This made for a perfect Father’s Day Treat. Everyone loved it!
This week’s recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie is Strawberry Shortcake Franco-American style. When I first looked at the recipe I thought it might be complicated. But, it turned out to be a breeze.
We started out by making the ladyfinger batter. We had never made ladyfinger batter before, but it was very similar to a merengue or angel food. It started with egg whites, once they were beat to perfect peaks we mixed a bit of them into the egg yolks, then folded the egg yolk mixture back into the remaining whites. We loved the beautiful yellow color this made. Lastly the flour mixture was folded in. This was put into a piping bag and piped out into disks on top of the circles we had drawn on the parchment paper. We were so happy that we had prepped the parchment paper and piping bag ahead of time so we could quickly use the batter while it was fresh, light, and fluffy. We had plenty of extra batter and chose to pipe out some ladyfingers that we could snack on. We dusted all in powdered sugar and let stand for 15 minutes before cooking. We baked these for 10 minutes at 375 degrees. The recipe called for 400 degrees, but I was afraid they would burn at 400 in my oven. And I was very glad we chose to bake them at 375, it was the perfect temp to get lightly golden shortcakes.
We did not make the optional cooked strawberries. But, we did slice up strawberries and add some sugar. We let the berries sit for an hour or so before preparing the cakes.
I love that we could whip up the cream and powdered sugar mixture as we were ready to serve and simply pipe out onto the cakes with the strawberries in a matter of minutes. This cake combined perfectly with the sweet strawberries and cream. We all licked our plates clean – and the beaters and spatulas.
If you would like to try this recipe it can be found on page 338 of Dorie Greenspan’s cookbook, Baking Chez Moi.
