logo
Don't let the season go by without making strawberry shortcake

Don't let the season go by without making strawberry shortcake

Independent24-06-2025
On a recent visit to see my son at the University of California, Davis, I wandered into a lab at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science … as one does. A bunch of students were preparing for a tasting to evaluate some of the strawberry breeds they have been developing.
My food nerd heart swelled, and for the first time in decades, I missed school.
When strawberries are in season, it is incumbent upon us to make the most of those fleeting weeks.
And I can't think of a better way to put them to use than in a classic strawberry shortcake. If you can find wild strawberries, or at least really flavorful ones from a farmers market (or if you are getting your PhD in food studies with a concentration in strawberries in California), this treat is nothing short of heavenly.
There is nothing difficult about strawberry shortcake. A few components come together in a gorgeous stack of sweetness.
First, the biscuits
I like my shortcake biscuits slightly sweet, but not overly sugary. The natural sweetness in the sliced strawberries will be augmented with a bit of sugar to amp up those ruby red juices. Plus there's the whipped cream, which can be as sweet or restrained as you like.
Cut out the biscuits as close together as you can, with as little dough left behind on the cutting board as possible. Yes, you can roll the scraps up and cut out another couple of circles, but the more you handle the dough the less tender it becomes.
The tops of the biscuits are brushed with a bit of half-and-half or milk and sprinkled with sugar before they go into the oven, resulting in a beautifully browned and slightly crunchy top.
Make biscuits with some height to them, as you will be cutting them horizontally and then filling them with the strawberries and cream.
The layers
I like a double-decker strawberry shortcake, which definitely requires a knife and fork.
To assemble: The bottom half of the biscuit goes first, then some whipped cream, then strawberries. Then the top half of the biscuit. And then, yes, more whipped cream and more strawberries.
The addition of sour cream to the whipped cream is a pastry chef hack that I learned over the years. It adds more richness, stability and body to the whipped cream, and gives the whole shebang a whole other layer of lushness.
Strawberry Shortcake
Serves 6
Ingredients:
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, sifted
6 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided
4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
¾ cup half-and-half or whole milk
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 pints (4 cups) fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
For the Whipped Cream:
1 cup heavy cream, chilled
2 tablespoons sour cream, crème fraiche or mascarpone (optional)
2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Very lightly flour a clean counter or work surface.
2. Combine the flour with 2 tablespoons of the granulated sugar, the baking powder, baking soda, salt, and lemon zest in a medium bowl. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender or use your fingers to rub it into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Or, pulse the butter into the flour mixture in a food processor.
3. Add the ¾ cup half-and-half or milk and stir until just barely combined. Turn the mixture onto the lightly floured surface. Use your hands to lightly mix the dough until it barely holds together. Pat it out into a circle or a rectangle 1/2-inch thick.
4. Use a 3-inch round biscuit or cookie cutter to cut out the shortcakes, keeping them as close together as possible to minimize extra dough. Use a sharp biscuit cutter rather than a glass, and press down and pull straight up, without twisting; twisting will hinder their rising as they bake. If you dip the biscuit cutter in flour between each biscuit cutting, it will help prevent sticking. Collect the scraps and re-pat them out into a ½-inch disk, and cut out another 2 or 4 circles when you are done. Try to handle the dough as little as possible.
5. Butter a baking sheet or spray it with nonstick cooking spray. Transfer half the biscuits to the sheet. Brush the tops with a bit of the melted butter. Top the butter-brushed dough with the remaining cut-out biscuits. Brush the tops with a bit of milk or half-and-half. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of sugar over the shortcakes.
6. Bake for about 15 minutes, until light golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
7. Meanwhile, put the berries in a medium bowl and sprinkle with the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar, or to taste. Toss with a fork, and lightly crush some of the berries so you have some different textures going on and some of the juices are released. Let the berries sit for at least 15 minutes.
8. Once the berries are macerating, make the whipped cream. Place the heavy cream, sour cream, confectioners' sugar and vanilla in a clean bowl (if you chill it first, the cream will whip up faster.)
9. Use a whisk or a handheld electric mixer on high speed to beat the cream until it starts to form stiff peaks. Refrigerate until ready to use.
10. Just before serving, cut each biscuit crosswise. Place the bottom halves on plates, layer on some strawberries, then some whipped cream. Replace the top of the shortcake, then spoon over some more strawberries and whipped cream. Serve immediately.
___
Katie Workman writes regularly about food for The Associated Press. She has written two cookbooks focused on family-friendly cooking, ' Dinner Solved!' and 'The Mom 100 Cookbook.' She blogs at https://themom100.com/. She can be reached at Katie@themom100.com.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

New research explains why wrinkles develop with age
New research explains why wrinkles develop with age

The Independent

time3 hours ago

  • The Independent

New research explains why wrinkles develop with age

Scientists at Binghamton University have experimentally shown that skin wrinkles as it ages due to a process where it stretches laterally and then contracts, forming creases. Associate Professor Guy German explained that the skin's mechanical properties degrade with age, causing increased lateral stretching driven by inherent forces within the skin. The research involved using a low-force tensometer on skin samples from individuals aged 16 to 91, providing experimental evidence for previously theoretical models of skin aging. This new finding complements existing knowledge that genetics, disease, sun exposure, and repeated muscle movements also contribute to the formation of wrinkles. Published in the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, the study did not investigate methods to prevent these newly identified forces, though external factors like sun damage are acknowledged.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps review – Marvel regains buoyancy with wacky superhero family sitcom
The Fantastic Four: First Steps review – Marvel regains buoyancy with wacky superhero family sitcom

