Hi guys, I'm Laura Vitale, on this episode of Laura in the Kitchen, we are going to make
a classic strawberry shortcake.
Last time I did strawberry shortcake, I believe was 2011, like a classic strawberry shortcake,
and I want to make this for you because it's easy and it's simple, it's perfect for Mother's
Day which I know is tomorrow, but you know what?
The great thing about this recipe is it doesn't require fancy ingredients, so if you're making
a last minute stop to the grocery store, you can pick up a couple of these ingredients
and then make fabulous strawberry shortcakes on the most deliciously flaky biscuits EVER!
Which is why I love this recipe so much, I think the biscuit base is so glorious, and
I'm thrilled to share it with you.
The recipe for the biscuit base is really simple, but I'm telling you they're all the
right ones.
You need some self-rising flour, and then I'm going to boost up the leavening agents
a little bit more with baking powder, baking soda, some salt, and a little bit of sugar.
You'll need some cold unsalted butter, and you will need some buttermilk.
And then we are going to macerate our berries, and make some fresh whipped cream, it's just
so good, what a classic!
I wish my mother was here, my mother lives in Italy so I could make this for her, but
maybe when I go there next time I can do that.
I'm going to make mine in my standing mixer with a paddle attachment, to make my life
easier, I've invested in it it might as well work.
But you could do this by hand, obviously.
So I'm going to add all the dry ingredients in here.
Like I said, with the paddle attachment.
And I'm going to add in the butter, it's really important that the butter is cold because
this is what's going to attribute to those flaky layers.
And now I'm going to mix this until the butter is distributed throughout the dry ingredients
in little teeny tiny pieces almost resembling the size of peas.
Because that's the magic, you know what I'm saying?
Alright, I can see that the butter is where I want it so now is the time to add in the
buttermilk, now if you don't want to make a last minute stop to the grocery store, and
you already have strawberries on hand, you already have got whipped cream on hand and
you're saying to yourself 'Ah mamma mi!
I really don't want to stop at my local ShopRite right now to buy two extra ingredients I don't
have on hand like buttermilk and some self rising flour, well, make your own buttermilk,
all you need is about a teaspoon or two of lemon juice or white vinegar to your whole
milk, let that sit for about ten minutes and it will curdle, and that will give you buttermilk,
you don't want to go buy some self rising flour because I hear ya, $5 for a bag of self
rising flour is quite ridiculous if you're only going to use it on one occasion, although,
make yourself a bunch of biscuits and put them in your freezer for whenever the craving
calls, you take your regular flour, you add two cups of flour to this recipe and instead
of adding one and a half teaspoons of baking powder like my recipe calls for, just up it
to two teaspoons of baking powder and then one teaspoon of baking soda and you're golden.
Alright, enough said, lower this down I don't want to over mix it because the more you mix
the more the butter will start to melt, so now at this point you've got nibbly bits of
dough and you're going to pull it together by hand and just form it into a disc.
This has to go into the fridge just to sort of set for a while, I'm going to show you
how to pull it together really quick, you don't want to overwork it because you see
the little bits of butter, you want those bits of butter to remain cold so you just
pull it together like so, form it into a disc, and pop it into the fridge for about an hour.
See how it just kind of holds together really nicely?
Don't over-mix it do it fast fast fast.
Into the fridge for an hour and then we're going to roll out some beautiful giant biscuits.
Alright.
My dough was in the fridge for about an hour, just let it come to room temperature for a
few minutes before you handle it, it's a really soft beautiful dough, can you see the pieces
of butter, that's what's going to give you those phenomenal flaky layers, make sure that
you just go ahead and lightly flour that and sort of shake off the excess.
What you're going to do, we want to create layers of flakiness, right?
I'm eating a biscuit, it's gotta be the best biscuit ever, you know what I'm saying?
I don't want to waste any calories.
If I eat something, it has got to be good.
See all those little bits of butter in there?
That tells me this is going to be so delicious, so amazing.
What I'm doing is I am rolling this out to about a little less than half inch thick because
we are going to do this two more times and I'm going to show you what I mean by that.
Because we again want to create layers.
Lightly flour your surface, very lightly and then you're going to fold this into thirds,
and I'm going to shake off if there's a lot of flour underneath, shake that off.
