May: Strawberry Shortcake

The pleasures of fresh strawberries

Strawberry Shortcake, in watercolor.

May brings us the pleasure of strawberries! When I was growing up, and we finally arrived at the middle of the month of May, the day would come when we could go berrying! We would drive to a local farm known for the perfection of their strawberries, pile out of the car, and spend the morning disbursed along the rows of plants, filling buckets – and, as discretely as possible, our own mouths – until we had an abundance of the reddest, juiciest, sweetest strawberries to bring home for ourselves and to  share with our grandparents, our uncles and aunties, and our many cousins! We believed it then – and I still believe it today – the sandy soil on Maryland’s Eastern Shore produces the sweetest, juiciest, most delicious strawberries in the world!

On the western side of the Chesapeake Bay, where I live now and Molly and her sister and brothers grew up, a nearby orchard grows fields of very tasty strawberries. In late May and early June, we can drive over and pick up huge flats of berries that the farmers have even kindly saved us from the sweaty exertion of picking ourselves! Several of our family members live in New Orleans, where they’re lucky enough to enjoy not just a couple of weeks of fresh strawberries, but so much warm weather that it’s possible to enjoy nearly year-round strawberry shortcake. Imagine that!  

We know, strawberries are trucked hither and yon throughout the country and throughout every month of the year in 21st-Century America where few of us expect to have to delay gratification much longer than the time it takes for us to think of what we might want. But, the best strawberries are those that are picked, locally, while they’re in season. And, the best thing to make with strawberries, as soon as they’re picked and waiting on the kitchen counter, is strawberry shortcake!

My mother loved strawberry shortcake so much that, at least once a year, usually on the night that followed that first morning of berry picking, despite preparing a typical meal that featured a meat entree and at least two, often three, vegetables or sides for our family of five, the only thing she would have for supper, herself,  would be strawberry shortcake! This didn’t happen often, and she expected the rest of us at the table to consume all of the nutritious elements of the supper she had prepared. But, each year, usually toward the end of May, I would be amazed to learn that an extra healthy serving of strawberry shortcake was the only thing our mother was having for supper.

We did not use those packaged sponge cake rounds that, even as long ago as the 1950s and ‘60s, grocery stores placed alongside the strawberries in the produce section as inspiration for shortcake. In fact, back then, our family didn’t even add the softly whipped cream that adorns our shortcakes nowadays. Strawberry shortcake meant just those juicy strawberries, made even more sweetly syrupy by adding a copious amount of granulated sugar to the sliced berries, layered between and on top of a warm wedge of a big, round biscuit that our mom always called “TurnBread.”

I don’t know why she called the biscuits for shortcake turnbread. I’ve never heard anyone else call it that, and a Google search, using both a compound word and two words separated with a space in-between, yields no results that resemble a recipe for shortcake or shortbread or even biscuit dough.

My mom, preferring cooking to picking crops or caring for younger siblings, was responsible for much of the cooking on the farm where she and her three sisters and four brothers grew up during the Great Depression. She could whip up enough turnbread to feed ten or twelve hungry people, without even glancing at a cookbook. My dad and my two sisters and I were the lucky beneficiaries of all of that practical childhood experience preparing meals for a farm family who worked hard and expected large meals on the table three times a day, every day.

Remembering that delicious strawberry shortcake, and all of the berry picking, washing, capping, slicing, sugaring, and turning out of the bread that went into it, makes for the most pleasant nostalgia.

This is how Molly and I make Strawberry Shortcake. We hope our recipe allows you and the people you love to create some happy nostalgia of your own. 

Strawberry Shortcake

Ingredients

For the Strawberries:

1 quart fresh strawberries, gently washed, capped, and sliced ¼-inch thick

1/3 cup granulated sugar or ¼ cup agave or coconut sugar (if you want to lower your consumption of sugar) 

For the Turn Bread:

2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour

2 tsp. baking powder

2 TBSP. granulated sugar (you can reduce that amount or leave the sugar out altogether if that’s your family’s preference)

1 tsp. salt

½ cup (1 stick) cold, unsalted butter

2/3 cup cold, whole milk

A grating of fresh nutmeg

For the Whipped Cream:

1 cup cold heavy whipping cream

1 to 3 TBSP. confectioners’ sugar (optional)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

A cold mixing bowl and whisk

Preparation: 

Putting it all together!

Wash, cap, and slice your strawberries into a bowl. Add sugar or other sweetener, and allow the berries to stand while you make the shortbread.

For the Turn Bread Biscuit:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

In a food processor, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and granulated sugar if using. Pulse 10 to 12 times to combine ingredients.

Slice the cold butter over dry ingredients, and pulse again to make the texture of the resulting mixture feel sandy.

(You can perform this process in an ordinary mixing bowl, using a fork or a pastry blender.)

Pour in the milk and pulse until the mixture forms a ball (or if you are not using a food processor, just make a well in the middle of the flour/butter mixture, pour in the milk, and combine with a fork until the mixture forms a ball).

Use your lightly-floured palms to pat out the dough in an 8-inch, un-greased  round cake pan, or pat out a free-form round on an un-greased baking sheet.

Grate a little nutmeg on top of the dough, and place in the preheated oven. Bake for 15 minutes.

Remove from oven, cover with a tea towel or cloth napkin until ready to serve. (You want the shortcake layer to be warm.)

For the whipped cream:

Pour the cold heavy cream into  a cold mixing bowl. Using a cold whisk-style beater, beginning on low speed and gradually increasing the mixer speed as the cream becomes thicker, whip the cream until it feels thick and luxurious when you lift the beater.

Add the powdered sugar if using and the vanilla extract. On low mixer speed combine these ingredients with the cream.

To make the shortcake:

Cut a wedge of shortcake for each serving and split that wedge horizontally so you have two layers. Place a layer in an individual serving dish or on a dessert plate and ladle a generous amount of the strawberries on top. Plop on a big serving spoonful of whipped cream, then repeat the process. Serve to happy, smiling guests, and enjoy!