Especial Guest Blog de la Strawberry Shortcake

I think I said I'd be back around May 15th, but it turns out May 15th was a rather ambitious time frame. I'm still on hiatus, but as chance would have it my brother, the uber-important workaholic decided a couple of weeks ago that he wanted to do a guest blog. Of course I said yes, but as one really has to know Hank and experience him to understand his special brand of humor (he makes me laugh sooooo hard), there was the proviso that he might tone it down for the post. So, here we are 2 weeks later and here's Hank's post about strawberry shortcakes. And . . . I don't know if I've written about how awesome I think my brother is, but he's one of my very favorite people in the world. He's funny, and smart, and 98% of the time he is on my side (we are siblings, and we do squabble, so that accounts for the other 2%). Hank and I have had some seriously fun times together (a train ride from Pisa to Empoli to Pisa to Empoli to Siena comes to mind!) . . . without further ado, his post on strawberry shortcake.

The strawberry shortcake is arguably the perfect dessert. Or breakfast, as the case may be.

The only challenging part about is the biscuit, which isn’t really challenging at all. Unless you’re from the north, in which case you might not be a biscuit person. But if you want to try anyway, here’s how:

The key to knocking out SS’s in notime flat is planning. Preheat the oven, then make the biscuits. When the biscuits are made, the oven is hot. Throw the biscuits in, then knock out the berries and the berry goo, the whipped cream, at which points the biscuits are nearly done and you’re ready to roll. Half an hour, start to finish, if you’re moving.

Biscuits

This is going to sound like work. Don’t be fooled. Cut in the butter and don’t overwork the dough. Then you’ll have delicious biscuits.

I’m not good about measuring for biscuits, but in the interest of precision, I went all out and I can give you actual amounts for everything. Except the buttermilk, for reasons to follow.

Preaheat the oven to 425.

1.5 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

.25 tsp baking soda

1 healthy pinch salt

2 tb. sugar

1/2 stick butter

Buttermilk*

Sift the dry ingredients. Cut in the butter. Personally, I like a pastry cutter. Some people use a fork, which is I’m sure fine. Or you can cube the butter with a knife (good idea to freeze it a little first) and work in the cubes with your fingertips. Or use a food processor. Or (and this is a neat little trick) you can Pam a cheese grater then run the butter over it directly into the flour (in which case be sure to freeze the butter a little first).

Regardless, you want to have little pea-sized chunks of butter, like such:

Then add buttermilk. I really want to be able to tell you how much, but the truth is I can’t. Not just because I didn’t measure (which I didn’t) but also because it depends. It depends on how thoroughly you worked the butter into the flour and whether you sifted the flour and all that nonsense. Just fold it with a spatula or your hand until it comes together. You’ll need more buttermilk than you think you do. In the end, you want the dough to be tacky but still hold its shape, like so:

This part is important. Do not overwork the dough. We’re not making French bread. For seriously, do not overwork the dough.

Throw it on a well-floured surface. Throw a little flour on top. Pat it flat so it will cook evenly. You can do this all on a sheet pan if you’d like to save yourself some work cleaning up. Me, I like my biscuits about a half-inch thick before they get baked.

Dip the biscuit cutter in flour before you start cutting—and after, too. This dough is sticky.**

Now get your pie plate ready. Make sure you Pam the pie plate, unless you want your biscuits to stick. Cut out your biscuits. If you don’t have a ring mold/biscuit cutter, you can use the business end of a wine glass, but I’ve never found that to work too well. In that case, I’d just as soon make drop biscuits (i.e. with a spoon) then pat them down with wet fingers to smooth the top. If you are using a ring mold/biscuit cutter, you can cheat and sort of squish the dough together after every cut so you don't end up with too much excess dough.

Put yonder biscuits in the dish! Theoretically, you could use any sort of dish. But if the biscuits are close together, it helps them rise up rather than spread out. And the pie plate just has a nice symmetry. The dough should hold about 7 or 8 biscuits, depending on the size of your ring mold.

Brush the top with butter or cream if you’re feeling crazy.

Now you have about 18 minutes to finish everything else while the biscuits cook. Cutting up strawberries is easy, so go to town. Me, I like to half mine longitudinally if they’re small; quarter them longitudinally if they’re big.

Methinks these are the famed Ponchatoula strawberries

that are in season around NOLA right now?

When you’re cutting your berries, save the bruised, unhappy ones. Add some sugar and blitz them until it’s strawberry goo (I guess you can call it coulis if you’d like).*** I like a heaping helping of berries, so go to town. Fewer than ¼ of the berries go to the strawberry goo. I’m guessing a pint of berries will make a little more than one shortcake, but again, I like my berries.

Then whip your cream, which I’m thinking needs no instruction. Just don’t make butter and you’ll be good to go. About this time, your biscuits should be done. Let them cool a little; cut them in half with a serrated knife.

Biscuit; berries-with-goo; top of the biscuit, and voila.

Behold! The strawberry shortcake!

(hmmm -- chasing daylight here?)

*I understand most people don’t have buttermilk hanging out in their fridge. Why I’m not sure. The expiration date is always three days after the date of purchase, for some reason I can’t begin to figure out. Buttermilk is literally milk with a bacterial culture—spoiled milk. It doesn’t get more spoiled all that quickly. I’ve been known to keep the stuff for months. Just give it a whiff before you use it (it can go bad, at which point it smells kind of awful). If you don’t have buttermilk, there are all sorts of cheats that involve milk plus lemon or vinegar, but for our purposes, I say cut back the butter by a little, 86 the baking soda**** and use cream.

**Some people advocate folding the biscuit dough. I don’t see any real utility to that, and I advise these people to stay in Connecticut or New Jersey or whatever bitter, frozen wasteland they call home.

***The other option is just to sugar your berries earlier. But then you get pink water, which isn’t quite as appealing as bright red strawberry goo.

***Bizarre fact for the day: Baking powder = 1/3 baking soda (a base), 1/3 tartaric acid (a/k/a cream of tartar, an acid), and 1/3 cornstarch. Acid base water => Carbon Dioxide => leavening. When I was supremely lazy and didn’t have any baking power, I faked my way with baking soda and cream of tartar. The reason buttermilk and baking powder are so often found together is that buttermilk is an acid, so it takes the place of the cream of tartar.

Continue reading here: Peter Reinhart's Anadama Bread

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