PrintStrawberry Shortcake
JEP's question about whipped cream got me thinking about strawberry shortcake (I know it's winter, but a girl can dream...). There are so many different versions -- sponge cake, angel food, biscuits. I like it best with pound cake, very lightly sweetened whipped cream and the juiciest strawberries I can find. What about you? What's your ideal strawberry shortcake?
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19 Comments:
a light white cake (not quite sponge cake), fresh whipped cream, a little strawberry preserves, and good strawberries... in louisiana, it was a biscuit-based cake, but now i am hooked on the perverse strawberry shortcake and love it!
bmorecupcake at 10:12AM on 02/08/08
A like mine with a sweetened biscuit. No cake, not ever! And very juicy, fresh strawberries.
Strawberry shortcakes's one of my favorite desserts.
KarynMC at 11:34AM on 02/08/08
Now I'm craving. Fresh strawberries on a biscuit loaded with fresh whipped cream.
ride&cook at 12:37PM on 02/08/08
I like mine with no cake or bread or anything -- just macerated strawberries -- and topped with ice cold, lightly sweetened cream (unwhipped).
Okay. So that's not shortcake. My next most favorite is tres leches cake topped with fresh, slightly macerated berries. Heaven on earth.
Otherwise, if it MUST be more of a traditional shortcake, I prefer something fairly dense, like pound cake or real shortcakes (sweetened shortening biscuits or scones). Do NOT care for it made with a light airy cake, such as angel food or sponge, although I will generally eat that way it if it's served.
And it's so delicious made with a custard-filled bundt cake!
LoCo at 12:49PM on 02/08/08
LoCo - you're after my own heart! Tres leches was my wedding cake, and you're right, with strawberries it is sooooooo gooooooood!
CookiePie at 12:56PM on 02/08/08
Anything but angel food cake. Might as well have rice cakes. No flavor, and strange textures. I don't see the point.
PerkyMac at 1:01PM on 02/08/08
Cookie! Wow! A wedding cake??? Fantastic! Never would have thought of that in a million years. Was it a small wedding? Did it the construction "elevation" (multiple tiers)? If so, how did they do that without it collapsing into a pile of mush?
Tell me more! There's a wedding in our family's future... I might have to press for this!
LoCo at 1:43PM on 02/08/08
We had this discussion just this morning at...of all places...the gym. Our cycle instructor loves individual shortcakes using biscuits but a fellow member loves to bake a full-scale strawberry shortcake. I OTOH, have no preference, I like them all. We get beautiful strawbs from a place nearby called Plant City. They are incredible. And that season is coming up! I'm starting to see some strawbs in better stores even now!
chiff0nade at 2:13PM on 02/08/08
Thanks LoCo! It wasn't a traditional wedding cake -- as you mentioned, you can't really stack them (although if you wanted to do a tiered thing, you could place them on different plates and place the plates at different levels, on cake stands and such -- or put them on something like this: http://www.sugarcraft.com/catalog/wedding/Wcakestands-WILTON.htm#cake%20disp).
It's kind of funny how it came to be: I was married in Mexico (my husband's parents are expats living in Mazatlan, so we had it there). We tasted several cakes from the best bakery in town, and they were... awful. Really, really terrible. I was moping around, trying to think of a way to make my own wedding cake, when my mother-in-law thought of tres leches. Turns out, it's actually traditional to serve it at Mexican weddings! The same bakery with the bad regular cakes actually made fantastic tres leches, so we just ordered up several, bought beautiful Mexican dishes to serve them on, and all was right with the world! Our guests absolutely loved it -- even self-professed non-dessert people devoured it.
When's the wedding for you?
CookiePie at 2:27PM on 02/08/08
Really good angel food cake with fresh macerated strawberries and fresh whipped cream is awesome! Also, fresh scones or biscuits can be a wonderful dessert too.
FigswithBri at 3:56PM on 02/08/08
Angel food cake, definitely. It's got to be layered cake, whipped cream, strawberries, etc, up. The first time I had it like that was a million years ago at Cafe La Fortuna on the UWS in Manhattan. It almost floated. Now I want all my strawberry shortcake to float.
chisai at 4:02PM on 02/08/08
Homemade sweetened shortcake biscuits still warm from the oven, slice the biscuit in half, place the halves in a bowl, spoon on a generous amount of slightly sweetened juicy sliced strawberries and finally a dollop of lightly sweetened real whipped cream or instead of WC, pour half & half around the bisuits---consume privately so you can savor every bite without conversation!
JEP at 5:54PM on 02/08/08
Cookie, I'm astonished I didn't know about the tres leches tradition in MX. I'm in So Calif, and have had much exposure to the culture through countless Mexican friends over the years. Yet I'd never even heard of tres leches until recently! I am not a big dessert person, but I've never been able to turn it down since it discovered me!
The wedding is at least a year away, probably about 18 months -- no date yet -- so I've got time to exert undue matronly influence. Er... campaign! Er... make helpful suggestions! I think I'll start by mastering a recipe and then serving it frequently at family gatherings... [evil laugh ensues]
LoCo at 6:03PM on 02/08/08
Plain angel food cake, only in a pinch, but toasted or grilled angel food is a different beast altogether. The most common thing hereabouts is the little store-bought sponge cakes that I only a few years ago discovered are called Mariannes, the kind with a ridge around the edge. Myself, I like a biscuit dough that's slightly sweet. And the strawberries are better sweetened with brown sugar.
As to tres leches, here in St. Louis, we are seeing more and more of it at the small Mexican restaurants that don't get crowds of Anglos. Many of our restaurant owners and customers are from Michocoan, Mexico, and I suspect it's a regional dish. Strawberry jam, rather than fresh berries, alas.
lemons at 11:43PM on 02/08/08
barefoot contessa Strawberry Country Cake is the best I ever had. I make this when strawberries are coming out our ears and people dig it. The whipped cream is sweetened and works well.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_21017,00.html
JerzeeTomato at 7:59AM on 02/09/08
Good luck, LoCo! I have a recipe - you're welcome to it, just tell me your email address :)
JEP - as usual your description made my mouth water! Now I really can't wait for strawberry season... where is that biscuit recipe...
And thanks Jerzee -- I'm going to try that recipe too! Can't have too many versions of strawberry shortcake, right?
Thanks for sharing, everyone! You gave me a bit of summer on a cold winter's weekend :)
CookiePie at 10:46AM on 02/09/08
I'm a big fan of the sweet biscuit strawb shortcake.
BUT I love tres leches! I can't wait to have it with strawberries!
Oh, and LoCo, my friends recently had a wedding and tres leches was
their wedding cake, too. They ordered 5 cakes from a local Cuban restaurant. Delicious. We weren't surprised by the non-traditional cake because they are serious food devotees.
Also, if you can't have it at the reception, you could always serve it at the rehearsal dinner or have a groom's cake in addition to the wedding cake--you'll see which is the hit.
wookie at 3:29PM on 02/09/08
my great grans recipe for hot milk cake is the only one I use for strawberry shortcake, not really a sponge cake or a cake cake more of a mix of both. But then I'm not much into baking, and that recipe I've used for everything from pumpkin muffins to pina colada cake.
huney_bumper at 10:05AM on 02/16/08
sponge cake, strawberries with good balsamic and grand marnier, pinch of sugar fresh whipped cream
sustarz at 2:13AM on 02/19/08