Strawberry Dreams

I have a vague and very dreamlike early childhood memory. In my four year old mind it was nighttime, but actually it was pre-dawn, and I am sleepily riding in my aunt’s old 1949 Dodge sedan. My Mom and my aunt are in the car; one is driving and the other is whispering to me in reassuring tones. The moist early morning air circulates the overwhelming smell of fresh picked strawberries around us. The newspaper covered back seat is stacked with trays of strawberries, twelve quarts in every tray, each quart carefully “topped”—arranged with the nicest looking berries on top. We drove for what seemed a long time in little girl perspective and arrived at a two or maybe three story brick building that had loading docks and old wooden garage doors. Maybe I fell asleep at that point because that’s all that I remember. Later my Mom explained that we were taking the berries to the commission house in East St. Louis to sell them to the produce broker.

My maternal grandfather called himself a truck farmer which meant that in addition to growing the usual grain crops of corn and wheat he also grew fruits and vegetables to sell to the produce market. My Mom and aunt grew up picking berries from their father’s strawberry field which was at least an acre of land. Let me describe an acre in a size we can all understand better, an American football field is 1.3 acres. That’s a lot of strawberries and a lot of bending down to pick them! These berries were not at all like the hard fleshed strawberries that we find almost year ‘round in supermarkets now. Homegrown strawberries define the word perishable. When they are ripe they have juicy, soft flesh that is deep red through to the core and intense berry flavor. They also crush and mold easily hence the need for daily picking and pre-dawn trips to the commission house.





















That’s why the strawberry patch in my garden is tiny by my grandfather’s standards. It’s just big enough to yield berries for the family. For a few short weeks every spring we have them fresh with breakfast, sliced and sugared on shortcake, baked in strawberry rhubarb pie, or if it’s a bountiful year, preserved in a few jars of jam.

Last spring when I told my new husband, Dave, that I was going to make shortcake with fresh berries for dessert he said,

“I don’t really care for strawberry shortcake.”

My mouth dropped open and I must have looked at him like he had just grown a set of green ogre antenna.

“What do you mean you don’t care for strawberry shortcake?” I asked incredulously.

He went on to explain that the only shortcake he had ever had was the yellow sponges sold in the supermarket next to the strawberries. I set out to educate the poor man on the subject of homemade shortcake. I was a girl the first time I baked shortcakes. Mom handed me the box of Bisquick and told me to follow the instructions for shortcake on the side of the box. Everything turned out fine; after all shortcakes are just sweetened biscuits. In the years since then I have experimented with other recipes and have discovered that a scone recipe works great with sliced berries and whipped cream.



















This image is the facing page of a paperback recipe book that belonged to my Grandma Emma. It is titled All About Home Baking. It was published by the consumer service department of the General Foods Corporation. Its fourth edition copyright is October of 1941. Of course each recipe uses at least one General Foods product!

Speaking of paperback recipe books my favorite shortcake recipe comes from a small paperback book called Simply Scones by Leslie Weiner and Barbara Albright. I have had this book since it was newly published in 1988 but now it is more like a folio with an outside cover that has separate spotted and yellowing pages that are only in order because there are numbers at the bottom of each.

The book calls this recipe “Classic” Cream Scones and I have only tweaked it slightly.

Strawberry Shortcakes with Dried Blueberries

The strawberries:

2 quarts of fresh strawberries --home grown if you can get them

1/3 cup granulated sugar

The cakes:

2 cups all purpose flour

¼ cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 ½ teaspoons grated lemon peel

1/3 cup unsalted butter, chilled

½ cup heavy (whipping) cream

1 large egg

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

½ cup dried blueberries

Wash, hull and slice the strawberries, put them in a large bowl and sprinkle the sugar over them. Stir and refrigerate while you make the shortcakes.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Lightly butter a baking sheet.
In a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and lemon peel. With a pastry blender, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs then mix in the dried blueberries. In a small bowl, stir together the cream, egg, and vanilla. Add the cream mixture to the flour mixture and stir until combined.
Scrape the dough onto a lightly floured cutting board and divide into eight equal pieces. With lightly floured hands shape each piece into a round, large biscuit shape. Place them on the prepared baking sheet. Bake 13 to 15 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove the baking sheet to a wire rack and cool for 5 minutes. Using a spatula transfer the cakes to a wire rack to finish cooling.
To serve, split each cake in half horizontally. Put the bottom half on a plate and spoon the sliced berries and some of the juice on top. Spoon some softly whipped cream (either home made or from the can) on the berries. Top with second half of cake and a little more berries and cream.

P.S. Dave has changed his mind about strawberry shortcake.