Strawberry (and blueberry) Shortcake

My lovely sister visited me a couple of weekends ago, and while she was here we decided to make shortcake! She'd made it before, but I'd never even eaten a real shortcake before. I find that most of the time you see it in a restaurant, grocery store or bakery, it's actually angel food cake served with strawberries. Very different!

Shortcake is actually made with a dough. It looks like bread dough. You mush it into a pan and it's lumpy and not very pretty when it comes out. But it still somehow looks delicious and perfect.
You're supposed to cut this (very thin) cake in half and layer it with whipped cream and fruit. We decided it would be difficult to do (plus we were tired and just wanted some cake), so we didn't. It kept a lot better that way.

I didn't take photos of the whole process because we were also busy making dinner when we made it, but here's what it looked like when we were done!









It's really a simple and lovely cake. Very filling, too, so you can get quite a few servings out of one cake!

Recipe

Strawberry Shortcake

×××

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 cup cold butter or margarine, cut into pieces
2/3 cup milk
2 pints strawberries (about 7 cups whole)
1 cup whipping cream

×××

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Grease 8-inch round cake pan. In medium bowl, combine flour, 3 tbsp sugar, baking powder, and salt. With pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in milk just until mixture forms soft dough that leaves side of bowl. On lightly floured surface, knead dough 10 times. With floured hands, pat evenly into cake pan and sprinkle with 1 tbsp sugar. Bake until golden, about 20-30 minutes.
Meanwhile, reserve 4 whole strawberries for garnish; hull remaining strawberries and cut in half or in quarters. In medium bowl, toss strawberries with remaining 1/2 cup sugar until sugar has dissolved.
Invert shortcake onto surface. With long serrated knife, cut shortcake horizontally in half. In bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat cream just until soft peaks form.
Place bottom half of shortcake, cut side up, on cake plate; top with half the strawberry mixture and half the whipped cream. Place remaining shortcake, cut side down, on strawberry mixture. Spoon remaining strawberry mixture over, then top with remaining whipped cream. Garnish with reserved whole strawberries.


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Strawberry and White Chocolate Tart

Okay. So, not only am I back from Germany, but I'm also unemployed because 1) this is a weird time of year to hire anyone, and 2) it's a terrible economy to hire anyone. You're probably thinking that I should be using all this time to bake bake bake and post post post. But bake bake baking requires money money money, which I am sorely lacking because of my current state of unemployment.
Nonetheless, I did bake last week. I actually made something for a friend who was looking for a subject for a photography exercise/contest. I spent a lot of time considering all my options. Something tried and true or something completely new (rhyme not intended)? I chose a dish, then changed my mind, then changed my mind again and finally I did land on something I had made before... only completely different.
If you'll think (or look, if you weren't with me back then) back to June 2008, you'll remember that I made a strawberry chocolate pie for my sister's birthday. Well this time I decided to follow the original recipe more closely and used white chocolate... but I still used strawberries. Mostly because the raspberries were about twice the price.


I started by hulling and washing some beautiful, fresh, Ontario strawberries. I'm only glad I live in Ontario in the summer, and only because of the plethora of beautiful, fresh produce.


I set those aside to drain and cut up some chilled butter.


Then added some flour and sugar.


And blended it all up.


Next I added some egg yolks, whipping cream and lemon juice and blended those in.


The dough looked like this when it was all blended.


I formed it into a ball and wrapped it up in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.


Meet my new Paderno tart pan. I love it.


When the dough was chilled, I fit it into the lovely lovely pan.



The dough went back into the fridge and I chopped up the white chocolate.


I melted it in a pot with some whipping cream and vanilla (which made the colour kind of gross, but I tried to ignore it).


I poured the melted chocolate mixture into a bowl with an egg and beat it up.


While I was doing all that, the tart shell was baking blind, so once the filling was prepared, I filled the bottom of the tart with a bunch of strawberries.


And drowned them with the white chocolate mixture.


After going in the oven for 45 or 50 minutes, the tart came out looking like this, which is basically what I imagine heaven looks like.


