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Biscuits for Dessert
All of these biscuits make a good shortcake in wild berry season, but they are better if half again as much fat is added to recipe. They should be split with the fingers-never cut biscuits with a knife-buttered while hot, spread with berries mashed with sugar, and eaten at once with more berries for the sauce.
It is good to remember that the berries will take on a lovely flavor if mashed, sugared, and warmed near the fire while biscuits are being made. 2 CUPS FLOUR I TEASPOON SALT
This is a finishing method rather than a full formula: it tells you how to turn any plain biscuit into berry shortcake. The hinge is speed — split, butter, fill and eat while the biscuit is still hot enough to melt the butter.
- Half again as much fatIf a biscuit recipe calls for 4 tablespoons of butter or shortening per 2 cups flour, use 6. The richer dough browns faster and is more tender, which is the point for dessert, but it also spreads more, so keep the rounds thick.
- Split with the fingersThis is not sentiment. Pulling a hot biscuit apart follows the layers and leaves a torn, absorbent face that drinks up juice; a knife smears and compresses the crumb, and the berry syrup runs off instead of soaking in.
- Macerating the berriesMashing with sugar and letting the fruit stand draws out juice by osmosis; 20 to 30 minutes is usually enough for raspberries or blackberries, longer for firm strawberries. Warming it "near the fire" means gentle heat only, lukewarm rather than hot; keep it off the boil so the fruit stays fresh-tasting and does not start to cook down.
- Sugar quantityThe recipe gives no amount; something in the range of a quarter to a half cup of sugar per quart of berries is usual, depending on ripeness. Taste after the fruit has stood, since sweetness comes forward as the juice runs.
- Butter while hotButter both torn faces while the biscuit is still hot enough to melt it. The recipe does not specify which butter; salted butter gives a mild contrast against the sweetened fruit.
- Yield and servingTwo cups of flour will generally give somewhere around eight to twelve 2-inch biscuits, so two apiece for four people. The recipe asks for 'more berries for the sauce' without saying how many; reserve a portion of the fruit unmashed for spooning over the top.
Berry shortcake in American cooking has more often been biscuit-based than cake-based, though cake and sponge versions also appear in nineteenth-century American cookbooks; the sponge-cake cups sold in supermarkets are a later industrial convenience. "Shortcake" takes its name from the older sense of "short" — crumbly, tender with fat, the same sense that gives us the word "shortening" — so instructing the cook to add half again as much fat moves a biscuit further toward being a shortcake. The method suits camp and trail cooking, since it needs little equipment beyond a pan and a fire, and the recipe's own reference to wild berry season and warming fruit near the fire points that way.