Strawberry Shortcake

Thanks to Casimir Pulaski and the great state of Illinois I had an extra long weekend.  It was near glorious.  I didn't get any chores done but I brunched, and coffeed, ate meatballs the size of my face, watched 9 hours of The Great British Baking show, googled a mad mess of British food terms, and well, I baked.  Shower is still pending.  God bless Casimir Pulaski!  I'm not a baker by nature.  I have a hard time playing by the rules and I'm rubbish (too much British telly) at precision.  I can whack a biscuit or a cake together with a good recipe though, so I needed to find one.


I went to my Betty Crocker Cook Book and The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cook Book.  I finally settled on America's Test Kitchen since, quite frankly, it made a smaller batch.  The following recipe has very few minor adjustments from me.  I didn't make the full batch of strawberries shown here because I knew we wouldn't eat them fast enough, but I've included the original amount.  I also went square instead of round on my shortcakes because I'm lazy.  They were quite large though. I'm not complaining.  And the brand of food processor I have is called Fork.  If you've got a food processor, or heck a pastry blender, you're one step ahead of me.  Still if I can pull this off with some degree of impressiveness then I think you'll be able to pull off a showstopper (bonus points if you get the reference).  Have to say, in the end I was quite chuffed with myself.  *British terms and phrases are available for a limited time only during periods of overdose on BBC programming.

Serves 6
Prepare the strawberries first and set them aside to macerate while preparing the biscuits.

Fruit
8 cups (40 ounces) strawberries, hulled
6 tablespoons of sugar




Shortcake
2 cups (10 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour, plus extra for the work surface and biscuit cutter
5 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon table salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces and chilled
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon half-and-half or milk
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 large egg white, lightly beaten

Whipped Cream
1 Cup heavy whipping cream, chilled (I also chilled the bowl)
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon powdered sugar *Optional

1,  For the Fruit: slice the strawberries in a large bowl and stir together with sugar.  Set aside for at least 30 minutes and up to 2 hours.  The original recipe calls for crushing 3 cups of the strawberries with a potato masher, but quite frankly I couldn't be bothered.

2.  For the Shortcake:  Adjust an oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 425 degress.  Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.  With a wire whisk combine the flour, 3 Tablespoons of the sugar, the baking powder, and salt.  Sprinkle chilled butter cubes over the flour mixture and use a fork to work butter into flour mixture until it resembles a course meal.  The original recipe calls for pulsing the mixture in a food processor and then pulsing the butter in (about 15 pulses) but I have a fork, not a food processor.

3.  Whisk the milk and lightly beaten whole egg together in a small bowl, then stir into the flour mixture with the rubber spatula until large clumps form.  It will be quite shaggy (ruh roh).  Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until the excess bits are worked in and it just comes together.
4.  Pat the dough into a 9 by 6 inch rectangle about 3/4 of an inch thick.  I used a measuring tape y'all!  We're warned here not to overwork the dough and to also use a biscuit cutter to cut out 6 biscuits.  I skipped the biscuit cutter bit and simply cut my rectangle into 6 equal squares.  I figure it saves the overworking of the dough and eliminates the waste.  No one wants wasted shortcake dough!  The square shortcakes are original if a little big.  Go big or go home.  Brush the tops with the slightly beaten egg white and sprinkle the remaining 2 Tablespoons of sugar over the top.  I'm not going to lie, I just sprinkled as much sugar as I wanted over the top.  If you want to wait to bake you can cover your biscuits and keep them in the fridge for up to 2 hours.  But why would you want to do that?

5.  Bake until the shortcakes are golden brown, 12 to 14 minutes rotating the sheet pan halfway through.  Transfer the sheet to a wire rack and cool the shortcakes about 10 minutes until warm.

6.  For the Whipped Cream:  In a medium bowl whip the cream sugar, and vanilla together on low until frothy.  Then increase the speed to high and whip until cream forms soft peaks 1 to 3 minutes.  At this point I slowed down the mixer and added about a Tablespoon of powdered sugar to stabilize it somewhat.  I usually don't add my flavorings and sugar at the beginning and I think it gives a softer cream.  Next time I think I'll skip the granulated sugar and just do my sprinkle of powdered at the end.

7.  To Assemble:  When the shortcakes have cooled slightly split them in half horizontally (or crumble into a bowl gosh darn-it they're your shortcakes).  Place each shortcake bottom on an individual plate, spoon a portion of the berries over each bottom, dollop with shopped cream, and cap with shortcake tops.  Add more berries and cream if you want... recipe doesn't say to but I wanted so I did.  Was a bit rich, might try doing as I'm told next time.

Rooster Downtown for Brunch or That Time I was Rude to Jon Hamm

Rooster Downtown

NOT picture used as cover to stalk Jon Hamm

Let me just keep it real, I;m about as good at keeping my commitment to write on a regular basis as I am at sneaking pictures of celebrities in public places.  So, I'll kill two birds in this post by telling you about my brunch at Rooster where I used my family as a cover to take a picture of Jon Hamm attempting to have a peaceful breakfast before the Winter Classic in St. Louis this past Monday. 

Weekday brunches aren't always easy to find but Rooster offers breakfast 7 days a week, they're trendy, locally owned, and right down town.  It seemed like a no-brainer.  In retrospect I should have stuck with the recommendations made to me by another local foodie.  It wasn't terrible, and well, I saw Jon Hamm in the flesh.  But they seemed ill prepared for the crowds and our service left a heck of a lot to be desired.  Everyone was friendly and the food was good.  I had scrambled eggs over black beans and fried potatoes and I do believe my mom's eggs were perfectly poached.  My sister ordered a savory crepe and my nephew a classic Nutella and strawberry.  Both were tasty but I think the neph did mention a lack of strawberry.  Big props for having self serve Kaldi's coffee accessible while you wait.  

The wait wasn't bad but there was nowhere to stand that we weren't in the way.  Of course that's what led us to our "encounter" with Mr. Draper.  My sister shuffled off to an adjacent room to get away from the crowds and comes back immediately, pulling me by my jacket "You'd know what Jon Hamm looks like wouldn't you?"  Yep, sure was him and we shamefully faked a photo of the fam to attempt to get him in the background.  I was totally caught and later felt the need to explain to my youngest nephew that what I did was just plain rude.  Still posted that business on social media though.  What can I say, I'm a conflicted human. 

It was about 15 minutes after we sat before we were acknowledge at our table and then our silverware, water, glasses, food, and drinks all came piece meal if at all.  My oldest nephew finally just decided to drink the water straight from the carafe.  My sister's meal came when the rest of us were 3/4 of the way through ours after reminding the servers that she didn't have her food, and my beverage never came even after asking 2 or 3 servers about it.  Thankfully I wasn't charged for it.  But on a note of the ticket, they messed those up too, but that's forgivable as we did split our tickets. 

Rooster is one of several Bailey's restaurants in our area and I've been to a few of them.  I have to say that I've not been over the moon impressed with them, the exception being Bailey's Chocolate Bar.  They seem to rely heavily on trendiness and as I get older that impresses me less and less. The food was good enough for me to give this place another shot on a less crowded day, although given that brunch is something you usually eat on weekends, I'm not sure how soon that will be.  

Sorry this post wasn't funny or clever.  I wasted all my clever on my shameful social media posts about Jon Hamm.