Shortcake

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Shortcake
Stawberry shortcake.jpeg
Strawberry shortcake
Type Cake or biscuit
Place of origin United Kingdom
Main ingredients Flour, sugar, butter, milk or cream

Shortcake generally refers to a dessert with a crumbly scone-like texture. [1] There are multiple variations of shortcake, most of which are served with fruit and cream. One of the most popular is strawberry shortcake, which is typically served with whipped cream. Other variations common in the UK are blackberry and clotted cream shortcake [2] and lemon berry shortcake, which is served with lemon curd in place of cream. [3] [4]

Contents

Preparation

Shortcake is typically made with flour, sugar, baking powder or soda, salt, butter, milk or cream, and sometimes eggs. The dry ingredients are blended, and then the butter is cut in until the mixture resembles cornmeal. The liquid ingredients are then mixed in just until moistened, resulting in a shortened dough. The dough is then dropped in spoonfuls onto a baking sheet, rolled and cut like baking powder biscuits, or poured into a cake pan, depending on how wet the dough is and the baker's preferences. Then it is baked at a relatively high temperature until set. [5] [6]

Strawberry shortcake is a widely known dessert made with shortcake. Sliced strawberries are mixed with sugar and allowed to sit an hour or so, until the strawberries have surrendered a great deal of their juices (macerated). The shortcakes are split, and the bottoms are covered with a layer of strawberries, juice, and whipped cream, typically flavored with sugar and vanilla. The top is replaced, and more strawberries and whipped cream are added onto the top. Some convenience versions of shortcake are not made with a shortcake (i.e. biscuit) at all, but instead use a base of sponge cake or sometimes a corn muffin. [5] [6]

Though strawberry is the most widely known shortcake dessert, peach shortcake, blueberry shortcake, chocolate shortcake and other similar desserts are made along similar lines. [6] In some recipes the shortcake itself is flavored; coconut is one addition. [7]

History

The short part of the name shortcake indicates something crumbly or crispy, generally through the addition of a fat such as butter or lard. [5] The earliest printed mention of the descriptive term short – as in short cake – occurred in 1588, in the second English cookbook to be printed, The Good Huswifes Handmaid for Cookerie in her Kitchen (London, 1588). [8] However, that recipe describes an unleavened cookie or biscuit (in the English sense), made of flour, cream, sugar, egg yolk and spices. [9] [10]

Strawberries were first included in a recipe for "Strawberry cake" which appeared in the June 1, 1845, issue (page 86) of The Ohio Cultivator (Columbus). The recipe was popularized by Eliza Leslie of Philadelphia in The Lady's Receipt-book (1847). These "Strawberry cakes" were made of a thick unleavened cookie of flour, butter, eggs and sugar, split, layered with fresh strawberries, and covered with a hard sugar-and-egg white icing. [9] [11]

The North American introduction of baking soda and baking powder as leaven in the 1800s revolutionized baking and made possible the biscuit-style shortcake. [12] By the 1850s, leavened shortcakes were the popular pastry for American strawberry cakes, and the term strawberry shortcake became established. [9]

By the 1860s, cream was being poured onto the shortcake and strawberries. A June 1862 issue of the Genesse Farmer (Rochester) described a “Strawberry Shortcake” made up of layers of soda biscuit, fresh berries, sugar, and cream. A similar recipe appeared in Jennie June's American Cookery Book (1866) by Jane Cunningham Croly. [9] The first known cookbook by a black woman in the United States, A Domestic Cook Book (1866) by Malinda Russell, [13] also contains a recipe. [14]

Festivals

In the United States, strawberry shortcake parties were held as celebrations of the summer fruit harvest. This tradition is upheld in some parts of the United States on June 14, which is Strawberry Shortcake Day. [15]

Record

The largest strawberry shortcake ever made was in the town of La Trinidad, Benguet, in the Philippines on March 20, 2004. It weighed 21,213.40 lb (9622.23 kg.) [16]

See also

Related Research Articles

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Cake is a flour confection made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate and which share features with desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pastry</span> Various baked products made of dough

Pastry is baked food made with a dough of flour, water, and shortening that may be savoury or sweetened. Sweetened pastries are often described as bakers' confectionery. The word "pastries" suggests many kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder, and eggs. Small tarts and other sweet baked products are called pastries as a synecdoche. Common pastry dishes include pies, tarts, quiches, croissants, and pasties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chocolate chip cookie</span> Drop cookie featuring chocolate chips

A chocolate chip cookie is a drop cookie that features chocolate chips or chocolate morsels as its distinguishing ingredient. Chocolate chip cookies are claimed to have originated in the United States in 1938, when Ruth Graves Wakefield chopped up a Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bar and added the chopped chocolate to a cookie recipe; however, historical recipes for grated or chopped chocolate cookies exist prior to 1938 by various other authors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pound cake</span> Type of cake

