Strawberry Season!! Finally!!

OK...after only like three or four days of sunshine in MD during the month of May, I thought we would never get strawberries. And they were late coming in because of the lack of sun. But know they are FINALLY starting to come in. I just got some and they were lovely!

So I was wondering, does everybody else wait as eagerly as I do for strawberry season? And what is your favorite thing to do with them? I think my favorite is just sliced, and made juicy with some sugar. A nice bisquity type shortcake, and I am good to go.

With red-stained fingers,
Meowzart

We are about 3/4 thru the season here in the Louisville area. This has been a cool wet Spring so berries have not been at their best, compared to last year.
We will sometimes use a potato masher a bit on a bowl of fresh berries to help generate the juices.
A great summer dessert is made of chunks of Angel Food Cake, a bunch of the juicy berries (sugared) and some whipped cream or Cool Whip. Stir it into a "stew" and enjoy. Or better yet, Drop a scoop of ice cream on top...then chow down

We're still waiting for strawberries here in the Hudson Valley- hardly seen the sun for about a month.
Basically its strawberies and whipped cream - sometimes flavored with various liqueurs instead of the old standby vanilla. Very occasionally we melt some chocolate and sit around the table dipping the berries - its a great treat.
I like sliced strawberries on a bowl of corn flakes with 1/2&!/2 cream
for breakfast, in season. And, I sometimes make an omelet of eggs, strawberries and cream cheese that I learned about in Ocean City, MD.
Also make strawberry ice cream- french style in the old White Mt. Just found a recipe for a strawberry tart that we will make sometime during the brief season.

One year we caught the strawberry season in Florida, caught it again here at home, and followed it up thru Main , Quebec, and New Brunswick. Unplanned, and delicious.
Mr. Mayor, lose the CoolWhip- like me, you're retired and have all the time in the world to whip up some real cream...

John... I agree, but the wife ( a nurse) nails me for the fat content...she says KoolWhip or plain... So I opt for the ice cream every time I can.
We did pick our first handfull of Raspberries today. and the Blackberries are still real green and small, but it will be a good year for them if the sun ever shows itself.

meowzart, you strawberry shortcake description reminds me of the strawberry shortcakes we enjoyed when I was a kid and we had a small strawberry patch and milk cows (so had plenty of berries for a short period during a good season and always plenty of whipped cream). My mother's strawberry shortcake recipe was for a (from scratch) sweetened biscuit dough type cake. She would make two of these round cakes (size of any regular round cake) and top one with plenty of sweetened, crushed, juicy strawberries. She would then place the second cake on top of that and cover it with more of the sweetened, crushed, juicy berries, letting some of the crushed berries and juice run down the sides of the cake. After the berries and juice had kind of "set" or "soaked in", she would "ice" the entire cake with fresh real whipped cream and would then decorate the top with a few whole berries. Talk about something that was good, although it was probably a heart attack waiting to happen. Over the years I've encountered very few people who were familiar with the sweetened biscuit dough type shortcake such as this, made as a whole cake and served in slices. Seems most people used angel food cake, some type of sponge cake, or something like "fat" cookies (and often made as individual servings) rather than this big cake with which I grew up. I wish I knew what happened to my mother's shortcake recipe. If anyone reading this has this type recipe, I'd sure appreciate your sharing a copy. Also back then we had real whipped cream with everything. If there was nothing but jello for dessert, it was topped with real whipped cream. Those were the days. From the comments in a number of the above postings it appears that much of the country has been plagued with the cool and extremely wet spring which we have endured. I surely look forward to some dry, sunny weather.

