#17: Strawberry Shortcakes

I was struggling to come up with the recipes I wanted to make for my first week down in Utah... it needed to be something SOMEWHAT impressive, since I KNEW the pressure would be on me to share my treats, but it also needed to be something I assumed I wouldn't be able to screw up... like the loaves I tried last Saturday. After looking up numerous recipes, and storing away quite a few, I finally decided, after buying an ENORMOUS carton of Strawberries from Costco for Codi, to try out a Better Homes and Garden's recipe I found in my mother's cookbook prior to leaving Washington. Stinkin' awesome treat, let me tell you. I'm not sure if everyone was just being nice (I have... trust issues?), but the shortcakes were gone fairly quickly... you can be the judge...

#17: Strawberry Shortcakes (as taken from Better Homes and Garden's Anyone Can Cook cookbook. It's a pretty good one... I need to go out and buy the Anyone Can Bake one...)

Ingredients:  

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/3 cup cold butter

1 egg, slightly beaten 

1/2 cup dairy sour cream

2 tablespoons milk

5 cups sliced strawberries

3 tablespoons sugar
Whipped cream (they want you to follow the Better Homes and Gardens whipped cream recipe, after making my own shortcake, I said forget it, and got some Reddi Whip)

 
Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly grease a baking sheet; set aside.

2. In a medium bowl combine flour, the 1/4 cup sugar, the baking powder, salt, and baking soda.

3. Using a pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
     - All right, for those of you new to baking, like me, I had no idea what a pastry blender was. I just assumed it was a speed on a typical blender you'd use for making smoothies. Oh no, it's a strange contraption, with a handle and wires poking out the bottom. You mash the butter up into the dry ingredients, and it essentially just combines them. My dough didn't turn out super coarse, so naturally I thought I did something wrong, but it doesn't all really come together until you add the wet ingredients, so don't panic!

4. In a small bowl combine egg, sour cream, and milk. Add to flour mixture, stirring with a fork just until moistened.

5. Drop dough into 8 mounds onto prepared baking sheet. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool.
      - These actually took more like 16 minutes to get a good, golden brown crust on them. I also used my Martha Stewart trick and added a little sugar to the top to make them slightly crunchy. Excellent idea? Oh yeah, you bet!

6. Meanwhile, combine 4 cups of the strawberries and the 3 tablespoons sugar. Using a potato masher, mash berries slightly; set aside. To serve, split shortcakes in half; fill with strawberry mixture and whipped cream. Top with remaining sliced strawberries.
     - Due to SOMEONE'S inability to portion control, I think we actually ended up slicing 6 cups of strawberries to mash, and dumped about 5 tablespoons of sugar into the bowl to sweeten them up. Definitely learned it's easier to mash large strawberries if you first cut them into halves or quarters first!

Seriously, an awesome treat for the first day of summer. Unfortunately, even after Stephen kept getting on me about taking pictures, I forgot. Here is the picture provided by Better Homes and Gardens:

 

And here is what a pastry blender looks like, since I KNOW you are all eagerly awaiting to buy your own and all:

   

Sorry about the quality, I had to copy and paste because apparently the picture uploading feature on Blogger doesn't want to work today, hmph.