries for good measure. To add to the summer theme, I garnished with some lemon thyme from my herb pots.

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The Whipped Cream Berry Cake

The Whipped Cream Cake

Inspired by Richard Sax with some technique via Nicola Lamb

Makes one 9-inch square cake

Oil or butter for greasing the pan

180 g (1 1/2 cups) all purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

173 g heavy whipping cream, cold

3 large eggs, cold

188 g (about 1 cup minus 2 teaspoons) sugar

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 vanilla bean or 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon almond extract

Spread some oil or butter on the bottom (not the sides) of a 9-square cake pan. (I like to use this one.) Try to not use a nonstick pan, but if that's all you have it will be fine. Do not grease the sides of the pan. Line the bottom (and the bottom only) with parchment paper.

Heat the oven to 350F with a rack on the middle of the oven

In a medium mixing bowl, add the flour and baking powder. Whisk for about 1 minute to combine. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fit with a whisk attachment and whip the heavy cream on high speed until thick, and soft peaks form, 1-3 minutes depending on the power of your mixer and the fat content of your cream. (Err on the side of slightly under-beating the cream.) Put the whipped cream into a separate bowl and keep it in the refrigerator until you need it. Don’t drop it on your foot. Rinse off the mixer bowl and whisk, then wipe them dry.

Into the mixer bowl, add the eggs, sugar, and salt. Cut the vanilla bean in half lengthwise, then use the back of a knife to scrape out the vanilla seeds and add them to the eggs and sugar. Fit the mixer with the whisk attachment, and whisk for about 1 minute on low speed to break up the eggs. Crank the mixer up to the highest speed and whisk for 10 minutes until the batter looks very frothy and light. Lower speed to medium (6 on a KitchenAid) and beat for a further 5 minutes. Then turn the mixer to its lowest speed and whisk for 10 more minutes, until you have a smooth, even-textured foam. Add in the vanilla extract (omit if using a vanilla bean) and almond extract and beat for an additional 1 minute on low.

Keep the mixer on it's lowest speed and slowly add in the flour, stopping just before the flour is totally combined. Turn off the mixer and use a rubber spatula to stir in any errant bits of flour. Go get the whipped cream and fold half of it into the batter. Once that cream is about 75% incorporated, fold in the remaining whipped cream just until you don't see any streaks of cream.

Scrape the batter into the prepared baking pan and smooth it into an even layer. Bake the cake  at 350F for about 32-38 minutes (mine takes exactly 36 minutes), until the cake springs back when pressed in the middle and a cake tester comes out with just some fluffy crumbs attached (no wet batter). It will be a deep golden brown and it may have risen and domed a lot. Remove the cake from the oven, hold it 5 inches above your counter and drop it onto the counter. (Thud.) Now set the cake on a wire rack and let it cool in the pan for about 15 minutes. (The top will sink a bit and the cake will be more or less flat, which we want.) Run an offset spatula around the edges of the pan to loosen the cake. Invert the cake onto a wire rack, remove the parchment and let it cool completely on the rack (I just leave it upside down). Handle the cake gently, because this cake is quite light and fragile. After it's cool, carefully transfer the cake to its final destination. (A platter or something like that.)

You can make the cake a day or two ahead, wrapped it in plastic wrap or another airtight situation.

Lemon Verbena Whipped Cream Frosting

Adapted from Dan Langan

Makes about 2 cups of  frosting.

Zest of 1/2 of a lemon (or 1 whole lemon if you don't have lemon verbena)

6-8 fresh lemon verbena leaves

40 g (3 tablespoons) granulated sugar

56g (2 ounces) cream cheese, cold

1/8 teaspoon salt

230 g (1 cup) heavy cream, cold

Wash, dry, and finely chop the lemon verbena leaves. In a small food processor, whiz the lemon zest, verbena leaves, and sugar. (You could also do this step with a mortar and pestle.)

Add the sugar mixture, cream cheese, and salt to the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix on low speed for about 1 minute to combine. Turn the speed to medium and whisk until smooth, about 1-2 minutes. With the mixer on medium-low, stream in the cold heavy cream. After the cream is all added, turn the mixer to medium speed and whip until you get your desired consistency: soft peaks for casual swoops, and stiff peaks for piping. Don’t walk away from the mixer while whipping cream. That’s a general rule.

You can make the whipped cream about one day ahead of time, if you need to. Store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Assembly and "Decoration"

About 2 quarts of fresh berries*

Few sprigs of fresh lemon thyme or fine shavings of lemon zest

Just before serving, assemble the cake. Dump all of the Frosting onto the cake and use an offset spatula to spread the frosting evenly around the cake. Wash and dry the berries (yes, dry them). Put them on top of the frosting, and be generous. I like to to finish mine off with some sprigs of lemon thyme or even a dusting of finely grated lemon zest.

*I used fresh red raspberries, black raspberries, and blueberries. Any berry that you don't have to cut would be great. Blackberries or red currants would be nice. You could use sliced fresh peaches, nectarines, mangos, or strawberries, too! The fruit will start to seep a bit as soon as you assemble it, so serve it soon after assembly.

Happy Baking,
Martin