Here in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, our strawberry season seems to extend from February to November, they are everywhere! I like my strawberries simply sweetened with a little brown sugar and some cream.

quote:

Originally posted by Liketoeat

meowzart, you strawberry shortcake description reminds me of the strawberry shortcakes we enjoyed when I was a kid and we had a small strawberry patch and milk cows (so had plenty of berries for a short period during a good season and always plenty of whipped cream). My mother's strawberry shortcake recipe was for a (from scratch) sweetened biscuit dough type cake. She would make two of these round cakes (size of any regular round cake) and top one with plenty of sweetened, crushed, juicy strawberries. She would then place the second cake on top of that and cover it with more of the sweetened, crushed, juicy berries, letting some of the crushed berries and juice run down the sides of the cake. After the berries and juice had kind of "set" or "soaked in", she would "ice" the entire cake with fresh real whipped cream and would then decorate the top with a few whole berries. Talk about something that was good, although it was probably a heart attack waiting to happen. Over the years I've encountered very few people who were familiar with the sweetened biscuit dough type shortcake such as this, made as a whole cake and served in slices.

If anyone reading this has this type recipe, I'd sure appreciate your sharing a copy. Also back then we had real whipped cream with everything. If there was nothing but jello for dessert, it was topped with real whipped cream. Those were the days.

Hi Liketoeat!!

Believe it or not, I grew up with my mom using the shortcake recipe from the back/side of the Bisquick box. If I remember correctly, that recipe calls for dropping the dough onto a cookie sheet for individual shortcakes. My mom just used to press it out into a pan and then just cut slices. I think the bisquit-like shortcake is best for catching the strawberry juices!

I rarely have Bisquick on hand anymore, but I found this recipe for bisquity shortcake on allrecipes.com that I edited a bit and use now. I think you will find that this fits your needs:

2 1/4 cups flour
2 tbsp. white sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 cup melted butter
1 egg, beaten
2/3 cup milk

Mix dry ingredients together. Mix in the butter, egg, and milk. It will be a sticky dough. Press into a round or square cake pan that has been greased and floured. Bake at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown on top.

Let me know how it works for you!!

Meowzart

Unfortunately the strawberry season in East Tennessee is over. I always hate to see it go. The strawberries out of my garden are much smaller than the ones sold at the markets, but to me, they are much tastier. The huge ones at the market seem to be a little tasteless although they are beautiful to look at.

Now raspberry and blackberry are beginning to ripen. I love to get those little seeds in my teeth and have to floss for 30 minutes, but the taste is worth it.

I had a blackberry cobbler yesterday served with real thick whipped cream. The syrup that at the bottom was almost as tasty as the cobbler.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

Liketoeat
I also grew up with true short cake. The sponge & angel food cakes are a product of the 60's & 70's when people started to get their cakes from the bakery rather than making their own. One time, for father's day, I took real short cake to my sister's for our Father's day celebration. The grandkids all wanted to know what it was and protested that it couldn't be good. However after eating it, they wanted to know why their mothers never made it that way.
My mother would tell us about growing up in the 20's & 30's in a family with 9 kids. They frequently had cheap one item meals. Such as a meal of nothing but corn in the summer, but the one they all looked forward to was the strawberry shortcake meal. When the Anne Arundel County berries came in & the street Arabbers came around selling them they knew they were in for a treat. They didn't have whipped cream (cost to much for enough cream for the big family.) they just poured milk over the dish.

We have available in our local markets, very large red fruit, strawberry shaped, in fact, labled "California strawberries"- and we have them year round it seems. I've tried those things: they are not strawberries.Strawberries are much smaller, sweeter, jucier, and tastirer than those gross monsters out of the inland valleys of California.

Our Strawberry season just ended too ![|)]

We had a good season this year, they were big and sugary sweet !! Freshed picked from the field !! I liked to cut them up in a bowl over a piece of Sarah Lee pound cake (if the real fresh baked pound cake is not available !)

Oh well .... I'll get over it cause .... Mater season is almost here !!!!

We are right in the middle of it. My favorite is to dip a strawberry in sour cream and then roll it in brown sugar and eat. Repeat. Yum.

