Strawberry Shortcake - SCB

Here is another recipe from Southern Living’s new book The Southern Cake Book -2014

Strawberry Shortcake 
 Click HERE for recipe

Now Strawberry Shortcake is one of my favorite desserts. I love the traditional style where the cake is more of a biscuits and less of an angel food cake. Think of a fat, fluffy scone smothered in strawberries and whipped cream and you will get a hint of what I’m after. And while the shortcake version in The Southern Cake Book wasn’t exactly my ideal (a little too flat), I decided to expand my horizons and give it a try.

Well the end product turn out kind of pretty, but I wasn’t overly impressed with the taste.  The cake/biscuit part didn’t wow me. It was a little bland and nondescript. In the end I scraped off the strawberries and cream, threw the cake away, and stirred the salvaged strawberry into some vanilla ice cream.

So sad.  Where did I go wrong???? ;-(

The dough came together easy enough, but it was very wet and very sticky...

But the directions in the book warned of this and suggested using damp fingers to push and spread the dough around.  And it actually worked. I manged to fill all the gaps.

The only thing that I had trouble with was spreading the beaten egg whites over the top of the cake.  The directions says to beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.  Well I guess I beat them too long because try as I might I couldn't get those egg whites to spread evenly.  Looks a little lumpy, ah?

Here is the cake right out of the oven.  Notice the scorching of the egg white?   Oven possibly too hot for egg whites?  Hummm...  There was one difference between the online version of the recipe and the recipe in the book.  The book says to bake at 450 degrees for 8-10 minutes, but the online recipes says to bake at 300 degrees for 40 minutes.  I wonder which one is right?

I usually tastes cakes after I take them out of the oven, but I forgot in this case.  Stupid me because if I had tasted it first I wouldn't have wasted the strawberries and whipped cream.  Here is the cake being assembled...

And here is the finished cake.  Looks good, but in my opinion it just didn't have a great taste.  I probably did something wrong (I usually do), but with this cake I'm not even tempted to try it again. 

Strawberry Shortcake

I bought a flat of strawberries from a local vendor and decided to make this a Strawberry Memorial Day Weekend.

My favorite strawberry dessert is Strawberry Shortcake (with sweet biscuits not sponge cake), and my favorite recipe is Strawberry Shortcake a la Treebeard’s. I think it is the brown sugar in the mix that makes it so special tasting.



If you like a lots of strawberry filling on your shortcake, double the volume of filling called for in the Treebeard’s recipe or cut the shortcake recipe in half. Also, taste the filling before adding the entire 1/3 cup of sugar. The added sugar needs to be adjusted depending on the natural sweetness of the berries.

Enjoy your Memorial Day…

Strawberry Shortcake Cookies

I don’t know if you are supposed to publish your failures (or non-tasty results) on a blog, but disappointment is a big part of baking so here goes…. I found a Martha Stewart recipe for Strawberry Shortcake Cookies that looked good and sounded delicious.



Here is the strawberry shortcake cookie dough all mixed up. Looking good at this point.



Here they are about to go into the oven. The recipe said to use parchment paper, but I used a silicon baking mat instead. The recipe also said to sprinkle sugar on top of the cookies. I should have known better. From my many scone baking adventures I have found that any sugar that lands on the pan instead of the cookies will burn to a crisp.



Just out of the oven at this point. The still look good. The edges are turning brown and the centers are still pale and soft looking. Yummm…



I thought I had a winner at this point. But then I turned a cookie over and noticed the bottoms. YUCK…. Granted I do have a hot spot in my oven and I have to rotate the tray once or twice, but even with that a few of the cookies ended up a little too toasty. Also notice the areas of the cookies where the sugared strawberries came in direct contact with the pan. Cinders!!



Here are the best of the bunch. The finished cookie looked nice, but unfortunately the taste was downright bland and definitely not worth the calories. If they had tasted better I might have experimented with protecting the bottom, but they were not worth a second try.