Strawberry Short Cake

I picked up a basket of strawberries at the farmers marketon Thursday and decided to make strawberry short cake. I am using a significant modification of the Milk Street scones recipe from Tandem Bakery’’s to make short cake for the strawberry short cake. Using lemon as part of the liquid gives the short cake a nice light lemon flavor.

Ingredients

• Biscuits for Short Cake
  • 227 grams (1 3/4 cups) all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
  • 67 grams (5 tablespoons) white sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt (1/2 teaspoons table salt)
  • 1/2 cup cold buttermilk
  • 1/8 cup lemon juice + 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces and chilled
• Strawberry Topping
  • 2 cups cleaned and sliced strawberries
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon garam masala
• Whipped Cream or Clotted Cream for serving

Directions

1. Wash and stem the strawberries. Slice the strawberries into slices about a 1/4 inch thick into a medium size bowl.
2. Top the strawberries with the sugar and garam masala and stir together.
3. Important: Let the strawberries sit in the sugar at room temperature while you make the short cakes.
4. Heat the oven to 375°F with rack in the middle of the oven position. Line 1 rimmed baking sheets with kitchen parchment. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
5. In a small bowl, combine the buttermilk with the lemon juice.
6. To a food processor, add about ½ of the flour mixture and scatter the butter over the top. Pulse until the butter is in large pea-sized pieces, 10 to 12 pulses. Transfer to the bowl with the remaining flour mixture.
7. To the bowl of flour, pour in about ⅓ of the buttermilk mixture and toss just a few times with your hands, making sure to scrape along the bottom of the bowl, until the liquid is absorbed.
8. Add the remaining buttermilk in 2 more additions, tossing after each. After the final addition of buttermilk, toss until no dry, floury bits remain. The mixture will be quite crumbly and will not form a cohesive dough.
9. Lightly dust the counter with flour, turn the mixture out onto it, then give it a final toss. Gather it into a mound and briefly knead until the mixture is mostly smooth.
10. Gather the mound into a ball, then press firmly into a cohesive disk about 1½ inches thick.
11. Using a biscuit cutter, cut out 4 biscuits. Gather the remaining dough and gently kneed together. Press out into another disk 1 1/2 inches thick and cut out two more biscuits.
12. Bake until the biscuits are golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes, rotating the baking sheet halfway through. If using a convection oven, you don’t need to rotate.
13. Cool on the baking sheet on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then transfer directly to a rack and cool for at least another 5 minutes.
14. Using a stick blender, blend half the strawberries (1 cup) to a purée. Stir the purée with the sliced strawberries.
15. Split a biscuit in half and put the bottom half it in a small bowl. Spoon strawberries over the bottom half of the biscuit and put the top half on the biscuit. Scoop up some of the purée with a spoon and drizzle it over the top of the biscuit.
16. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream or clotted cream.

Notes:

If you don’t have a food processor, then scatter the butter over the the entire flour mixture and cut it in with a pastry cutter or fork. The butter should be pea sized.

You can use less sugar in the short cake, but I would not use less than 3 tablespoons.

Do not use frozen butter. It doesn’t work very well.

You could use vanilla ice cream instead of whipped cream or clotted cream.