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Strawberry Shortcake
2 cups flour. 3/4 teaspoon salt. 4 teaspoons baking powder. 2 tablespoons Cottolene. 1 cup thin cream.
PROCESS: Sift together flour, salt and baking powder. Rub shortening in with tips of fingers. Add cream, mix with a knife to a soft dough. Turn on a floured board, knead slightly and divide the dough into two equal parts. Pat and roll each piece to one-half inch thickness; lay one piece in a buttered jelly cake pan, brush over with soft butter and place remaining piece on top. Bake in a hot oven fifteen minutes. Remove from oven; invert cake on a hot serving platter. Remove bottom layer (which is now the top). Spread with soft butter and add a layer of berries prepared as directed hereafter. Sift generously with bar sugar, replace remaining cake, cover with berries, sprinkle with sugar, mask with whipped cream sweetened and flavored with orange extract.
A biscuit-dough shortcake, not a sponge — the two layers are baked pressed together with butter between so they split cleanly after baking. A few of the ingredient names need translating.
- CottoleneA cottonseed-oil-and-beef-suet shortening sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company, who published this book. Use 2 tablespoons of vegetable shortening, or lard, or cold butter.
- Thin creamLight or single cream, roughly 18-20% fat. One cup makes a soft, sticky dough; hold back a tablespoon or two and add it only if the flour stays dry.
- Bar sugarA fine-grained sugar; superfine or caster sugar today. Granulated works but sits on the berries in visible crystals.
- Hot oven425-450F. Fifteen minutes at that heat is right for half-inch layers; check that the top is set and pale gold rather than browned.
- Jelly cake panA shallow round layer-cake pan, about 8 or 9 inches. Not a jelly-roll sheet.
- The buttered seamBrushing the lower round with soft butter before laying the second on top is the whole trick — it keeps the two from fusing so they lift apart in one motion. Skip it and you will be tearing the cake.
- HandlingKnead only a few turns and pat rather than roll hard. Baking powder doughs worked like bread come out tough and layered rather than tender.
- The berriesThe recipe refers to a companion entry for preparing the berries, which is not reproduced here; the usual period treatment is to hull ripe strawberries, sugar them and let them stand until juicy. Prepare them first so the juice has drawn by the time the cake comes out.
- Yield and timingTwo 8- or 9-inch layers; the recipe gives no yield. Assemble while the cake is hot and serve promptly, as it softens as it stands.
52 Sunday Dinners (1913) was written by Elizabeth O. Hiller and published by the N. K. Fairbank Company, makers of Cottolene, which is why a cottonseed-oil shortening appears here in place of butter or lard; the book is a menu planner and an advertisement at the same time. The shortcake itself is older and thoroughly American: a biscuit dough split and filled with fruit, distinct from the British sponge-and-cream approach, and appearing in printed American cookery from the mid-nineteenth century onward. Strawberry shortcake was a seasonal dish, tied to the weeks when local fruit was in the market.