Vietnamese Sponge Cake

After making LOTS of very sweet buttercream frosted yellow cakes, I've gotten a pretty good recipe combo down, but it is still very standard and super sweet. I tend to like that stuff, it reminds me of cake being served after church and hoping for the piece with the most frosting. I know most others don't like it, and baking a variety of cakes is what sent me to learn to decorate them. So when my friend Esther's birthday approached, I decided to try something different. Esther is a dear friend of mine who when cake comes to mind prefers a non sweet asian style cake, probably with fresh fruit. She ended up giving birth to her first son a few days before her birthday, and I thought that this year it would be easy to let her birthday go by unnoticed, so I wanted to try something special. I decided to learn how to make a Vietnamese style sponge cake (which I believe is also a French style).

I did some googling, and I decided to try this recipe. Now, as you might have noticed from my post on Emeline's cake....if I actually have an event to make a cake for, especially if it's not something I've done before, I absolutely must test it out first. I thought this had to be true with a sponge cake, because I figured if that went wrong, it would be a rubbery mess unworthy to serve to anyone. So I followed the instructions to a T and made a first draft.

The sponge came out beautifully on my first try. It looked just the right color and texture. Instead of making a two layer, I just sliced the one layer and frosted it up with the recipes filling of strawberry mouse, whipped cream topping and garnished with strawberries. Here it is:
I didn't try any fancy decorating, cause I wasn't sure what I could pull off with whipped cream. I decided to wing it with a shell border, but that didn't turn out looking much like shells, but it gave me an idea of what it is like to pipe with whipped cream. It had fallen a bit by the time I got to piping, so I knew what needed to be different for next time. It was also surprisingly easy to get a smooth finish with my spatula, and I was very happy with that!

So as Esther's actual birthday approached, I doubled the sponge cake recipe to make a two layer version. The cakes turned out nicely again, and I just did the same filling and frosting. This time I decided to put on some drop flower accents.
Esther and the fam said it tasted great, so I was happy. It was so fun to learn something new and have it turn out well, as well as to give a fun gift to my awesome friend!