Strawberry Mousse Cake and Strawberry Charlotte

So last week my roommate and I had to run some errands downtown... our freakin residence card is being delayed due to the annual "techincal" problem of theirs. Sighhh, it's ridiculous how inefficient Poland can be some times. There was only one lady that was attending the window/stand at the immigration office and I was already getting pretty annoyed waiting in line... then to find out that their problem wont be fixed until AUGUST is just )*(#&%)(*@%&)(#@*%&)(@#&. ARGHHH, I do not want to pay another 3,000 NT for a freakin unnecessary visa. Even though i could just use my Brazilian passport, i still don't want to worry about the 90 days limit. Its not even our fault anyway, at least reimburse us with free visa. Sheeeshhh... Well, after wasting our time at the office, we went to the far ING bank and passed through a strawberry stand. The strawberries looked so fresh and smelled so sweet that you could smell it 2 feet away, no kidding. So on our way back we couldn't resist but to stop by and get ourselves a bag of strawberries each. As if the freshness and prettiness wasn't a good enough reason to get them, then 4.00 zl for 1 kg must be 了吧!! Yep... looking at my past strawberry entries, 4.00 zl for 1 kg by far the cheapest. I could've gotten 2 kgs but I already had 500g of strawberries at home. So yep, that gave me 1.5 kgs of strawberries to work with XD.
After blending 1/3 up for yogurt-shakes, I decided to use some for a Strawberry Mousse Cake. But for some reason i just kept on screwing up and ended up wasting 1 liter of milk, 7 eggs, and tons of whipping cream, sugar, and other ingredients. Sighhh... i was pretty pissed off but hey, if you don't make mistakes, then how can you learn from them, right? So the next day i gave it another go and reduced the size to a small 5.5'' cake. Sigh, 真的是 with low expectations comes great satisfaction... it turned out 10x better than I expected! I divided it into 8 pieces-- gave one to little A, one for myself, and JLo ate the rest... in one sitting ;) Wahahahaa, that felt pretty good. Anyways, here's the recipe!

Sponge Cake
from ytower.com
makes a 8.5'' cake (I halved recipe to make a small 5.5'' cake)
INGREDIENTS:

• 290 mL (1 and 1/4 cup) all-purpose flour
• 4 eggs
• 35 mL milk
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 35 mL vegetable oil

DIRECTIONS:

1. Prepare ingredients: [pictures 1, 2]
   - add sugar and salt together.
   - add milk, oil, and vanilla together.
   - sift the flour.
2. Add the sugar+salt into the eggs and blend with an electric mixer immediately. [picture 3]
3. Blend until the egg mixture becomes foamy and tripled in size (around 5 minutes).
4. Add in the flour and mix well. [picture 4]
5. Pour some of the mixture into the milk+oil and stir until well blended. [picture 5]
6. Pour it back into the original cake mixture and use your spatula to fold until well blended. [picture 6]
7. Pour into a cake mold and bake for 35 minutes at 180 C (Gas 4). [picture 7]

Strawberry Mousse Cake
makes a small 5.5'' cake
INGREDIENTS:

• 2 layers of sponge cake (cut off 1 cm around the edges)
• 200g fresh strawberries
• 1 egg yolk
• 3-4 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 100 mL milk
• 2.5 teaspoons unflavored gelatin
• 1 cup whipping cream
• 150g fresh strawberries sliced in half.

DIRECTIONS:

1. Blend and puree 200g of fresh strawberries. [picture 1]
2. In a saucepan, mix the sugar, egg yolk, and vanilla. [picture 2]
3. Pour the strawberry puree (around 150 mL) into the egg mixture. Mix well. [picture 3]
4. In another saucepan, add the gelatin and milk and heat until gelatin has dissolved. Pour it into the strawberry mixture and continue heating until everything comes together. [picture 4]
5. Remove the mixture from the heat and place the saucepan in cold water until it reaches room temperature.
6. Whip the cream until stiff peaks form. Pour it into the strawberry mixture. [picture 5]
7. Fold until blended thoroughly. [picture 6]
8. Place the 1st layer of sponge cake in the center of the mold and arrange sliced strawberries on top. Pour in the mousse until strawberries are covered. [picture 7]
9. Place the 2nd layer of sponge cake in the center and cover it with more mousse. [picture 8, 9]
10. Refrigerate until set (4 hours). Decorate and serve.

Strawberry Mousse Cake

For Strawberry Charlotte:

1. Dip the bottom of the ladyfingers in raspberry or strawberry syrup.
2. Line up the ladyfingers side by side along your springform pan.
3. Fill up the inside as directed with the Strawberry Mousse Cake recipe above.
   

Strawberry Charlotte