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Strawberry Short Cake II
2 cups flour 1 tablespoon sugar 4 teaspoons baking powder 1/3 cup butter ½ teaspoon salt 3/4 cup milk Mix same as Strawberry Short Cake I. Toss and roll on floured board. Put in round buttered tin, and shape with back of hand to fit pan.
This is Fannie Farmer's biscuit-dough shortcake, richer than the plain version and meant to be split and filled with crushed sweetened berries. The recipe leans on the preceding entry for method, so a few things need filling in.
- The salt is a misprintThe salt looks high: 1 1/2 teaspoons for two cups of flour is well above what a biscuit dough of this size normally takes, and it may be a slip for 1/2 teaspoon. If in doubt, use 1/2 to 1 teaspoon, allowing for salted butter.
- "Mix same as Strawberry Short Cake I"The earlier entry is not reproduced on this page, but the usual method for such a dough is to mix the dry ingredients, work in the butter with the fingertips until it resembles coarse meal, then add the milk to make a soft dough. Handle it as little as possible once the milk goes in.
- OvenNo oven direction is given here. A dough of this kind wants a hot oven, in modern terms somewhere around 425-450F, until well risen and browned; watch it rather than trusting a fixed time.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to two cups of flour is two teaspoons per cup, roughly double the 1 to 1 1/4 teaspoons per cup common in modern recipes. It is not dangerous, but a modern double-acting powder at this rate can leave a metallic edge; three teaspoons is closer to what the dough needs today.
- The panA "round buttered tin" would most likely be an 8- or 9-inch cake pan. Shaping with the back of the hand rather than a rolling pin keeps the dough loose and the crumb tender.
- Splitting itThis entry directs a single round in one tin, to be split after baking. Some shortcake recipes instead bake two thin rounds with butter between so the cake pulls apart cleanly; a single thick round split while hot will tear more.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; a single round tin of this size will serve about six. Fill and top with crushed sweetened berries and serve with cream.
American shortcake belongs to the biscuit family rather than the cake family, and this entry shows it plainly: it sits in the biscuits and breakfast cakes chapter, not among the desserts. The name comes from "short" in the old sense of high in fat and crumbling easily, the same word behind shortbread and shortening. By the time Fannie Farmer compiled the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book in 1896, strawberry shortcake had become a fixture of the June table in the Northeast, timed to the short local berry season. Sponge-cake and sweetened-batter versions were also in print in the nineteenth century; the version here, split and buttered while hot, is the older form.