So, I don't have any photos of the tart cut. I took the tart over to my friend's house where he had set up about three flashes and his fancy-pants camera. Many shots of the whole tart were taken before we cut a perfect slice out and took many most photos of the slice and the tart, etc. It was fun and a lot of the photos seemed to turn out pretty nicely. Of course I haven't seen any since that night, but as soon as I get my hands on them, I'll post them up and show you what my food looks like when you light it properly instead of just using the natural light of my huge apartment windows.
We also ate some, and it was pretty tasty! They crust was a little too thick, but the filling had a pleasant white chocolate flavour and the strawberries gave it a nice fresh taste, too! I did alter the recipe based on thoughts by eat me, delicious, who made it quite a while ago and thought that the white chocolate flavour was a little weak. All I did was increase the white chocolate by 2 ounces and decrease the whipping cream by 2 ounces. It worked out just fine!
I'm not sure I would add it to my regular rotation of desserts for gatherings or functions, but it was quite enjoyable.

More posts to come soon, hopefully! My sister is visiting for the weekend and we're planning to make shortcake!

Recipe

Strawberry and White Chocolate Tart
adapted from a Ricardo Larrivée recipe.

×××

Shortcrust
2 ¼ cups flour
1 pinch of salt
½ cup sugar
¾ cup unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
4 egg yolks
1 tablespoon ice water or 35% cream
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Filling
½ cup 35% cream
6 ounces white chocolate, chopped
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 ½ cups fresh strawberries (or enough strawberries to fill the bottom of your tart crust)


×××

Shortbread Crust
Place the butter, flour, salt and sugar in a bowl and blend with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the egg yolks, water or cream and lemon juice and blend until the mixture is uniform. Shape into a disk, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Pat the dough into a 9-inch tart pan. Refrigerate for another 30 minutes. With the rack in the lowest position, preheat the oven to 375°F. Line the chilled crust with aluminum foil, scattering a few dry beans or pie weights on top to hold the foil in place. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove the weights and foil and bake for 5 minutes more. Let cool.
Filling
Preheat the oven to 325°F. In a saucepan over low heat, gently melt the chocolate in the cream and vanilla. Lightly beat the egg using an electric mixer on lowest speed. While beating, slowly add the chocolate mixture, taking care not to incorporate air into the mixture. Beat for 15 seconds more. Arrange strawberries on the pie crust with their pointed ends facing up. Gently pour the filling over the berries without covering them completely. Bake until the centre is only slightly jiggly, 45 to 50 minutes*.
Let stand at room temperature for 3 to 4 hours. Best if served the same day.

* Make sure you check often after about 35 minutes, because all ovens are different!

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Chocolate Berry Roulade Cake with Fudge Drizzle

Just look at that title. I bet you want to just skip to the end with the photos of the completed cake and the recipe right now so you can run to your kitchen and make this delectably perfect dessert. Don't you?

Let's get to it.

This was basically an all-day affair, so if you're planning on making it, clear your schedule. It wouldn't take nearly so long if you didn't make it into a roulade, but I did. Next time I'm planning to just make the cake in muffin tins and treat them as short cakes, of a sort.
On that note, you may want to clear your schedule for this entry about the cake. Seriously. Around 30 photos ahead.

I started with the cake.

The recipe said to make it in a jelly-roll pan, and after just a moment of searching online, I found out what they really meant was "a normal cookie sheet, with sides." Okay, well sort of. It's supposed to be 1" deep. Mine was 0.75" deep, but it was both wider and longer than it need to be, so I figured it would work out. I greased it, put in a layer of parchment paper, and then greased the paper. This is is what i t looked like:


In case you were wondering, I rely heavily on my laptop while I'm baking:

I keep all my recipes on it, and I play music on it. It's partly responsible for any greatness that comes out of my kitchen. Thank you, little Toshiba.

Back to the cake. The first thing the recipe asked me to do was the to make really really really thick cocoa.


I also separated some eggs.

Okay, yea, I really cheated. I used a separator. Normally I don't, but there were a lot of eggs to separate.

I whisked the egg yolks:


And added the really thick cocoa, some brown sugar, and vanilla.


Finally, the flour went in, too.


I let that sit while I whipped up some egg whites:

Man. I love making meringue. It is so pretty. And tasty.


I added it in two batches to the chocolate mixture.

