Best Ever Strawberry Shortcake!

My garden is growing. Somehow, no thanks to me I'm sure, it's actually producing produce. I've never grown anything before, and within days of planting this garden, all of my flowers died. So you can imagine my surprise when the edibles kept on keeping on. I live in an apartment complex built in the 1920's in downtown San Diego. It's not your average cookie cutter complex. Almost everyone here has a garden. There are 5 fig trees, 3 peach trees, loquats, (what the eff is a loquat?, you ask.... stay tuned, more on the rat bastards of the produce world later),tomatoes, herbs, and lots of other surprising little gems growing in this eccentric community.

I'm growing three different kinds of tomatoes, mint, basil, rosemary (accidentally, I didn't plant it), watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, and butternut squash. The squash is huge and really starting to cramp everything else's style. I'm gonna have to have a talk with him.

Anyhow, upon taking a stroll through my garden yesterday(this didn't take very long; it's only about 10 square feet), I harvested my first strawberry! It was tiny, but full of huge strawberry flavor. I was so impressed with my new found accidental gardening skills, that I was inspired to make my favorite summertime treat: strawberry shortcake.

I love the simplest of things. Especially when it comes to dessert. While I can appreciate the work and thought that goes into a "deconstructed" version of an old fashioned favorite, 9 times out of 10 the original is so much better! There are so many different styles of strawberry shotcake these days, and while none of them is "wrong", by any means, for me, there is only one way to make this classic: the way my dad or grandma would've made it. None of this fancy sponge cake or pound cake business, give me a biscuit!

The inspiration for the following "biscuit" (not a true biscuit, more like a scone), comes from Claudia Fleming's cobbler recipe. When I worked at Gramercy Tavern, I used to eat the tops off of the leftover rhubarb cobblers every night. They are crispy, cakey, and soak up the juices without becoming too soggy...everything you could possibly want out of a shortcake, right? I remembered when I asked about the recipe for them, one of the pastry girls had told me it included hard boiled egg yolks. I thought it was weird, so I did a little research and found out it's an old eastern European technique and then I got to experimenting with recipes. The following recipe is an adaptation of Claudia Fleming's recipe that I found online. This is a huge recipe, so give some away by "canning" them in mason jars, or the same dough can be used as a topping for cobbler.

Serves 10

Biscuit: Conventional oven 375, Convection 350

3 large hard boiled egg yolks, sieved

3 1/2 c + 2 tbsp. a.p. flour
1/2 c + 2 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp + 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

12 tbsp (6 oz.) cold butter, cubed

1 3/4 c heavy cream

Strawberries:

4 pints strawberries

juice of one lemon
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped

1 cup sugar

pinch salt

2 cups heavy cream (preferably manufacturing cream)

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 vanilla bean, scraped

pinch salt

In a food processor: sift dry ingredients, add sieved yolks. Add cold butter and pulse until butter is about the size of peas. Add ream all at once, mix just until incorporated. Wrap and chill immediatley.

To do this by hand: In a large bowl, sift dry ingredients and toss with sieved yolks. Add butter to bowl. Using your forefingers and thumbs, smash butter into flakes, being careful not to handle it too much. When most of the butter is smashed, add all of the cream at once, and using only your hands, mix until fully incorporated. Wrap and chill immediatley. You want to keep this dough cold at all times.

For the strawberries:

Clean, hull, and quarter strawberries. Toss with sugar, scraped vanilla bean, and lemon juice. Set aside.

For cream:

Whip together cream, scraped vanilla bean, salt and sugar until medium peaks.

To bake biscuits:

On a lightly floured surface, pat dough to 3/4" thickness. Using a biscuit cutter or a glass, cut into 15 circles. You can keep reusing the dough until it's gone. No need to throw away the scraps.

Chill again until cold. Brush the tops with cream and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. Bake about 25 minutes in a conventional oven, or 28 in a convection., turning halfway through. Cool before serving.

To serve: Cut all of the biscuits in half horizontally. It doesn't matter if they crumble a little, they're delicious nonetheless. Starting and ending with the biscuit, layer biscuit, strawberries and juices, and whipped cream. You can eat this immediatley or store for a couple of days.