Instead of cake, my mother always made little pastry rounds that were basically like a thick pie crust. They add a nice crunch to it. For the strawberries, just mash up a bunch with sugar to create a chunky, juicy, heavenly mess. Put a few pastry rounds in the bowl, pour a bunch of the mashed strawberries on that, then top with whipped cream.

That's still my favorite way to eat them.

Hello, meowzart and ocdreamr - Thanks for your responses and for sharing your great memories of childhood shortcake. Nothing better. I'd not thought of those days or of that most delicious dessert for who knows how long prior to seeing your initial posting, meowzart. Great memories. We also occasionally had peach shortcake from our few peach trees. They were good, but I preferred the strawberry shortcake while preferring the fresh peaches made into a cobbler, handcranked ice cream, or as just sliced, sweetened peaches, preferably with ice cream rather than with whipped cream. Thanks, meowzart, for the Bisquick shortcake recipe. Believe it is very similar to my mother's recipe (tho her's was a totally from scratch rather than Bisquick recipe - but I bet this will be indistinguishable or virtually so from hers). Thanks so much for I had no recipe of any sort that was anywhere near to hers. I'll surely let you know how it comes out just as soon as I can give it a try. Thanks again to both of you. Lovetoeat

Bushie, your childhood strawberry experiences sound great, too, and back when I was a kid someone - an aunt, mother of a friend, can't remember exactly who - made those kinda crunchy individual little pasteries for her shortcake and served them just as you described. Were delicious. Think anything homemade of this nature back then is what made it all so good - rather than the various "storebought " cakes everyone, including even us, later went to for use with strawberries. Ocdreamr, bet the grandkids were shocked with the "real" shortcake you brought to them. Everyone I knew mashed the berries with sugar as you described, Bushie. Thanks to all of you for sharing these great memories and the recipe, meowzart. Liketoeat.

My grandfather and grandmother lived in the Cumberland Gap area of East Tennessee. They lived on a large farm and lived off this farm. I think my grandmother made bisquit dough and prepared it a couple of different ways. One for bisquits and the other as a sweeten bisquit type of cake. That was dessert with the fresh berries of the season.

I recall when I was very young, one of my grandfathers neighbor was the local chef for the preparation of distilled spirits. Most of Tennessee was dry, but that did not keep spirits of great skill from being prepared. Corn liquor was an art, but certain types of brandy was also. Each week of the season brought new things to the recipe. I recall strawberry, peach, blackberry, apple, pear and a few others that I cannot recall. I was only about six or seven at the time.

Each evening, my grandfather would walk to a very country store which was about a mile away. He would take me with him and usually buy me something like a Kit Kat (type of chewy candy with flavors of banana, strawberry and chocolate) maybe a coke or candy bar. They would then sample the newest runs of brandy and trade knifes as they sat around the huge stove. I recall they had pickles in barrels that the knife traders and brandy tasters along with the corn liquor tasters would use to improve their palate. They had another guy who made his homemmade cheese from his local Jersey herd. Another guy would bring his recently churned butter which was cooled in the sweet spring water beside his house and his homemade crackers.

Those times that are somewhat dim in my memory were precious. I recall the bizzare conversations regarding their fox hunting adventures. I believed then as I believe now, fox hunting was nothing more than an excuse to frationize, liquor tasting and men being men. That was a long time ago

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

quote:

Originally posted by RubyRose

We are right in the middle of it. My favorite is to dip a strawberry in sour cream and then roll it in brown sugar and eat. Repeat. Yum.

Oh man...does that sound good!! Who needs chocolate dipped berries when you can do that!! I bet that is also good with fresh peach wedges!! MMMMMMMmmmmmmm.......

On Sunday, our family went to a strawberry field northwest of Baltimore and picked nearly 3/4 bushel (yup----that is correct) of the sweetest berries that we have had in a long time. Yesterday, I made 4 batches of strawberry jam and we had "old fashion" shortcake for dinner last night. We always use biscuits for our shortcake. Today I am going to make strawberry rhubarb pies for the freezer and also strawberry bread. With another shortcake for dinner tonight, that should finish them off! I just love strawberry season......it signals the start of summer for me!

