Ideal recipe for a birthday: here is the most beautiful strawberry plant you will see

What if it was the strawberry (and not the swallow) that made spring? Emblem of sunny days and its gourmet flavors, the fruit with its delicately tangy carmine color, comes to embellish market stalls every year… and our pastry desserts. An iconic cake of sunny days with a centuries-old history, the strawberry cake is making a comeback on our tables thanks to culinary interpretations as diverse as they are varied. The latest? That of Adrien Salavert, pastry chef of the Michelin-starred restaurant Les Belles Perdrix on the Troplong-Mondot estate, in Saint-Emilion. At only 32 years old, the man who went from administrative studies to a CAP Pâtissier overnight is reviewing and correcting this essential pastry by integrating dexterity and knowledge of the Périgord strawberry, the terroir that rocked his childhood. Homemade sponge fingers, crispy Breton biscuit, pastry cream with mascarpone and vanilla zest, and of course succulent freshly harvested strawberries, Adrien Salavert reveals the different stages of his recipe with pedagogy and pragmatism. But not only that!

Also read: Gourmet and tasty, Adrien Salavert’s walnut tart

Strawberry shortcake, a dessert with 1001 interpretations

With his recipe, the acclaimed thirty-year-old joins the long list of recognized chefs who have ventured into this culinary creation with mysterious origins. And for good reason, we only find its trace in a cookbook by Escoffier which, at the end of the 19th century, described a similar cake without really proving (very) convincing. Then we spot the strawberry again at Pierre Lacam, who, at the very beginning of the 20th century, imagined a dessert based on wild strawberries, sponge cake and a touch of kirsch. It was ultimately the irreplaceable Gaston Lenôtre, who in 1966 launched his own version of the strawberry cake with a recipe based on sponge cake punched with kirsch, butter cream and fresh strawberries. Her name ? Bagatelle, in a nod to the famous gardens of the same name. Enough to make us want a tasting of green strawberries, like the one offered by Adrien Salavert, on the castle terrace, overlooking an ocean of vines.

Strawberry recipe from Adrien Salavert

Ingredients

For the spoon biscuit
60g egg whites
50g caster sugar
40g egg yolks
50g flour

For the crunchy reconstituted biscuit
50 g of Breton pancakes or Breton biscuit
50g white chocolate
50g cocoa butter

For the strawberry cream
210g of liquid cream
15g caster sugar
150g of mascarpone
2 sheets of gelatin
20g cocoa butter
50g thick crème fraîche
1 vanilla pod

Preparation

For the spoon biscuit
Mix the egg whites with the sugar in a mixer, adding it in 3 times. Add the egg yolks and then the flour delicately with a spatula.
Poach a 12 cm circle. Bake for 8 min at 180°C.

For the crunchy reconstituted biscuit
Crush the biscuits. Melt the white chocolate and cocoa butter in a saucepan, then add to the crushed biscuits. Mix everything together. Spread over the cooked biscuit.

For the strawberry cream
Bring the liquid cream, sugar, mascarpone and vanilla to the boil in a saucepan, then add the gelatin leaves and let melt.
Then add the cocoa butter and the thick cream one after the other. Keep in the fridge for at least 1 hour. Beat with a mixer only when the mixture is completely cold.

Dressage
Spread the reconstituted biscuit crunch on the sponge finger. Place halved strawberries around a 16/18 cm circle.
Whip the cream with a mixer. Spread the cream on the walls over the strawberries.
Insert the biscuit and the crispy layer at the very bottom. Place strawberries inside, and smooth to the height of the circle with the rest of the cream.
Leave to rest for 30 minutes before finishing.
Prepare a whipped cream with vanilla to pipe on the edge. Place among red fruits, flowers and herbs from your vegetable garden.

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