Strawberry Shortcake!

For this final assignment of a class potluck using local, seasonal ingredients, I was excited about the prospect of making dessert instead of dinner. While cooking is generally beyond my human capabilities, I’ll gladly take the opportunity to bake. Through numerous accounts of trial and error (including making muffins without butter and attempting to make peanut butter jelly cookies that refused to become completely solid), I’ve managed to pick up some decent baking skills. With strawberries being in season, I decided on Strawberry Shortcake, a dessert I’ve never attempted to make. I went home for Mother’s Day last weekend, and my mom, ever keen on being healthy, was happy to come to the farmer’s market with me. Almost every stand was filled with luscious, red strawberries, which gave me opportunity to pick the biggest and juiciest ones. I was also lucky to find some flower from a Santa Cruz bakery that makes German-style bread. My mom flocked from stand to stand and bought something at almost every one, leaving me to carry them all in the baking heat. San Jose, unlike San Francisco, is full of parking lots. This farmer’s market happened to be in a parking lot. Parking lots are generally made black asphalt that loves to make hot days hotter. Ashley and pounds of perishable produce in a hot parking lot do not mix well. Fortunately, the scorching pain did not last long as we quickly moved the produce to my home’s fridge. My mom decided to do some further grocery shopping (ever a mother), and I went along with her. While at Safeway, I noticed that many of the products actually came from the bay area. So when I came back to San Francisco, I did the same investigating at Lucky’s. Sure enough, I found that plenty of products came from the bay area. So I bought all my dairy products here, which came from Challenge Dairy in Dublin. After searching for local salt and baking powder, I was convinced I could not find it. Alas, there remain two non-local ingredients in my shortcake. And local ingredients I proudly had on hand were vanilla from the Vanilla Co. in Santa Cruz, and C&H Sugar from Crockett. Here’s the recipe I used:

Strawberries:

3 baskets of fresh strawberries

1/2 cup sugar

Vanilla extract

Remove the stems from the strawberries. Slice into thin (1/4″ to 1/8″) slices. Put into a large bowl. Add 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of sugar (depending on how sweet the strawberries are to begin with) and mix into the strawberries. Set aside at room temperature to macerate (which means that the sugar will soften the strawberries and help release their juices). After the strawberries have been sitting for 20 minutes or so, take a potato masher and mash them a little. Not too much, just enough to get more juice out of them.

Biscuits from scratch:

3 cups all purpose flour

3 Tbsp granulated sugar

1 1/2 Tbsp baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

12 Tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl. Cut the butter into the flour mixture until the largest pieces of butter are the size of peas. Combine the cream and vanilla in a liquid measure. Make a well in the center of the flour and pour the cream mixture into the well. Mix with a fork until the dough is evenly moistened and just combined; it should look shaggy and still feel a little dry. Gently knead by hand five or six times to create a loose ball. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and pat it into an 8-inch square, 3/4 to 1 inch thick. Transfer the dough to a baking sheet lined with parchment. Cut the dough into 9 even squares and spread them about 2 inches apart from each other on the baking sheet. Bake until the biscuits are medium golden brown, 18 to 20 minutes.

I also attempted to make my own whipped cream by combining 1 cup heavy cream with 1/4 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. However, after I had been whisking for about 20 minutes, I recalled the time I attempted to make my own meringue. I had been whisking egg whites by hand for about an hour with almost no progress. My mom put her own egg whites in the mixer, and within five minutes she had meringue. Realizing that this was probably a similar process, I decided I didn’t have the time to make my own whipped cream and hurried down to Lucky’s where I, unfortunately, bought non-local whipped cream. But Strawberry Shortcake without whipped cream is not Strawberry Shortcake, so I considered this a necessary evil.

When I brought my food to class, it looked like everyone had made truly gourmet meals. Upon sampling the food, I was convinced that everyone had made truly gourmet meals. I was totally surprised at the cooking ability of everyone in my class (maybe the local ingredients had something to do with it, too?) and definitely wanted to try the recipes for myself. Needless to say, I ate very well that evening!