email this pageShortcake is much more than the sum of its parts. Some cooks swear by buttermilk biscuits while others say homemade pound cake works best, but it’s the combination of juicy fruit, whipped cream, and something to soak up the juices and provide a texture contrast that makes shortcake the queen of desserts.
Unless you count the ground corn and crushed strawberries that Native Americans mixed together for the Colonists, there is no historical blueprint for shortcake. Instead, American bakers have taken the recipe into their own hands. Southern cooks lean towards using peaches and raspberries to make shortcake and have been known to top off their creations with dollops of meringue. New Englanders, who once made shortcake with sugary bread dough, use blueberries to make variations of it. Cooks everywhere take shortcuts with store-bought sponge cake and soft-serve ice cream, but what they end up with is an imitation of the real thing.
One of our favorite shortcakes starts with peaches so ripe and juicy they can be can be mashed with bare hands. Instead of adding sugar, we combine them with peach preserves to sweeten and enhance the fruit flavor. For the “biscuit” part of the recipe, we make a single pastry round with whole wheat flour substituting for some of the white flour, sprinkle it with sugar and pop it into the oven. While it’s still warm, we cut it in wedges, split them in half and add the peaches and whipped cream. There’s no soft-serve ice cream, no fruit syrup, no back into the oven to ripen—just dynamite shortcake.
Peach Shortcake
Ingredients
2 1/2 to 3 pounds peaches (about 6 to 8 peaches), peeled, pitted and sliced
1/2 cup fruit-only peach preserves
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar (optional)
1/2 to 1 tablespoon peach liqueur, peach schnapps or peach brandy (optional)
1/8 teaspoon almond extract
Shortcake:
Vegetable oil or cooking spray
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar, divided
3 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
4 1/2 tablespoons vegetable shortening, in small pieces
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 recipe Peach Filling
1 1/2 cups whipped topping
Fresh raspberries (optional)
2. Preheat oven to 425F. Lightly oil or spray a baking sheet.
3. To prepare the shortcake, combine flours, 1/2 cup sugar, baking powder, soda and salt in a food processor.
3. Add butter and shortening and pulse quickly to make a crumbly mixture (alternatively, add sifted ingredients to a bowl and cut shortening and butter in by hand).
4. In a small bowl, combine buttermilk, eggs and vanilla, beating well with a fork.
5. With the processor running, pour in buttermilk mixture and pulse a couple of times until dough holds together.
6. Place dough on prepared baking sheet; gently pat into a 12-inch round. Sprinkle with 3 tablespoons sugar.
7. Bake 15 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool on a rack until only slightly warm.
8. Slice cake into wedges. Cut each wedge open and spoon peach filling over bottom. Top with whipped topping and top of wedge. Garnish with fresh raspberries. Serves 8.
Recipe by Crescent Dragonwagon, "Relish the Season," June 2006.
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