Kris
It sounds absolutely ridiculous to long for summer when I live in Southern California… yes, I recognize that I sound spoiled. Springtime in Los Angeles is a temperate paradise compared to the bipolar craziness that is Denver—“Oh, were you expecting May flowers? Surprise! Here’s a snowstorm instead!”
But as I have continued to bake more frequently over the years, I have also grown to eagerly anticipate what I like to call “berry season.”
Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries… oh my! So juicy, sweet, and tender… and really, just begging to be baked into a pie or cake. They never taste as good when you buy them out of season, even if you’re over-saturating your recipe with sugar. And of course, that takes away the fun of munching on a few berries while you’re preparing the batter or crust… or waiting for the cake or pie to come out of the oven… I digress. (I’m a glutton for them, if that wasn’t obvious.)
When strawberries dropped drastically in price at the store a few weeks ago, I knew my “berry season” had begun. Lucky for me, Smitten Kitchen had just the recipe I was looking for—strawberry and cream biscuits! Could anything in biscuit form be nothing less than delicious?
The short answer, of course, is no—I mean, can anything with butter ever be wrong?—but I did alter a few things from the recipe, both while I was making the biscuits and adjustments afterward in hindsight. There are a few things that I’d like to stress before we get down to the nitty-gritty:
- Make sure that your strawberries are almost too ripe. Since there is a very small amount of additional sugar in the recipe, the sweetness of the biscuits is determined by the ripeness of the fruit. I made sure mine were dark red and almost dull in color before using them. If you don’t feel like waiting, I would increase the amount of sugar in the dough to ½ cup.
- This is really silly on my part, but I didn’t realize my baking powder was expired until these came out of the oven with nary a rise to be seen (hence my jokingly labeling them as scones). Super important to make sure your leavening agents are still chemically active, especially when you’re relying on one and not both (baking powder and baking soda).
- If you don’t have a biscuit cutter/round cookie cutter, use a short drinking glass. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all!
I gobbled up a few of these as soon as they were cool enough to touch… which is to say, I could barely hold them but ate them anyway. Buttery and flaky, but with the added one-two punch of velvety cream and juicy strawberries—berry season forever! (Please…?)
Original recipe: Smitten Kitchen