Okay?
Very much like you were making a croissant, right?
So this is the second time we roll it and then we are going to repeat the process one
more time once I roll this out to a quarter inch thick or so.
Fold one more time, and now this time you are going to roll this out into like 3/4 of
an inch thick, I want these to be really lovely and beautiful and flaky and not too thin and
I also don't want them to be too too thick because we're not eating these biscuits as-is.
These are going to be sandwiched with the strawberries and the whipped cream and so
just want to make sure that we get the perfect size and I'm going to take a 4 inch cutter,
and I'll just re-roll the dough to get some more biscuits, but you can make this smaller
by the way, you don't have to make them this bit, you can make them three inch you can
make two inch if you want to do bite size.
You can make them smaller if you want bite size little biscuits but, I'm going to just
roll this out, look what I'm doing, I'm not even really working it that much I'm just
kind of pushing it together with my hand, the dough because you're not going to notice
it.
Right and then you just kind of pull that together and then I'm going to take whatever
is leftover and make small pieces and give that to Mia for a little snack.
Okay now, because we just worked these so much, I'm going to lightly cover these with
the same sheet of plastic wrap, pop them in the fridge for ten minutes or so, in the meantime,
preheat your oven to 400F, get an egg wash ready which is just a beaten egg with a little
bit of milk or cream or water.
And then when we come back, we're going to brush them on top, bake them I'll show you
the whole thing.
Biscuits are out of the fridge, this is just the scraps of the dough that I pulled together,
it's fine, it's fine!
Really.
An egg wash, just an egg beaten with a little bit of cream, milk, or water, just a small
touch.
I'm going to brush the tops with this this gives you a really beautiful golden brown
color.
Gotta love that!
And I'm telling you this is like the only way you should ever eat strawberry shortcakes,
piled high, on really flaky biscuits, so delicious, with lots of fresh whipped cream, I mean there's
just nothing better.
Nothing better!
And these biscuits, too they're so easy, they're so easy, minimal ingredients, you gotta just
love it, and because I like a little extra something sweet, a little granulated sugar
right on top.
This gives you like a lovely crunchy lid to your biscuits.
And now before I pop this into the oven so I don't have to let you go and come back,
I've got some diced strawberries, I like to dice my strawberries, because I think when
I cook, I think in the same way that I eat.
It just makes it much easier and everything kind of goes on the spoon a lot better if
the strawberries are diced.
If they're sliced then they'll fall off your biscuit and it'll be hard for you to cut into
them so I just do a little bit of sugar, little bit of lemon juice just to kind of bring out
their juices and you just toss them together and you set them aside while you do everything
else.
Now all I'm going to do is I'm going to set these aside, pop these into my oven at 400F
for about 15 minutes or until golden brown, let those cool and in the meantime I'm just
going to whip up some whipped cream, some fresh heavy cream with a little bit of vanilla,
I'm not going to bore you with that, it's literally a handheld whisk with my heavy cream
with my vanilla and a touch of powdered sugar and when we come back we build the most delicious
strawberry shortcakes.
I mean I would like to have a bakery so that I can make biscuits that are like that.
Okay?
Because if you give me anything but that then I'm leaving.
I'm leaving!
I'm just I'm done, I'm done.
I've already picked off the top of this one.
You know what I'm saying.
Look at this.
Ta daa!
That's the biscuit I want!
Now, you take your strawberries with plenty of juice hat they made, and that juice kind
of just mmm.
You know what I'm saying?
Mmm!
Really good dollop of that homemade whipped cream.
You put your lid on.
And if you're feeling fancy, which you should always feel fancy, especially when you're
serving.
Would you like a bite of that?
Mountain of love and delicious.
You know you want to.
But now, when you go away, this is what I do.
Flip it over, I am not a pretty eater because I think when you smash it and you smash it
all together that's where the magic happens, I actually want the lid, because do you remember
that the lid has that sugary crust?
Mmm!
Wow.
I feel like, what's his name?
Owen Wilson.
Whatever his name is.
WOW.
That is the strawberry shortcake of absolute dreams.
Perfection.
I literally have no words, which I know is a shocker, but I don't.
Go to LauraintheKitchen.com, get the recipe, make it, judge for yourself.
I'll see you next time.
Bye.