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This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie was Berry Surprise Cake on page 273-75 of Baking by Dorie Greenspan. It was chosen by Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen. As others expressed in the P&Q, this recipe calls for fresh berries which are not exactly at their peak in mid-January. I think this fact gave a great opportunity for playing around with the concept of this cake and using different ingredients and flavorings. I ended up making what I would call a Meyer Lemon Curd & Toasted Almond Surprise Cake.

Follow up:

I had a bunch of Meyer lemons in the house again with no particular plan for them. (This seems to happen to me a lot, I just can’t seem to resist this wonderful citrus.) I had made a Meyer lemon curd a few weeks ago with Dorie’s recipe on page 462 and it was excellent. See my post on it here. I decided I would make a curd to mix in with the filling in the recipe and mix some toasted almonds in as well. I also added some almond extract to the cake and browned the butter to bring out the nutty flavor.

I know many people had issues with the cake deflating when it came out of the oven. In an attempt to possibly prevent this from happening to me, I did take some of the advice offered by Elizabeth of Cake or Death in the P&Q. I decreased the amount of baking powder to 1/2 tsp. After the eggs were whipped, I separated out about a cup and folded the butter into that. I sifted the flour over the remainder of the eggs in two additions, then added the buttered egg mixture last, folding just until incorporated. Whatever I did, it worked because the cake baked beautifully without any incident. I do not own an 8 inch cake pan so I used my 9 inch.

I made the filling per Dorie’s recipe except that I folded my Meyer lemon curd and toasted almonds in to the cream cheese mixture before the remaining whipped cream was folded in.

Here is the process of the cake being deconstruced and then reconstructed. It went well, thanks to Nick’s ability with a knife.

Nick traced out a circle with the knife and then I scooped out the center with my fingers and a soup spoon. I made a limoncello syrup instead of raspberry and spread it over the cake at this point.

I used some of the leftover cake center to fill in the small hole that was in the top piece of the cake.

I whipped the heavy cream and instead of adding vanilla extract, I scraped out the seeds of 1 vanilla bean. This was a great idea from Nick - thanks dear . We are well stocked with vanilla beans, thanks to the great price at Vanilla Products USA, so we try to use them whenever we can. I also sprinkled the rest of my toasted almonds on the top and sides of the frosted cake. I chilled this cake for about 2 1/2 hours before we ate it.

Here is the final cake. If you look close, you can see the specks from the vanilla bean in the whipped cream.

We all loved this cake. The sponge cake was very light and had a lovely almond flavor and aroma. The filling was lemony and had just a hint of tang from the cream cheese. The almonds provided a necessary crunch in all the spongy creaminess.

This cake was a bit time intensive, but it came out great and I would definitely make it again. I would like to try it in the summer time with some beautifully ripe fresh berries.

I had a lot of leftover everything, so we made a mini trifle from the scraps.