This took an unexpectedly long time. The chocolate mixture was really thick. Probably because I refused to follow the recipe and used brown sugar instead of white sugar. Or something. Who knows. Anyway, by the time it was all folded together, the egg whites had deflated more than they were supposed to, I think.
But, I poured it into pan anyway, and spread it out with a spatula, and put it in the oven.


While it was baking, I completely covered a tea towel in confectioner's sugar.

How weird is that?

When the cake came out of the oven, it started shrinking!

I don't know why, but whatevski. It smelled goooood.

I very carefully (and quickly) flipped the cake over onto the sugar-covered tea towel and took off the parchment paper.


And then rolled the whole thing up together, and let it cool on a wire rack.


I did several things while it was cooling. One was to make an extremely unsuccessful attempt at a healthy filling for this cake. The recipe called for a whooole bunch of whipping cream, which is not light, that's for sure. So I thought I would try making something with Quark. Oh my goodness. It went so badly I don't even want to talk about it. Finally I just caved and bought whipping cream. I also hulled and washed strawberries, and pureed some of them, too.

When everything was ready, the assembly of the cake began. I was nervous that when I unrolled the cake it would be in pieces and all dry and gross. But it was still nice:


I started by spreading the pureed strawberries over it.


Then spread on the whipped cream:


And finally, placed on some sliced up strawberries:


I rolled it all back up, which was a little more difficult than I thought it would be. The strawberries wanted to escape.


This went in the fridge for a while, and while it chilled, I made a simple chocolate sauce of whipping cream and melted chocolate. I drizzled that on before I sliced up the cake. It looked so damned pretty when I started cutting it up.






I served each slice with some of the extra strawberry and chocolate sauces.

It went over very well.



This cake was delicious. The flavours were all simple, but very delicious all together. There was never a question about that, though, since it was strawberry, chocolate and whipped cream. As a said earlier, I'm not sure it was worth all the effort. Sure, a roulade is very pretty, but I'm not convinced that it wouldn't look just as pretty as little individual cakes, piled up with whipped cream and strawberries and topped with chocolate and strawberry drizzle. Just thinking about it is making me want to try it this weekend.
We have some slowly (but surely) softening strawberries in the fridge... and this might just put them to good use.

Recipe

Chocolate Berry Roulade Cake with Fudge Drizzle

Cake
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa
¼ cup boiling water
4 eggs, separated
½ cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ cup white sugar
1 cup sifted cake and pastry flour
½ cup icing sugar

Filling
1 ½ cups whipping cream
3 tablespoons icing sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups fresh berries*

Fudge Drizzle
100 g dark chocolate
½ cup heavy cream

×××

Cake
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a 10x15 inch jelly-roll pan with parchment paper or waxed paper coated with grease. Stir cocoa into pot of boiling water and let stand. In a mixing bowl, beat yolks with a mixer until thick and pale yellow. Slowly beat in ½ cup sugar, cocoa mixture, salt and vanilla. Beat in the flour. In another bowl, with clean beaters, beat egg whites with cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar. Continue beating until firm peaks form. Fold into flour mixture in two batches. Smoothly spread batter in jelly-roll pan. Bake for 20 minutes or until cake springs back in centre when gently touched. Meanwhile, heavily spread icing sugar over a clean tea towel. Run a knife around cake pan to loosen sides. Turn out onto tea towel and remove paper. Starting on the long side, roll up the cake and tea towel together. Completely cool cake wrapped in tea towel on a rack.


Filling
Beat whipping cream, icing sugar and vanilla together until firm peaks form. Place in refrigerator for 10 to 15 minutes.

Fudge Drizzle
Completely melt chocolate in cream over low heat.

Assembly
Unroll cooled cake, keeping on tea towel. If the cake is still warm, fan to cool. Spread filling to within 1 inch of all edges of the cake. Evenly top with berries. With the long side toward you, use the towel to help firmly roll up the cake – leave the towel out of the roll. Slide rolled cake onto a large baking sheet, seam-side down and cover with plastic wrap. Chill for at least 1 hour or up to one day.
To serve, transfer cold cake to a serving platter. Drizzle cold cake with some of the fudge sauce, and reserve the rest to drizzle on individual slices.

*I found this recipe in the LCBO Wine and Food magazine for June and it was all about blue berries. So, the original recipe was with blueberries, but any in season berries will work.

