Steps

• The day before: prepare the cream for the whipped cream! Heat the soy milk and pour it hot into your blender with the odorless coconut oil. Blend for at least 2 minutes, at maximum power. Leave it in the fridge overnight.
• Prepare the sponge cakes: in a mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In another container, mix the vinegar, oil, and plant-based milk. Pour this mixture over the first mixture and whisk together.
• Divide the dough into 4 portions (about 500 g of dough for each). In an 18 cm (7-inch) diameter sponge cake pan, bake 4 identical sponge cakes. For baking, it's 25 minutes at 180°C (355°F). Personally, I only have one pan, so I bake them one at a time. Mine is a silicone pan, so there's no need to grease it! Remove the sponge cakes from the pan and let them cool on a wire rack to avoid condensation.
• Prepare the pastry cream: Split the vanilla pods in half and collect the seeds. In a saucepan, heat 200 mL of plant-based milk with the coconut oil, vanilla seeds, and split vanilla pods. In a mixing bowl, combine the sugar, starch, and the remaining 50 mL of plant-based milk. Pour the boiling vanilla mixture over it and whisk. Return everything to your saucepan and bring to a boil while continuously whisking. Once the cream is cooked and very thick, stop the heat and transfer to a dish. Chill in the refrigerator.
• Prepare the strawberries: set aside 7-8 beautiful strawberries of the same size for decoration! Cut all the others into large cubes. Put half of the cubes to cook in a small saucepan, on low heat, with the sugar. Allow to cook for about 20 minutes so that the strawberries are nice and soft.
• Next, mix the cooked strawberries with the raw strawberries to have a compote that is both sweet and fresh at the same time ;)
• Prepare the soaking syrup: bring the water to a boil with the sugar so that it is well dissolved. Allow it to cool.
• Retrieve the whipped cream prepared the day before. Using an electric whisk, whip it into a chantilly cream. Add the icing sugar by sieving it and gently mix.
• Retrieve your pastry cream from the fridge; it should be nice and cold and set. Using an electric whisk, whip it to achieve a silky texture.
• Fold in the whipped cream into the pastry cream little by little, gently mixing with a spatula. And voila, your cream is ready! You can put it in a piping bag with a smooth or fluted nozzle, as you prefer :) Chill it in the fridge!
• Using a bread knife, cut off the domed part of the 4 sponge cakes, as we will not use them because we want straight layers.
• Begin the assembly: place the first sponge cake on your serving plate. Soak it with syrup using a brush. Place a third of the strawberry compote on top, in the center. Spread without reaching the edge (leave a centimeter all around without compote). Pipe a layer of cream about 1 cm thick everywhere, going right up to the edge.
• Place a second sponge cake on top and soak it with syrup as well. Repeat the process with another third of the strawberry compote and another layer of cream. Cover with the third sponge cake. Soak it with syrup in turn. Finally, add one more third of strawberry compote and a layer of cream.
• Finish with the fourth sponge cake layer. Soak it as well. Pipe the cream beautifully all over the top of the cake. Decorate the top with the whole strawberries that you had set aside.
• Using a spatula or a pastry cutter, smooth the edges of the cake to achieve that cream effect that doesn't quite cover the sponge layers completely.
• You can add some non-toxic flowers on top for decoration!