Prep Time: 45 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 pound (450 g) commercially prepared Genovese, pan di Spagna, or pound cake
- 2 2/5 cups (600 ml) heavy cream
- 1 3/4 pounds (800 g) strawberries, washed, drained and hulled
- 3 sheets fish glue (about a half ounce, or 15 grams), or a packet of unflavored gelatin
- 1/2 cup (50 g) powdered sugar
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- ** To Garnish The Zuccotto **
- 2/5 cup heavy cream
- Several attractive looking strawberries
Preparation:
Set the fish glue to soaking in cool water.Slice the cake into half-inch (1 cm) slices.
A hemispherical bowl 7-8 inches (18-20 cm) in diameter.
Quarter the strawberries and put them in a bowl with the granulated sugar. Let them rest for 15 minutes, and while they are resting slice the cake into half-inch thick (1 cm) slices), and use some of them to line the bowl.
Drain the juice from the strawberries into a small saucepan and stir a tablespoon of water into them. Squeeze the excess water from the sheets of fish glue and add them to the strawberry juice in the saucepan. Heat gently, stirring, until the glue dissolves (if you are using gelatin, use enough to thicken the volume of cream, dissolving it per the instructions on the package in the strawberry juice).
Whip the cream to fairly firm peaks, fold the strawberry gelatin into it, and then incorporate the strawberries.
Fill the bowl with the strawberry cream, smooth the filling with a spatula, and cover it with more slices of cake. Chill the zuccotto for at least 4 hours.
Come serving time, dip the mold in hot water, cover it with a serving plate and flip both; when you remove the bowl the zuccotto will remain on the plate. Whip the remaining cream and put it in a pastry bag with a starburst nozzle; decorate the base of the zuccotto with dabs of creamand strawberries, and arrange more sections of strawberry at the top of the zuccotto, in a starburst pattern, and decorate with a ring of whipped cream as well.
