Dennis Weaver
How to Cut Your Strawberry Prep Time in Half
When strawberries are good, use them every chance you get. Use them on cereal, on cake, with milk and honey—even on chocolate ice cream. They’re good on everything from salads to shortcakes.
Real shortcakes are biscuit-like but richer. They are made with eggs and sugar and cream or milk. But they are crisp like a biscuit, not soft and soggy like a cake.
You’ll love the contrast–a crisp biscuit, succulent strawberries, and the whipped cream. It’s like making a strawberry pie with a good, crisp crust, but a lot less work.
You can make them with a just-add-water biscuit mix. Simply add sugar and milk to the mix. Se the recipe with directions. It works great.
Three Ways to Cut Your Prep Time in Half
- Use a Just-Add-Water Biscuit Mix - To use a biscuit mix to make shortcakes, see the next section. You can drop them on a sheet—like in the image here—or roll them and cut like biscuits. It only takes minutes.
- Strawberry Slicer - You’ll cut your prep time in half and your presentation will be prettier with a strawberry slicer.
- Use a Straw - A plastic straw is the quickest, best way to hull strawberries. You’ll waste less berry than with a knife and they’ll look better too.
Shortcake Recipe
- 3 cups just-add-water biscuit mix
- 2 large eggs
- Milk or cream
- 1/3 cup sugar
- Measure the mix into a medium bowl.
- Add the eggs to a 2-cup measuring cup. Add enough milk to make just over 3/4 cup of liquid.
- Add the sugar and whisk the liquids and sugar together.
- Make the biscuits per package directions
- To shape your biscuits, you can use a scoop or a cutter. Add a little extra milk to make it a stiff, sticky dough. Then, use an ice cream scoop and scoop mounds onto your cookie sheet. The shortcakes at the top were made that way. The result is the roughhewn shape that you see. Pat the dough to 3/4 inches thick to make nice tall shortcakes. Use cookie cutter and make traditionally shaped biscuits. Those that you see here were made with a cutter about 1 1/2 inches in diameter.
Use a round cutter about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Pat the dough to 3/4 inches thick to make nice tall shortcakes.
With the extra sugar, the biscuits will brown a little quicker. We turn the temperature down 25 degrees and watch the time. They’ll usually come out a minute or two earlier than what the package says even with the temperature down.
Use full-size biscuits for a large strawberry shortcake. Try making some mini biscuits about an inch-and-a-half in diameter for a more standard sized serving.
To assemble your strawberry shortcakes, slice the strawberries into thin slices using a strawberry slicer and toss them with a little sugar. Split the shortcake open with a fork and lay one split biscuit on each plate. Spoon strawberries over the shortcakes and top with flavored whipped cream. These are best served fresh.
Discover Flavored Whipped Cream
Instead of spray cans, make flavored whipped cream.
For the caramel whipped cream, use caramel flavor instead of vanilla and brown sugar instead of granulated. If you want to make your whipped cream more durable, add meringue powder as a stabilizer.
Orange Cloud Flavored Whipped Cream
This is a simple whipped cream made with orange flavor and orange zest, but the results are delicious.
Ingredients
- 2 cups whipping cream
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons orange flavor
- 1 tablespoon orange zest
- 2 tablespoons meringue powder
Directions
- Whip the cream to soft peaks.
- Add the sugar, flavor, and zest and continue whipping.
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