Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Sweet July: Red, White and Four

*Girl From Scratch is proud to announce it's first-ever theme month! It's Sweet July: An Exploration in Four Ingredient Desserts. Each weekly post will showcase a different dessert made with only four ingredients. That means by the end of July you will add four amazingly easy, four-ingredient desserts to your repertoire-- get ready to wow an amaze everyone!

Strawberry Shortcake



Today's recipe is pure, double-duty, recipe genius. This is made possible by the granulated sugar and heavy whipping cream, they are excellent double-duty time-savers that keep this recipe simple. Don't waste time and money using powdered sugar for homemade whipped cream, instead use granulated sugar, it tastes exactly the same and delivers a perfect whipped texture. The sugar is also used with the boxed baking mix to sweeten the shortcakes and then again with the sliced strawberries.

My favorite is the way the heavy whipping cream comes into play. Most shortcake recipes I found used milk and butter in the mix to provide flaky, buttery cakes. The heavy cream has a higher milk-fat ratio in it, so it's almost like milk and butter in one! Add this and a few tablespoons of sugar to a boxed baking mix (like Bisquick!) and I promise you the most flaky, slightly-sweet, and buttery shortcakes you have ever tasted. And it's all in just four ingredients.


Four-Ingredient Strawberry Shortcake
Cast of Characters: heavy cream, Bisquick, strawberries and sugar. (Optional: vanilla extract)
Slice a quart of strawberries and sprinkle with 2 tablespoons of sugar. Cover and chill while you prepare shortcakes.
Empty entire box of Bisquick in bowl. (I used the small, 20-ounce box.) Add 3 tablespoons of sugar. This makes the batter just slightly sweet, adjust for your tastes! (Optional: Add splash of vanilla extract.) 
Add one cup of heavy cream to batter, then add a splash of water to get desired consistency.  You want the batter thick, yet moistened all the way through. (Tip: Pancake batter consistency is too runny.)
Scoop mounds of batter on a baking sheet like you're making drop-biscuits. Follow baking instructions on the side of the box for biscuits.
Whip cream with a mixer and add one tablespoon of sugar. (Tip: Make sure you use a cold bowl.)
Soft peaks means you're done!
Golden, buttery babies.
Assemble and enjoy!
Make this today. What's stopping you? Surely not the ingredients!
Four-Ingredient Strawberry Shortcake Recipe
1 pint strawberries
1 quart heavy cream
1 box 20 ounce Bisquick
Granulated sugar

Slice Strawberries and add 2 TB sugar. Cover and chill. Add 1C cream and 3T of sugar to entire bowl of Bisquick. Splash of water too. Mix and scoop onto baking sheet. Follow cooking times and temp. on the side of Bisquick box. Pour about 2C cold cream into a mixer. Add 1T of sugar and beat until soft peaks form. Assemble all ingredients when shortcakes are done baking!

This dessert was so good. It is the epitome of summer foods. The variations are endless too. Why not peach shortcake, or blueberry? What would you change or modify? Have a sweet week!

3 comments:

  1. What about apple? I've never heard of apple shortcake but the idea sounds good to me. :-) btw this strawberry version is de-LISH!

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  2. looks lovely indeed. however, you know i am not a fan of biscuity things, any substitutes?

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  3. @Eys- Apple sounds great! Maybe with a cinnamon sugar mixture in the apples. Yum! Great suggestion!

    @Jubi-Maybe a vanilla cookie or almond biscotti would be a good replacement for the shortcake. Sounds good to me!

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