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Orange Berry Muffins

My computer crashed and I lost this once already, so I'm annoyed, but the show must go on and you must see this recipe for muffins.
Even if my previous write up was far cleverer than this one will be.

Anyway, today is Canada Day! Yayyy, Happy Canada Day! Woo 141 years as a country. You go, second largest land mass in the world!
The thing is, I didn't get a long weekend, thanks to McMaster (and in part, the government) deciding we should work on Monday and have real Canada Day off. At first I was pretty annoyed about this whole thing, but all was forgiven when I stepped into the kitchen early this afternoon. And then, a series of thoughts went through my head: 1) Ooh, I'll try my hand at Brötchen again, with one of the three recipes I've been hoarding; 2) Man, this calls for one whole pound of flour? That's a lot, especially if it's not going to work out yet again. I'll try this roulade recipe I found a few days ago. 3) Whhhat? This calls for a lot of whipping cream. And gelatin? No problem, I'll try Quark, instead! 4) Oh yea, all the stores are closed and we don't keep Quark on hand... I'll just make cookies. 5) Oh, we don't have chocolate chips... okay, which of the over 20 recipes in my "To Try" folder do I have the ingredients for?

Turned out I had the ingredients for these bad boys. I originally got the recipe from Eat Me, Delicious, but of course, it was altered as I went along.

To be perfectly honest, I was reluctant to put in the orange zest. I hate zest in baking. Sacrelige, right? Sorry, but I hate it. It interferes with lovely moist cake or smooth filling, or whatever. I just don't like it.

But I don't have a zester, so I used the very fine side of a cheese grater. It turned the zest into mush, which is perfect by my standards.

Next, I took that same orange and cut it into quarters to juice it.

I love this juicer. It's so efficient. You should go get one.

The orange gave me about 1/2 cup of juice. I filled the measuring cup up to 1 cup with milk, then added two eggs, some honey and oil. I meant to add some vanilla, too, but I forgot. I was disappointed.

This looked so delicious that I forgot about the muffins and just drank this.







I'm totally lying.

I actually just whisked it all together until it looked uniform.

Now, this wasn't the first place I deviated from the recipe, but it was the first time I had a bit of a headscratcher. The recipe told me to rub the zest and the sugar together with my fingers. But I didn't use sugar. I used honey. And I had already put the honey in with the liquid ingredients. So I decided to put in an extra tablespoon of honey.


And mixed it until uniform.


Then I mixed in the flour and baking soda (it called for baking powder, too, but I was surprised to find we didn't have any), and then the liquid ingredients.


The recipe called for blueberries, and we did have some, but they're so much more expensive than in-season strawberries, so I threw those in, instead.

I had to fold it pretty gently because I picked out the softest ones, so as not to "waste" the nicest ones that can be eaten by themselves. Mmm.

And then I spooned the batter into a greased muffin tin.

I love this thing. My mum bought it for me after she saw me struggling to get cookie dough out of a 1/8 cup measure. It's perfect, because you can push whatever it is you're scooping out with the soft little silicon bit. You should probably go out and get one of these, too. It's good for scooping ice cream, too.



Fresh out of the oven, I was expecting that these would smell amazingly orange. But they didn't.



They still looked amazing.


Really. Amazing.

And how did they taste?


Pretty darn good! Not nearly enough orange flavour, but it was there. Next time, I would probably use two oranges, instead of just one. The strawberries are great, though! These little bursts of flavour and freshness. Delish.

And since I changed the recipe, here's my version.

Recipe

Orange Berry Muffins
1 orange*
Milk
2 large eggs
5 tablespoons honey
¼ cup olive oil
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 ½-2 cups berries – fresh or frozen (not thawed)

×××

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Grease a muffin tin and place it on a baking sheet.
Pour the orange juice into a large glass measuring cup and top up to 1 cup with milk. Whisk in the eggs, oil and 4 tablespoons of the honey.
In a large bowl, mix the orange zest and the remaining tablespoon of honey. Whisk in the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir just to blend. Gently mix in the berries and divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.
Bake for 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before turning out the muffins.
Makes about 15 standard-sized muffins.

*I recommend using 2 oranges, not just one. Also, add some vanilla!

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