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.