Hey guys! Today I want to share my favorite recipe for a strawberry shortcake. It is such a light and delectable summer treat with the perfect amount of sweetness. Of course, I forgot to take progress pictures again so I will do my best to explain clearly.
While there is much debate and even more options for what base to pile your strawberries and whipped cream on, I think sponge cake is the best base for a strawberry shortcake. It is straightforward to make while being sweeter and softer than biscuits. It even has fewer ingredients than vanilla cake and can be made into either cake or cupcakes easily.
I recently found a wonderful sponge cake recipe, the link to that is here and I would suggest checking it out. (https://momsdish.com/recipe/92/perfect-sponge-cake)
The first half of this process is of course making the actual cake. I will leave most of the explanation of this process up to the recipe I linked here since she does it way better than I could.
I used 32oz of strawberries for my cake, or 2 cartons from the store. I will recommend the very first step being to slice about 3/4 of the strawberries into 1/4in (1/2 cm) slices, and stirring a few spoonfuls of sugar into them. I will note it is very little, not even enough to completely coat all of them, but if you let them sit like this for an hour or so the strawberries will appear glazed because the sugar sort of draws the liquid out of them. When you pour them onto the sponge cake the juice will soak into the cake and make it much more moist.
The next preparation step is to make homemade whipped cream because it is just so much better than store-bought. I used a cup of heavy cream and 1/4 cup powdered sugar, whipped on high until it formed stiff peaks. It is very important to use cold cream and add the sugar when it gets to soft peaks.
You can test soft/stiff peaks by pulling the whisk out of the bowl and turning it upside down. Does the point droop a lot? That means a soft peak. Perhaps it droops a little bit? That is a medium peak. If it stands straight up even after you lightly tap the whisk, it is a stiff peak. If you beat it too much past a stiff peak, you will make butter, and yes I have proven this on accident before. One last note is that your highest mixer setting will serve you very well for this, if you mix at too low of a speed you will not achieve a stiff peak.
Now it is time for assembly. I cut the sponge cake in half horizontally so that it made an even top and bottom layer. I poured most of the sliced strawberries and all of the juice onto the bottom layer of the cake and then spread a thick layer of whipped cream on top of them.
Next I placed the top cake layer on top. I spread the second half of the whipped cream flat on the top of the cake. I sliced the last 1/4 of the strawberries I saved from the first step, leaving them attached at the base so I could fan them out for decoration. I placed these evenly around the border. I poured the last of the sliced strawberries into the middle of the top and spread them flat.
All done! This cake is rather messy to slice, but it makes up for it with flavor.