For a few years now, I’ve been secretly obsessive about the berry chantilly cake at Whole Foods Market. (Whole Foods is owned by way of Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, additionally owns The Washington Post.) Tall and hanging, it boasts 3 layers and gleaming-white whipped cream topping elegantly garnished with a cluster of berries. Slice it, and you find extra berries and cream inside of.
Get the recipe: Berry Chantilly Cake
The cake seems festive however now not so fancy that it kind of feels inconceivable to make. And it tastes in reality, in reality excellent. Delicately candy cake is offset by way of wealthy however mild frosting and brightened by way of juicy recent berries. It seems like a party cake that doesn’t make you need to take a lengthy nap later on.
Since I were given presented to this cake — I will be able to’t bear in mind how it got here into my existence — I’ve most popular it over many pricier ones from fancier bakeries. In reality, whilst this cake is now not precisely affordable, it is nonetheless particularly reasonable, particularly while you imagine how a lot effort is going into making any from-scratch cake. Spending lower than $40 for a cake that may serve up to 20 that’s as scrumptious because it is stunning — and that you’ll be able to simply pick out up on a second’s understand — turns out to me like a lovely nice deal.
I had already came upon that the web obsession with this cake has ended in many DIY variations. And then I realized from a colleague that the girl who created it for Whole Foods is Chaya Conrad, who now runs the loved Bywater Bakery in New Orleans.
In 2005, Conrad was once operating on the Arabella Station Whole Foods on Magazine Street when she created the cake, which was once a right away hit. Within a couple of years, the cake unfold to Whole Foods places right through the South and Southwest, then national. During this early expansion spurt, Conrad went via a couple of revisions to make sure consistency.
The cake’s reputation grew, ensuing within the inevitable copycat recipes on-line.
Conrad, who speaks with a heat, welcoming, virtually songlike voice, informed me the foundation got here from her grandmother, who made one thing identical when Conrad was once rising up. But when creating the recipe, Conrad put her personal spin at the cake by way of including stabilized whipped cream frosting, so it might be displayed within the bakery case with out weeping.
After leaving Whole Foods in 2009, Conrad went on to paintings at any other widespread New Orleans grocery retailer, Rouses Markets, sooner than opening Bywater Bakery in 2017 — and has made a model of this cake at every forestall. At Bywater, Conrad now makes the cake with white almond cake layers, however the unique layers had been yellow cake, which was once what I used to be after.
Conrad promptly despatched me each variations, and I were given to paintings.
It was once straight away transparent to me that the cake Conrad at the start created for Whole Foods — whilst nonetheless scrumptious — has been changed fairly a bit. While the unique cake was once all butter, a cautious tasting in addition to a scan of the substances label showed that the Whole Foods model depended on oil. The layers of frosting of the Whole Foods cake I purchase are thinner than what Conrad described in our interview and how she makes it in her bakery, with every layer of frosting as thick because the cake layers. Likewise lacking is a beneficiant layer of berries that Conrad’s recipe options. Instead, my native Whole Foods makes use of what tastes like raspberry jam.
Conrad is sanguine in regards to the adjustments. As a former grocery bakery division head, she understands about mass manufacturing and dealing inside a finances. Butter is pricey, oil is a lot much less so. And the use of much less frosting, particularly as a result of mascarpone and heavy cream are expensive, may be a cost-control measure.
But she insists that plentiful berries are nonnegotiable — the brilliant, acidic notice enhances the wealthy, thick, dairy frosting. (On the shop’s web site, the picture nonetheless displays a cake generously festooned with recent berries in between the cake layers, as Conrad described to me. An image of a cake bought at a New Orleans Whole Foods by way of buddies confirmed quite a lot of entire berries as neatly.)
Armed with Conrad’s recipe, I set out to make the unique. That supposed tweaking it quite to paintings extra simply for the house prepare dinner, changing one of the most butter with impartial oil for a wet, soft crumb; the use of entire eggs as a substitute of setting apart yolks and whites; and quite upping the baking powder for a little extra upward thrust.
For the frosting, I made certain to practice Conrad’s cautious directions, which led me to pillowy clouds I sought after to tuck myself into. Her essential recommendation: Keep the whole thing — substances, mixer bowl and the attachments — as chilly as imaginable for so long as imaginable. If you might have house within the freezer, use it. Take the substances out of the fridge as you wish to have them, and now not a second faster. And if, as you’re whipping the substances, you to find that the bowl is warming up, as I did, slide a smaller bowl of ice water underneath the mixer bowl (in case your stand mixer lets in for that).
It’s likewise necessary to now not underwhip the frosting; you need to whip it till it’s the consistency of stiff whipped cream — virtually like Marshmallow Fluff — while you take a look at to unfold it. When frosting the perimeters of the cake, the whip will have to keep put, now not transfer even a hair. If you don’t whip sufficient, the frosting will weep.
While the theory of a frosting layer as thick as cake is jaw-droppingly spectacular, to make it paintings in a house kitchen in my non-industrial-size KitchenAid mixer — what’s a woman gotta do to get a Hobart round right here? — I had to lower the element quantities quite, retaining their proportions the similar. Even with this lowered amount, the frosting layers had been nonetheless beneficiant.
Having re-created Conrad’s just about unique model, I shared my small adjustments and requested for her tackle all of the variations of this cake out on this planet.
“It’s fun to watch this happen,” she mentioned in a telephone interview, and I may inform she was once smiling. “I love it — it’s fabulous. It’s wonderful to have people enjoy something you’ve had a hand in. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Does Conrad really feel even a little wistful to have it now not be attributed to her? “Look, it’s my cake, but I’ve written thousands of recipes by now. … It’s just food.”
As to what makes the cake so widespread, Conrad thinks it’s the vintage mixture of whipped cream and berries. “Buttercream is too sweet,” she says, however the texture you get with mascarpone, cream cheese and heavy cream is a really perfect foil for the tart, juicy fruit.
And whilst I’m neatly conscious about the cake’s reputation, I’m nonetheless blown away by way of its succeed in. To wit, my husband had an appointment with our ophthalmologist a few weeks in the past and was once chatting together with her about what I’ve been operating on. He discussed a summer-long cake exploration.
“This wouldn’t be the Whole Foods berry chantilly cake?” she requested. When my husband informed her that, certainly, it was once — admittedly, he was once a little speechless from the randomness of her bet — she informed him that her circle of relatives loves this cake such a lot, they purchase most effective a small slice of it a week, which all of them percentage. “Otherwise,” she mentioned, “we’d be eating an entire cake on a weekly basis.”
While I’m thrilled to be in a position to make a model shut to Conrad’s unique, I’ll nonetheless be tempted to slip the Whole Foods one into my grocery cart when the yearning hits and I’m brief on time. I believe that will be simply positive with Conrad. “I just want everybody to enjoy it,” she says.
Get the recipe: Berry Chantilly Cake