My mother always makes strawberry freezer jam. It seems as if it is uncooked and the taste is wonderful. I am not sure of her process, but whatever it is, it does not detract from the flavor of fresh strawberries and is great with whipped cream, ice cream or cake.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

chezkatie

did you have your hip boots on?? Where did you go to find the berries & did you leave any for the rest of us? Did the Reisterstown - Hanover -Littlestown -Westminister run on Friday didn't see a sign of any local berries. Other than fresh strawberry pies at the Hillcrest

We went to Baugher's Farm Market, 1236 Baugher Road, Westminster.
410-857-0111/410-876-5642. They opened for the season on Saturday. There are many many berries to be had. We found that we had use them right away as the next morning, a few of the very large ones were soft and watery. There was a lot of straw between rows so that if you were careful, your sneakers did not get too muddy. The small ones wore boots and my son and daughter in law, along with me, threw our sneakers right into the washer when we got home. It was a lot of fun and now that my pies and breads are made I may go out for a few more. The price figures out to less than two dollars a quart!

Strawberry season hasn't quite arrived here, yet, but I'm looking forward to it. A trip to one of the local farms for a morning of strawberry picking and we'll be enjoying strawberry pie. It's a plain crust with sweetened cream cheese spread on the inside, then you arrange fresh, whole strawberries inside the crust so that they look good. Finally, more fresh strawberries, mashed and cooked with sugar and a little corn starch, I think, to thicken them a bit, then pour the result over the berries in the pie shell and chill. My family could eat this 7 days a week during the season if we had the chance. Best topped with fresh whipped cream! (I don't know why we bother to arrange the berries to look good, the pie never lasts more than an hour or two after it chills.)

chezkatie
Was gonna run by Baughers in town on Friday but opted for the PA Dutch MKT instead. Lotsa salads, cheeses, deviled eggs, BBQ ribs etc...

It's enjoyable to read about everyone's strawberry treats. When I was growing up, no one in our family made strawberry shortcake but we did always have grilled strawberry sundaes - the berries threaded on skewers and cooked on a charcoal grill, then mixed with a sauce and served warm over vanilla ice cream. Sort of like a pink hot fudge sundae.

RubyRose,
That sounds like a great experiment for berry-lover's!!
Our Neighborhood U-Pick Farm shut down today. Season's over for them.
Our bed's here at home ar half June-bearing and half everbearing plants, so we will have a smaller quantity of berries for another month or so...until it gets too hot in mid-summer to keep them going. The rhubarb is looking good, so a pie with the two fruits will be in the oven this evening.

meowzart, we finally got some berries and tried the strawberry shortcake using your recipe. Was delicious. Absolutely the closest I've had to my mother's shortcake since way back in the days when she was making it. Thanks so much for your sharing the recipe. We even splurged (in all regards) this time and went with real whipped cream, but I fear furture shortcakes will have to make do with Cool-Whip. Thanks. Liketoeat

We are finally getting some local Strawberries here in Seattle, I even got a few Raspberries. I eat the frist ones plain last night, to good to pair them with anything.

The first local strawberries of the year were on the market Saturday, June 14 - that's very late! So we had strawberry shortcake Saturday and Sunday, strawberry omelet Sunday breakfast, and I'll have strawberries on my cornflakes tomorrow morning.

Meowzart's recipe for shortcake is fine, we jazzed it up a bit with heavy cream and grated orange rind - kind of gilding the lilly...

Seafarer john you have inspired me with the strawberry omlet idea. I am going berry picking tomorrow and I know what I am going to have for breakfast the next day. Like Sundancer 7 My Mum always makes freezer jam. Being from Canada, opening a jar of that jam in the middle of winter is like taking a big ol spoonful of summer.