The Guardian

time3 hours ago

  • The Guardian

The Fantastic Four: First Steps review – Marvel regains buoyancy with wacky superhero family sitcom

Baby steps, in fact. Marvel has rediscovered the lighthearted dimension of superheroism, the buoyant fun and the primary colour comedy – as opposed to the wiseacre supercool of, say, Guardians of the Galaxy. Here it has amusingly brought back the Fantastic Four in their early years (but not to the very beginning) in a retro-futurist version of early 1960s New York where no one smokes. Hilariously, the Four are of course living together as a family in a bizarre hi-tech apartment, like something in TV's Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie, often wearing their comfy blue pyjama-style outfits. Scientist Dr Reed 'Mr Fantastic' Richards, whose nickname rather oversells his peculiar superpower of stretchiness, is played by Pedro Pascal in a lighter vocal register than usual; he's married to Sue 'Invisible Woman' Storm – played by Vanessa Kirby. They are basically mom and dad to a couple of guys who are to all intents and purposes teen boys: Sue's brother Johnny 'Human Torch' Storm (played by Joseph Quinn) and superstrong Ben Grimm played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach. They are essentially two grown men who live with Reed and Sue in a cheerfully infantilised state, and what complicates things is that Sue is now suddenly pregnant long after the couple had given up hoping. (There is apparently no IVF in this alt-reality universe.) So the question arises: will the baby have superpowers doubled, superpowers squared? Is that how it works? Or will it be a kind of bittersweet affliction like that stoically accepted by Ben Grimm? And talking of the consequences of love, Ben Grimm is poignantly in love with a local schoolteacher (Natasha Lyonne) who is maybe unwilling to overlook his granite appearance, and it looks very much as if Johnny is having some amorous chemistry with the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) who arrives on Earth as the emissary of the colossally destructive Galactus (Ralph Ineson) – who says he might spare Planet Earth for a terrible price. The result hangs together as an entertaining spectacle in its own innocent self-enclosed universe of fantasy wackiness, where real people actually read the comic books that have made mythic legends of the real Four. I have expressed my dissatisfaction recently with superhero films which have to finish with AI cities collapsing – and, yes, this is what happens here, but at least this finale emerges from the established story premise, and works well with the tone of uncomplicated fun. (I was once in a minority for liking the now all-but-forgotten Ioan Gruffudd iteration of Fantastic Four for very similar reasons.) There is much incidental fun to be had in luxuriating in the film's hallucinatory 60s production design, down to the imaginary movies being shown in cinemas in Times Square: The Emperor's Twin from Disney and an Alistair MacLean-type adventure called Subzero Intel. Then when the baby is born, Ben Grimm earnestly brandishes his copy of Dr Benjamin Spock's Baby and Child Care, a permissive book which conservatives were later to blame for raising a generation of undisciplined slackers. Certainly, Kirby's Sue Storm looks very good for a sleep-deprived new mother with no childcare staff other than one small goggle-eyed robot. As for paterfamilias Reed, he always wears his tie, though sometimes tucks it into his shirt. Overall a very silly movie – though it's keeping the superhero genre aloft. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is out on 24 July in Australia and the UK and on 25 July in the US.

Betelguese: Scientists discover why dazzling star changes brightness
Betelguese: Scientists discover why dazzling star changes brightness

BBC News

time4 hours ago

  • BBC News

Betelguese: Scientists discover why dazzling star changes brightness

Astronomers say they have confirmed why Betelgeuse, one of the night sky's most dazzling stars, regularly changes brightness. For the first time, they have discovered a much smaller companion star that is orbiting the red to new research, this 'little buddy' has a mass around 1.5 times greater than our say its passage across Betelgeuse's face causes a 400 day cycle of dimming, as well as another one that lasts for nearly six years. What have experts discovered? Betelgeuse is more than 10,000 times brighter than our Sun, and as a result, its blinding light makes spotting anything nearby say that they long suspected that Betelgeuse might have a star nearby and are delighted with the new turned to the the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii to prove their a technique called speckle imaging, they put together many images to overcome issues that Earth's atmosphere causes telescopes that are based on the ground. Steve Howell, a NASA scientist who led the research team, said: "Previous papers that predicted Betelgeuse's companion believed that no one would likely ever be able to image it."The companion star is around four times the distance from Betelgeuse as the Earth is from the to the US research centre NOIRLab, which operates the Gemini Observatory, the discovery is the first time such a close companion star has been detected orbiting a supergiant. What is Betelgeuse? According to the International Gemini Observatory, Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the night sky, and the closest red supergiant to in the constellation of Orion, people have observed Betelgeuse with the naked eye for thousands of years. It has a huge volume, and is around 1,000 times bigger than our Sun. It's thought to only be 10-million-years-old, however, due to its large mass it has evolved quickly and is late in its life.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store