Strawberry Shortcake: A Balm For Wistfulness

In the summertime, when the weather is fine…

The coming of the warmer months is making me yearn to return to the setting of my childhood summers: my great-grandfather’s cottage on Bass lake in Ontario.

Norman McLeod, my great-grandfather, built our rickety lakeside cottage in the late 30’s from a kit. It’s constantly falling apart, requiring some kind of intensive maintenance work every visit. It is, nevertheless, quite charming, and my childhood summers were spent canoeing, swimming, and barbecuing in that blissful environment.

Norman himself was by all accounts, a force of nature, and locals still tell stories about him. He was the kind of country doctor who performed surgeries on farmhouse kitchen tables and drove on dirt roads to reach house calls across an entire county. Up until his 70s, he did one headstand a year just to prove he still could. Norman was known to occasionally eat entire bowls of maple syrup with a spoon. His medical school graduation picture hangs in my Grandmother’s study, and Norman’s visage, with fearsome brows and piercing, dark eyes, haunted me as a child.

Time at the cottage was filled with culinary delights. The local bakeries produced many treats that were unique to cottage country or Canada more generally. For breakfast, we would eat tea-cakes or cinnamon-y Chelsea buns with butter and local cream honey, so thick you had to use a knife to spread it. We allowed ourselves to eat dessert with both lunch and dinner when we were at Bass Lake, gorging ourselves on syrupy butter tarts and decadent loaf cakes. Social occasions were accompanied by chocolate-coconut Nanaimo bars, lemon squares, and fig bars.

Summer in that part of Canada was also a magnificent time for the local produce. Wax beans, sweet peas, corn and new potatoes would be simply boiled and served with butter. The tomatoes were at peak season, and black raspberries grew wild on the gravel road the led to the cottage. Usually our visits also coincided with the height of strawberry season. I would eat scores of the tiny, dark, sweet berries, nothing like the pale, unnaturally large California ones available in supermarkets.

My father celebrated strawberry season by making shortcake. The recipes for whipped cream and berries always stayed about the same, but he was constantly fiddling with his shortcake recipe, trying out a new method every time. I have continued his experimentation, with my favorite so far being this recipe:

Strawberry Shortcake

Strawberries

• 1 quart extremely ripe, in-season strawberries

• 1/4 cup granulated sugar

• Pinch of salt

Cream

• 3 cups heavy whipping cream

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar

• 2 tsp vanilla extract

• Pinch of salt

Shortcakes

• Approx 1 cup of AP flour

• 2 tsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1 tsp lemon juice

Cut the greens off your strawberries and slice them root-to-tip into 4 to 8 slices each, depending on size. Sprinkle with the granulated sugar and a pinch of salt and stir until all of the sugar is wet. Leave on the counter for 30 to 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until all the sugar is completely dissolved and a fair amount of syrup has been produced. Chill until ready to serve. This mixture will keep for a few days in the fridge, although the texture will change.

Reserve a couple tablespoons of your ice-cold heavy cream in a small dish and pour the rest in a bowl with the powdered sugar, vanilla and pinch of salt. Whip by hand or with an electric beater until stiff peaks form. Reserve 4 to 5 cups of the whipped cream in another bowl and put in the fridge. This will also keep for a few days, and can be rewhipped if it starts to deflate.

Mix your flour, baking powder, soda and salt together in a bowl. Add lemon juice to the cup or so of remaining whipped cream and stir gently with a rubber spatula to incorporate. Dump half your flour mixture into the lemon cream, and fold gently with your spatula. Once this is mostly incorporated, fold in the rest of the flour. The goal here to not deflate the cream; be gentle. Adjust the texture of your dough with milk or extra flour as necessary. It should be stiff enough to form with your hands, but wet enough that it feels a little sticky still.

Form your dough with your hands into six biscuit-shaped rounds and place on a greased baking sheet, preferably lined with parchment paper. Place the tray of shortcakes in the freezer or fridge for 15-30 minutes; this will help prevent them from spreading in the oven. Once chilled, brush the tops with the reserved unwhipped cream and sprinkle with a pinch of granulated sugar. Bake at 425 F for 10 to 15 minutes, until the tops are golden brown. Cool for a few minutes before putting together your shortcakes.

For assembly split the cake in half with a fork and place in a bowl. Top liberally with strawberries  and their juices, and cover with an immodest amount of whipped cream. You can add ice cream as well, but I think that gilds the lily.