This fresh Berry Chantilly Cake with it's moist vanilla cake layers, chantilly cream, and fresh berries is the perfect dessert for spring and summer celebrations!

What is Chantilly Cream?

Chantilly cream originated in France centuries ago, and has been a favorite addition to pastries and cakes ever since. It is simply a fancy name for sweetened whipped cream-and it's delicious!

Although we have many cakes in our Recipes section that call for sweetened whipped cream in the filling, we didn't realize that we were making Chantilly cream ;0) This is a new term for us!

Chantilly cream is made by combining whipped heavy cream, a bit of confectioners sugar (some bakers use granulated), and a bit of vanilla extract for flavor.

It is an amazing sweetened whipped cream filling and topping for fruit and desserts!

Variations of Chantilly Cream...

Many delicious variations of Chantilly cream have popped up over the years. Some bakers keep it sweet and simple as described above, while others add in mascarpone cheese, cream cheese or a combination of both to create a slightly richer and more stable cream.

For our Chantilly cream recipe today, we are folding a mixture of sweetened, softened cream cheese into a freshly whipped batch of whipped cream.

This adds a wonderful creaminess and slightly thickens the consistency while still resulting in a very light and airy filling. It is SO good!

Vanilla Cake Layers

For our cake layers, we are using our Vanilla Velvet Cake recipe. We love this super soft and moist vanilla cake which has a lovely texture thanks to the cream cheese and buttermilk in the cake batter.

Our Vanilla Buttermilk Cake and Vanilla Bean Cake recipes or our Yellow Cake from Scratch our Yellow Birthday Cake recipes would be great options as well.

If you prefer cake mix, try our White Almond Sour Cream Cake or White Cake- Doctored Mix with this recipe!

How to Make Berry Chantilly Cake

1. Our Berry Chantilly Cake is not only moist, light, and flavorful, but it is also so beautiful when sliced!
2. This dessert consists of vanilla cake layers, Chantilly cream, and fresh berries- we are using sliced strawberries and blueberries although raspberries are often used as well.
3. You can find the full, printable recipe further down in this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!
4. *Note that we are using a scratch vanilla cake recipe, but you can substitute your favorite white or vanilla box cake mix recipe if you'd like!
5. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour three 8 inch pans, adding a circle of parchment or wax paper to the bottom of each pan.
6. Flour Mixture: In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt for 30 seconds and set aside.
7. Combine Wet Ingredients: In another bowl, add the milk, oil, and vanilla extract. Set aside.
8. Butter & Cream Cheese: In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter and cream cheese and mix at medium speed until smooth.
9. Sugar: Gradually add the sugar and mix at medium speed for 2-3 minutes.
10. Eggs: Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing until the yellow of the yolk disappears.
11. Adding Wet & Dry Mixture: With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the milk mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture (We did 3 additions of the dry mixture, 2 additions of wet). Then, slightly increase speed until combined.
12. Do not mix above medium speed or over mix the cake batter. Divide the batter between the three pans.
13. Time to Bake!: Bake at 325 degrees F for 25-28 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached.
14. Let cool for 5-10 minutes in the pans on a wire rack before turning out.

How to Make Chantilly Cream

1. The Chantilly cream for our Berry Chantilly Cake has the lightness of whipped cream, but a bit more stability thanks to the sweetened cream cheese folded in.
2. It is the perfect complement to the fresh fruit in our filling, and you can pipe simple borders and accents with it as well.
3. We like to prepare the Chantilly Cream when our cake layers are baked, cooled, and ready to decorate.
4. Chill the Bowl & Beaters/Whisk Attachment: Freeze your mixing bowl and beaters 15 minutes before whipping the cream (30 minutes if chilling in the refrigerator). 
5. Beat the heavy cream: Using either a stand mixer with a whisk attachment or a hand mixer, beat the heavy cream on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form. 
6. Stiff Peak Stage: You have reached stiff peak stage when you lift the beater and the cream stands straight up forming a peak. Keep in the refrigerator while completing the next step.  

7. Cream Cheese Mixture: In another bowl combine the softened cream cheese, powdered sugar and vanilla extract.  Mix until very smooth.  We did this with our hand mixer.

8. Using a rubber spatula, I gently folded the cream cheese mixture into the freshly whipped cream.
9. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

Assembling the Berry Chantilly Cake

1. Place the first Vanilla Cake Layer on the cake pedestal and spread with a fairly thick layer of Chantilly cream.
2. Top with sliced strawberries and blueberries. I then topped with a very thin layer of whipped cream.

3. Add the second cake layer and repeat. Finish with the third cake layer and lightly press down. Fill in any gaps between the cake layers with Chantilly cream.

4. Frost the cake with Chantilly cream using an offset spatula. I like to smooth over it with a bench scraper also.
5. After applying the first layer of frosting, I like to chill it in the freezer for about 10-15 minutes. This is optional but is helpful to firm everything up.

6. Apply the next layer of frosting as needed and smooth over with your bench scraper of spatula.
7. Whipped frosting does not smooth in the same way that buttercream frostings or cream cheese frostings do.
8. For a smoother finish, I find it helpful to glide over the chilled, frosted cake with a metal bench scraper or spatula that has been warmed under hot water.

Decorating the Chantilly Cake

1. After smoothing the frosted sides of our cake, I swirled a little extra frosting on top of the cake using a small offset spatula. Chantilly cream is just fun to swirl around- it is so light and fluffy!
2. I topped things off with a few whole strawberries and blueberries, and piped a few stars here and there using a Wilton 6B french tip. (You could also use any large star tip).
3. I also piped a shell border around the base of the cake using a 1M large star tip. We had plenty of Chantilly Cream for the filling, frosting, and decorative accents here and there.

I love the simplicity of this cake and design. It's the kind of cake you just want to dive right into ;0) We hope that you enjoy it!

More Fruity Cakes to Try!

We just love fresh, light, and fruity cakes! We've made so many favorites over the years.

We're sharing some more of our light and fruity go-to cake recipes below, but you can find many more here!: Favorite Cake Recipes for Spring and Summer!

Strawberry Pound Cake

Lemon Blueberry Cake

Lemon Velvet Cake

Peaches & Cream Cake

Pineapple Cake

Orange Dreamsicle Cake

Enjoy the Recipe!

Thanks so much for stopping by. If you give our Berry Chantilly Cake a try, we would love for you to leave a comment and photo below!