How to Bake Strawberry Shortcake
Serves: 6
Preparation time: 35 mins
Cooking time: 20 mins
Ingredients needed to make Strawberry Shortcake:
- 1 ½ lb strawberries, washed, hulled and quartered
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 4 tbsp unsalted butter, frozen and diced
- 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 2 cups heavy cream
- ½ tsp fine salt
- 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 1 tsp lemon zest, finely grated
Cooking instructions for Strawberry Shortcake:
- Warm up your oven to 425 degrees F with an oven rack positioned at the upper third of it.
- Freeze a large glass bowl and hand whisk in the fridge to chill.
- Place the strawberries in another medium glass bowl and sprinkle ¼ cup sugar and lemon zest over them.
- Pour in a tsp of vanilla extract plus a splash of lemon juice and toss them together to mix well.
- Let it rest for half an hour at room temperature, agitating them from time to time.
- To make the shortcakes, place the flour in a bowl and stir in 2 tbsp sugar, baking powder and salt into it until well combined.
- Throw in the butter cubes and toss to dredge well with the dry mixture.
- Blend the mixture in a food processor briskly to turn it into a flaky mixture and empty a cup of cream into it.
- Work them together with your hands until they clump together to form a dry dough with crumb-like texture.
- Place onto a working surface and shape the dough into round ball.
- Flatten it out, using rolling pin, into ¾’’ thick round and carve out small, 3’’ wide shortcakes with the help of a cookie cutter.
- Gather the residue dough into a ball and roll it out again.
- Carve out more similar shortcakes from it so that you end up with 6 of them in total.
- Arrange them on a baking sheet and bake in the hot oven for 20 minutes or until it puffs up and turns golden with patches of brown.
- Place them on a wire rack and allow them to cool to some extent.
- Pour rest of the cream in the chilled bowl and whisk in remaining sugar plus vanilla until well combined.
- Whip the mixture for 3 minutes until it forms soft peaks and set aside.
- Slice each shortcakes horizontally into two halves and place the one bottom half on each serving plate.
- Spoon the strawberries onto each half and top it up with a large dollop of whipped cream.
- Place the other half of the shortcakes on top and serve right away.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
