Strawberry confit for cakes

Cooking method

1. Step 1:

   

   How do you make confit? Gather the ingredients. In spring and summer, fresh strawberries are best, of course — the layer will be more fragrant. The rest of the year, frozen berries work. If you use fresh ones, choose ripe, fragrant, sweet-tasting berries. You can use powdered or sheet gelatin.

2. Step 2:

   

   Soak the gelatin in 50 ml of cold water and let it swell for 10 minutes. If you have sheet gelatin, soak that in water too.

3. Step 3:

   

   If you're making confit from frozen berries like I am, thaw them first and save the juice they release. If you're using fresh berries, wash them and remove the stems.

4. Step 4:

   

   Put the strawberries in a saucepan, add the sugar, and pour in 30 ml of water.

5. Step 5:

   

   Blend everything with an immersion blender until smooth. A regular countertop blender works too. The important thing is that no whole, unblended pieces remain in the purée.

6. Step 6:

   

   For an even smoother purée without seeds, push it through a fine sieve.

7. Step 7:

   

   Set the saucepan over medium heat and, stirring, bring the purée to a boil. Boil for 1 minute, stirring, then take it off the heat.

8. Step 8:

   

   Immediately add the swollen gelatin to the hot purée and stir thoroughly so it dissolves completely. With sheet gelatin, lift it out of the water, squeeze it gently, add it to the strawberry purée, and stir. Let the mixture sit for a bit and cool slightly.

9. Step 9:

   

   The cooled confit can be poured straight onto the surface of a cake (the cake needs to be in a cake ring so the confit doesn't run off). In that case the confit should cool to room temperature so the hot purée doesn't melt the cake layers. After pouring it over the cake, refrigerate it so the confit sets.

10. Step 10:

    

    Confit can also go inside the cake as a layer. For that, you need to freeze it. Stretch plastic wrap tightly over one side of a cake ring of the size you want (7 to 9.5 inches / 18–24 cm, depending on how thick you want it — I show how in the video) and set it right away on a flat surface you'll freeze the confit on (a plate or board). Pour the slightly cooled purée inside and leave it to cool completely at room temperature.

11. Step 11:

    

    Then move it to the freezer for 3–4 hours. After that, the frozen berry layer is ready to use. I put mine on top of the cake, but you can set it inside between layers of cream. Enjoy!