strawberry | Perfecting Pru

I was quick off the mark this month. I had made and we had devoured the Fraisier within the first week of the challenge coming out. We loved it. I dream about it. It was wonderful. I love Fraisiers but would never have thought to make one as it seemed rather intimidating. In fact, it wasn’t. I’m already planning to make smaller individual cakes.

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes (which is now one of my favourite food blogs) was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

Here are the photo steps to making the cake.

This was a great pick. I macerated the strawberries in raspberry coulis and Chambord and they were lovely and soft. The sponge was also spoon-fed the same mixture. Next time I am going to drench the sponge more!

~ Pru

It was my pick for Martha Mondays this week and in the hope of keeping the warm weather around I chose Strawberry Shortcakes. I swear it started raining as soon as I sent the email through to Brette with my pick!

Yep, the true British summer is with us. Out are the t-shirts and skirts and in are cardigans and umbrellas. The fire is even on in the living room.

Still. I don’t care. There were shortcakes, cream and strawberries to look forward to. Okay, now I thought that shortcakes would be different to a scone, more biscuity or something. But they are like a scone. They are fiddly to slice, and I did use a cutter for mine instead of doing the very un-Martha-ish thing to do and just cut them into eight squares. If a recipe doesn’t call for a couple of bowls, every measuring cup, at least four different spoons and a tape measure then it just doesn’t seem like a proper Martha recipe but the shortcakes only required one bowl. It was incredible.

Okay, enough with the chatter. Our verdict? We loved them. I would use this recipe again instead of my usual scone recipe. I liked that the strawberries had softened in the sugar. It was a winner.

I hope anyone else who made them liked them (and that you enjoyed them in warmer, dryer weather!)

~ Pru