The kittens rampaging through my house knocked an old issue of Cook’s Illustrated off a shelf–May/June 2024. I flipped through it, on my way to reshelving it, and stopped at a recipe for Fresh Fruit Cream Cake.

Something about the phrase “cream cake” just sounds irresistable to me, so I read (or re-read) the article and discovered the author Andrea Geary started with a cross between a castella cake (which I hadn’t heard of) and a chiffon cake. The technique sounded different–and interesting! I decided I must try it and find out what it was like.

I suspect the reason I didn’t make the cake when I first got the issue is that I am not really a fan of fluffy things with fruit on top. I have always looked dubiously at recipes for pavlova, for instance. But I do like strawberries with shortcake and whipped cream, and I thought that the right cake would be just the thing for strawberry season.

(It isn’t strawberry season now, obviously. I’m just thinking ahead.)

So I tried making a half recipe. This was a bit complicated since the cake is meant to be tall, but I worked it out by using a 6″ round instead of a 9″. It was close enough. I also didn’t bake it for quite as long.

I’m not going to give the recipe, since I don’t feel right copying out a recipe from a magazine. However, I’m going to tell you that there is only a cup of cake flour per six eggs. The recipe relies on whipped egg whites, uses a water bath in the oven, and bakes for around an hour. The result is a very fine-grained, fluffy, spongy cake (all those eggs). Not dense like pound cake, and not crumbly-delicate like most butter cakes. This one is flavored with vanilla.

I’m also going to tell you that the whipped cream that fills and tops the cake is made with 5 tsp instant pudding mix (it MUST be instant) per 2 1/2 cups of heavy cream. There is also some sugar, and I added vanilla extract as well because I didn’t think the pudding would add enough vanilla flavor. I found the pudding mix did not incorporate as well as it should have–there was a yellow sticky smudge on the side of the bowl–but I think it did help keep the whipped cream from oozing.

I enjoyed trying something new. The cake was pretty good and will probably make a really nice strawberry cream cake come April. But I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to displace any of our preferred birthday cakes.