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Strawberry Shortcake
2 cups flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons sugar 4 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 3 tablespoons shortening 1 egg 1/2 cup milk Sift dry ingredients, cut in shortening; add beaten egg to milk and add to dry ingredients to make soft dough. Divide dough; smooth one half out lightly. Put into greased deep layer tin; spread with butter; cover with other half of dough which has also been smoothed out to fit pan. Bake in hot oven 20 to 25 minutes. Split while hot and spread crushed and sweetened berries and whipped cream between layers; cover top with whipped cream and whole berries. Dust with powdered sugar and serve.
A biscuit-style shortcake from a baking powder company pamphlet, baked as two stacked rounds with butter between so they part cleanly. A few notes on the vessel, the oven and the dough handling.
- Hot ovenRoughly 400-425°F. The recipe allows 20 to 25 minutes; start checking toward the end of that range.
- Deep layer tinAn 8- or 9-inch round cake pan, at least 1½ inches deep. A wider pan gives a flatter cake, a narrower one a taller layer that will want the longer end of the baking time.
- ShorteningIn this period the word means lard, or a solid vegetable fat like the newly common hydrogenated shortening. Butter works and tastes better; keep it cold and cut it in only until the pieces are pea-sized.
- The buttered seamSpreading soft butter on the lower round before laying the second on top is the hinge of the recipe. It keeps the two from fusing, so the hot cake splits along a clean line rather than tearing.
- Baking powder quantityFour teaspoons to two cups of flour is high by modern standards, but correct for a shortcake meant to rise fast and stay tender. Use fresh powder.
- Handling the dough"Smooth out lightly" means pat it, not roll it hard. Overworking makes the layers tough and gives them a bready crumb instead of a short one.
- BerriesAbout 1 quart of strawberries, roughly three-quarters crushed with 2 to 3 tablespoons sugar and left to sit 20 minutes to draw juice, the rest kept whole for the top.
- Yield and timingServes six to eight, cut in wedges. Assemble shortly before serving; the juice soaks into the split faces and the layers slump if it sits.
The New Royal Cook Book belongs to a long line of promotional cookery published by the Royal Baking Powder Company. Strawberry shortcake is a good advertisement for chemical leavening: it is an American dish, tied to the short early-summer strawberry season and generally traced to the mid-nineteenth century, when saleratus and then commercial baking powders made a quick sweetened biscuit possible in any kitchen at short notice. The split-biscuit form here is the older one; the sponge-cake and cup-shaped versions sold today came later.