Strawberry shortcake is a popular American dessert made with a sweetened tart, macerated strawberries, and whipped cream. The shortcake is a leavened bread that can be called a biscuit or scone. It is traditionally served in the summer when strawberries are in season.
Strawberry shortcake is a fruit dessert that appears to have been developed in the United States, as the earliest recorded recipe for strawberry shortcake comes from the American South. The dish is most commonly served in the summer, when strawberries are in season, and indeed in the 1850s, people held “pie parties” to celebrate the onset of summer and the first strawberry harvest of the year. This dessert is sometimes found on offer in restaurants and can also be made relatively easily at home.
The “shortcake” in “strawberry shortcake” is a leavened bread that may be called a biscuit or a scone, depending on where it is found. Americans tend to use the term “biscuit”, while the British prefer “scono”, as they reserve “biscuit” to refer to the dessert that Americans call “biscuits”. Whatever you call it, the tart uses a large amount of butter or shortening, which explains the name, and typically a sweetened tart is used for strawberry shortcake, sometimes with a spicy ingredient such as buttermilk added. or lemon zest.
To prepare strawberry shortcake, cooks start by washing, drying and cutting the strawberries before macerating them in a mixture of lemon juice and sugar. Steeping softens the strawberries and releases some of their moisture, causing a flavorful syrup to build up around the fruit. Typically, maceration takes about an hour under refrigeration. If the fruit is soaked for too long, it will become mushy and cloying.
Once the fruit has softened, the shortcake, which is traditionally round, is cut in half to create a top and bottom. The bottom is plated, covered in macerated fruit and topped with whipped cream, then the top is applied and the process is repeated. The end result is a dessert layered with shortcrust pastry, strawberries, and whipped cream, with the strawberry syrup from the steeping process adding moisture. For a neater presentation, some people use a pastry ring to make a strawberry tart, assembling the tart inside the ring and then pulling the ring away to leave an orderly column of tart on the plate.
In some regions, people use sponge cakes instead of shortbread ones, often baking individual sponge cakes with small recesses that can be filled with strawberries. Baked pie crust scraps are also used for strawberry shortcake in some corners of the world, particularly in the American South. Purists, however, prefer high-quality tarts made with fresh cream and butter, because they have a light, flaky, tender texture that pairs beautifully with the juicy fruit.
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