For Jeannie DelGreco, a small question grew into a full-on mystery. It began with a weekly card game.
“My 77-year-old mother has played cards every Friday with her New Iberia elementary school friends for years,” said DelGreco, a real estate agent in Lafayette. “And whoever hosts always provides dessert.”
DelGreco’s mother-in-law, Lena, joins the card game whenever she is in town visiting from New York. Such was the case earlier this year when, midway through the game, a Gentilly cake from Rouses Market was served. Lena loved it.
“She loved it so much, she requested it for her birthday in February,” DelGreco laughed.
When the cake was once again a hit at Lena’s birthday, DelGreco’s mother requested the same cake for her birthday one month later.
That is when things went sideways. DelGreco was tasked with picking up the birthday cake for her mother’s celebration, but she tried to cut a corner. She was closer to a different market than to Rouses, she said. “I knew they had a Chantilly cake and I figured it was the same thing!”
As soon as they tasted the cake, DelGreco realized there was a difference. That's when she wrote to Curious Louisiana with her question.
“We liked Rouses’ cake better, but can you tell us the difference between the Chantilly and Gentilly cakes?" she asked. "And which came first — which is the original and which is the knockoff?”
Layers of history
Discussions of Chantilly cake in southern Louisiana often trace its history back to Chaya Conrad, owner of Bywater Bakery in New Orleans.
Conrad is an important part of the cake’s story. But the prolific baker is quick to dispel any rumors that she invented the popular cake.
“Chantilly is whipped cream,” she said, “and I certainly didn’t invent whipped cream or cake with whipped cream and berries in it.”
In fact, the cake has been popular for more than a century, predominantly in the southern United States.
An 1891 article from the Weekly Monitor in Mayfield, Kentucky, describes “little rounds of paste (short for pastry, it seems) daintily browned in the oven with strawberry preserve and heaped with a spoonful of whipped cream.”
Whipped cream and fresh berries are the hallmarks of Chantilly cake.
No matter the century, a Chantilly cake recipe usually seems to feature some variation on cake, cream and berries. A recipe for the icing on a lemon Chantilly cake in the March 25, 1962, Times-Picayune includes only heavy cream, packaged white frosting mix and finely grated lemon rind.
In modern times, however, that icing is usually some selection or mixture of cream cheese, confectioner’s sugar, mascarpone cheese, heavy cream and almond cream that is used with fresh berries, typically spread between layers of yellow cake.
This is the case for Conrad’s Chantilly cake recipe, which came from her grandmother, and where the modern craze for the cake originated.
Mother of the modern Chantilly cake
In short, the Chantilly cake has been around for more than a century. While historically there has been room for interpretation — there’s even a Chantilly cake in Hawaii that more resembles a German chocolate cake — most versions feature mascarpone cream, cream cheese, and berries between layers of yellow cake.
Regionally, almond cake has become a popular alternative.
A sign inside the Bywater Bakery, home of the Chantilly cake.
Conrad has been baking cakes as a job since she was 14 years old. Too young to work in Vermont, she added a few years to her age to get a position at the local bakery. As a young adult, she moved to New Orleans and eventually ran the baked goods department at Whole Foods’ Arabella Station location.
In 2005, she adapted her grandmother’s recipe to create the grocery chain’s first Berry Chantilly Cake. The cake became so popular that it is sold nationally at all Whole Foods locations.
The chain even copyrighted the name. This became a challenge for Conrad when, in 2010, she became bakery director across all of Rouses Supermarkets.
Eager to introduce a version of her grandmother’s cake to Rouses, Conrad created a solution.
“My office was right off of Gentilly Boulevard” in New Orleans, she said, “and eventually I noticed the obvious: ‘Hey, Gentilly sounds like Chantilly. This is perfect for New Orleans!’”
Conrad even altered the recipe. Whereas Whole Foods’ version featured a yellow cake, Rouses’ Gentilly creation used white almond cake. She loved the variation so much that, when she opened her own Bywater Bakery in 2017, she stuck with almond.
Chantilly cake craze
“Of course, the link between what we did at Whole Foods, Rouses, and now Bywater Bakery is that the cake always has layers of mascarpone whipped cream and fresh fruit,” Conrad said.
Even as the national exposure of Whole Foods elevated Chantilly cake to superstar status — via countless recreations on social media, and even a Berry Chantilly latte — the chain’s cake was victim to a public revolt last year when a thick layer of jam temporarily replaced fresh berries. Whole Foods quickly changed the recipe back.
Each iteration of the cake has its fans. Whole Foods fans and countless social media content creators have pledged their allegiance to the most common Chantilly cake made with yellow cake with mascarpone whipped cream and fresh fruit. Connoisseurs of the Gentilly cake, such as DelGreco's family of casual card players, are seeking white almond cake, also with whipped cream and fruit. And, as the years go on, new options continue to emerge, such as Conrad's popular Bywater Bakery variety.
Overall, the woman who brought Chantilly cake back into the public eye doesn’t mind alterations to the recipe she made famous.
“I’m sure Whole Foods and Rouses have made changes and additions since I was there,” Conrad said, “and I even make a lemon, a coconut and a chocolate strawberry variety at my own bakery. Evolution can be good. It's evidence that people love the cake enough to spend time thinking up new versions.”
