How to make a strawberries and cream cake

Get out your vanilla beans

Split them in half lengthwise

Scrape out the beans using the back of a butter knife

Add to the 3/4 cups of sugar from the filling ingredients, and 2 cups of heavy cream.

Sprinkle the gelatin over 1/4 cup of cold heavy cream. I'm a pescatarean, so pork or beef gelatine is a no no for me, I'm using vegetarian gelatine. But you can use any unflavored gelatine you like.

Once the gelatine is set, and the cream is almost boiled, add the gelatine to the cream and stir untill it dissolves.

Strain the cream

Add the remaining cream and whisk. Chill it untill cold. Adding the gelatine to the cream helps in stabilizing it, so that when we whip it, it doesn't deflate later on

Ok now to the cake, grease the BASE ONLY of 2 eight inch cake pans and line it with parchement paper. Don't grease or line the sides!

In a CLEAN bowl, add the egg whites with the cream of tartar

Whisk on high untill frothy

Once frothy, gradually add 1 oz of sugar on low speed

Increase speed to high and whisk untill stiff peaks like that

Transfer to a seperate bowl

In the same bowl, place the yolks and 5 oz of sugar

Whisk for 2 minutes on high speed untill pale and thick

In the meantime, mix the flour with salt and baking powder

Once the yolks are pale and thick..

Add the water

And oil

And vanilla extract

Mix on high untill incorporated

Add the flour

Mix on medium untill incorporated

Add a 1/3 of the whites

Mix

Fold in the rest very carefully

Divide evenly amongst pans

Bake for 20-25 minutes in a preheated 325 F , 160 C oven or untill a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the center.

Let cool on a wire rack upside down immediately after taking out if the oven. Gravity will pull the cake down and keep it from deflating. If you grease the sides, the cake will hust fall out!

Once cooled, run a knife around the edges to loosen them up. Slice the cakes in half, so now you have 4 thin slices

Slice some of the strawberries, keep some for decorations on top

When the cream is cold, it will look for lack of better words...jiggly! Place it in a mixer bowl.

Whip the cream untill thick, 4 minutes. Any longer and you will end up with sweet vanilla butter...delicious on a muffin, but not for this recipe :)

This is what you want

Add a 1/4 cup of soft serve jam onto a layer of cake

Add strawberry slices, not too much

Add a generous layer of cream, repeat with the layers

Almost there...so it's a tad bit burned, still tasted divine :)

Add cream to the top and sides, dont worry about making the sides perfect

Because you will just coat them with the roughly chopped pistachios. Use walnuts or hazelnuts if you prefer :)

Pipe cream around and decorate with strawberry halves

A close up, notice the beans in the cream? I glazed the strawberries with some more jam to make them shine

Cut...and serve :)