Recipe Roundup: Strawberry Shortcakes Are Everywhere

Strawberries are still a little elusive at farmers' markets in New York City, but man oh man are they everywhere on the internet.

Reading some magazine websites and food blogs today, we were virtually tripping over strawberry shortcake recipes...

Since we've been talking about easy spring and summer desserts, it's nice to highlight the humble shortcake. Making biscuits made from scratch sort of tosses them from the "easy" category, but strawberry shortcakes are still the epitome of seasonal and simple for us.

You can make the biscuits ahead of time, and then it's just a matter of slicing them in half and piling on fresh berries and whipped cream. Truth be told, we know plenty of people who make the biscuits using Bisquick with a little sugar thrown in.

In our family, strawberry shortcake often came on angelfood cake, but as we've gotten older, we prefer the traditional, less-sweet biscuits.

Pim at Chez Pim recently made an easy strawberry shortcake, and she recommends patting out biscuit dough with your hands if you don't want to take the time to roll it out.

Over at the new Bon Appétit website, two home cooks are tackling the magazine's top 100 recipes, giving insight back and forth in the new Project Recipe feature. The latest? Strawberry Shortcakes with Mint and Whipped Cream (above, far right).

Fine Cooking has a shortcake on its home page — the Classic Strawberry Shortcake (above, far left). The recipe says to roll the biscuit dough into a rectangle and cut it into squares, which is a pretty smart way to make sure you aren't wasting any dough.

As for that rogue, chocolate shortcake in the middle... It's the Chocolate Strawberry Shortcakes recipe from last June's Bon Appétit, but it just looked different and delicious to us.

Anyone else making strawberry shortcake? How do you like yours?

(Images: Scott Phillips for Fine Cooking; Pornchai Mittongtare for Bon Appétit; Jacqueline Hopkins for Bon Appétit)

Comments (6)

You can't walk two feet at the farmers markets in Nashville without tripping over buckets of strawberries. We have purchased about 15 gallons over the past few weeks. (We freeze them whole for smoothies and stuff later in the year.) I also made homemade jam for the first time and it turned out quite well. My inspiration was last months issue of Bon Appetit. Now, on to strawberry shortcake!

God, I love strawberry shortcake. But a word of recipe experience, I made those Bon Appetit chocolate ones last year, and I have to say I wouldn't bother again. (Sorry my pictures were so bad!) I'd take the idea and run with it but use a different recipe for the biscuits; these were bland and nothing to write home about. But in theory? Awesome.

Interesting about the chocolate ones- good to know, katef. Thanks!

I like my strawberry shortcake simple. Plain strawberries, homemade whip cream with just a touch of sugar.

And the most important part - store bought refrigerator biscuits from the can. The kind that breaks off in cool little horizontal layers.

(If someone can tell me how to exactly duplicate those biscuits I will make them and redeem myself)

I like a little more cake in my shortcake--it still irks me to see people use the same biscuits I make for my breakfast. But I will admit to being a closet devotee of the recipe on the back of the Bisquick box... sacrilege, I know, but delicious.

I made strawberry shortcake this weekend, using fig & ginger scones as my biscuit, and threw some chocolate mint in with the berries while the macerated. so good!