Strawberry and vanilla shortcakes.

Thursday, June 26, 2014







If there is one thing that reminds me of summer it's these. Strawberry shortcakes. Every year my mum would make one, always with local strawberries. It was an essential part of my summer in my childhood. So on Sunday when we had our little family get together to celebrate what would have my Dad's 60th birthday I decided that I would make these. My Mum and I were talking and we realised that it was a good couple of years since we had made these. 

I picked the strawberries up on Friday. I walk past the market everyday on my journey into work and the smell of the strawberries gets me every time, especially on sunny days. It's such a summer smell. I picked up a couple of punnets for these which meant there were a few spare (yum!).

The addition of clotted cream in these makes my heart sing. I have Cornish heritage so I'm blaming that for my love of clotted cream and it has to Rodda's (look how cute the tub is!). There's also a good dose of vanilla which just makes these shortcakes even more special!

Adapted from BBC Good Food

You will need:
350g self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting
100g butter, cold, cubed
100g caster sugar
1 generous tbsp of vanilla extract
100ml milk, warmed
1 egg, plus a little extra beaten egg for glazing
squeeze lemon juice

1 tbsp icing sugar
1 generous tsp vanilla extract
227g tub clotted cream
250g strawberries, thickly sliced

Heat oven to 220ºC/fan 200ºC/gas 7 and line a couple of baking trays.


Put the flour, butter and sugar into the bowl of a food processor, then pulse until fine. You can do this by hand if you don't have a food processor by  rubbing the butter in to make breadcrumbs.

Tip into a large bowl. Beat the milk, egg, vanilla and a good squeeze of lemon together, then tip into the bowl and bring together with a knife, using a cutting action, until you have a clumpy dough. 

Bring together with your hands.

Lightly flour the work surface and tip the dough onto it. 

Using a rolling pin, pat out to 2cm thick. Cut out 8 rounds with a smooth 7cm cutter.

 Glaze just the tops with beaten egg, transfer to the floured sheet, then bake for 10-12 mins until risen and golden, and they sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. 

Cool on a wire rack.

Beat the remaining vanilla seeds and icing sugar into the clotted cream.

 It will get runnier at first, but keep beating and it will thicken again. 

To serve, slice the very top from each shortcake to give a flat surface. 

Top with a good dollop of the vanilla clotted cream and finish with the strawberries.



6 Replies

6 comments

  1. Great shots! And these looks delicious! xx

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  2. These look amazing. Is it bad to say I've never tried clotted cream?
    Hayley
    Water Painted Dreams xo

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They were. You need to try it, it's so delicious :)

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  3. These look so yummy!

    http://abigailalicex.blogspot.co.uk

    ReplyDelete

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