Pound cake is a type of cake traditionally made with a pound of each of four ingredients: flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. Pound cakes are generally baked in either a loaf pan or a Bundt mold. They are sometimes served either dusted with powdered sugar, lightly glazed, or with a coat of icing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shortbread</span> Scottish biscuit

Shortbread or shortie is a traditional Scottish biscuit usually made from one part white sugar, two parts butter, and three to four parts plain wheat flour. Shortbread does not contain any leavening, such as baking powder or baking soda. Shortbread is widely associated with Christmas and Hogmanay festivities in Scotland, and some Scottish brands are exported around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheesecake</span> Cheese-based dessert

Cheesecake is a dessert made with a soft fresh cheese, eggs, and sugar. It may have a crust or base made from crushed cookies, graham crackers, pastry, or sometimes sponge cake. Cheesecake may be baked or unbaked, and is usually refrigerated.

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A rusk is a hard, dry biscuit or a twice-baked bread. It is sometimes used as a teether for babies. In some cultures, rusk is made of cake, rather than bread: this is sometimes referred to as cake rusk. In the UK, the name also refers to a wheat-based food additive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quick bread</span> Bread leavened with agents other than yeast

Quick bread is any bread leavened with a chemical leavening agent rather than a biological one like yeast or sourdough starter. An advantage of quick breads is their ability to be prepared quickly and reliably, without requiring the time-consuming skilled labor and the climate control needed for traditional yeast breads.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hot milk cake</span> American sponge cake

Hot milk cake is a butter sponge cake from American cuisine. It can be made as a sheet cake or a layer cake, or baked in a tube pan. The hot milk and butter give the cake a distinctive fine-grained texture, similar to pound cake.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jumble (cookie)</span> Anise-flavored cookie

Jumbles are simple butter cookies made with a basic recipe of flour, sugar, eggs, and butter. They can be flavored with vanilla, anise, or caraway seed used for flavoring, or other flavoring can be used like almond. They were formerly often made in the form of rings or rolls.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poppy seed roll</span> Pastry

The poppy seed roll is a pastry consisting of a roll of sweet yeast bread with a dense, rich, bittersweet filling of poppy seed. An alternative filling is a paste of minced walnuts, or minced chestnuts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shrewsbury cake</span> English biscuit or cake

A Shrewsbury cake or Shrewsbury biscuit is a classic English dessert, named after Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire. They are made from dough that contains sugar, flour, egg, butter and lemon zest; dried fruit is also often added. Shrewsbury cakes can be small in size for serving several at a time, or large for serving as a dessert in themselves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biscuit (bread)</span> Type of bread

In the United States and Canada, a biscuit is a variety of baked bread with a firm, dry exterior and a soft, crumbly interior. It is made with baking powder as a leavening agent rather than yeast, and at times is called a baking powder biscuit to differentiate it from other types. Like other forms of bread, a biscuit is often served with butter or other condiments, flavored with other ingredients, or combined with other types of food to make sandwiches or other dishes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sponge cake</span> Type of cake

Sponge cake is a light cake made with eggs, flour and sugar, sometimes leavened with baking powder. Some sponge cakes do not contain egg yolks, like angel food cake, but most of them do. Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain. The sponge cake is thought to be one of the first non-yeasted cakes, and the earliest attested sponge cake recipe in English is found in a book by the English poet Gervase Markham, The English Huswife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman (1615). Still, the cake was much more like a cracker: thin and crispy. Sponge cakes became the cake recognised today when bakers started using beaten eggs as a rising agent in the mid-18th century. The Victorian creation of baking powder by English food manufacturer Alfred Bird in 1843 allowed the addition of butter to the traditional sponge recipe, resulting in the creation of the Victoria sponge. Cakes are available in many flavours and have many recipes as well. Sponge cakes have become snack cakes via the Twinkie.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Old-fashioned doughnut</span> Type of deep fried food

The old-fashioned doughnut is a term used for a variety of cake doughnut prepared in the shape of a ring with a cracked surface and tapered edges around it. While many early cookbooks included recipes for "old-fashioned donuts" that were made with yeast, the distinctive cake doughnuts sold in doughnut shops are made with chemical leavener and may have crisper texture compared to other styles of cake doughnuts. The cracked surface is usually glazed or coated with sugar.

Gâteau de plomb was a style of 19th-century shortcake pastry made with butter, eggs and cream, similar to biscuit.

References

  1. ↑ "What is Shortcake?". Bakingbites. 3 September 2009. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  2. ↑ "Blackberry & clotted cream shortcake". BBC Good Food. September 2005.
  3. ↑ "Lemon Berry Shortcake with Pressed Edible Flowers". nurturedinnorfolk. 1 June 2021.
  4. ↑ "Lemon Blueberry Shortcakes". Delish. 1 June 2022.
  5. 1 2 3 Purvis, Kathleen (July 18, 2007). "The long and short of the classic shortcake". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
  6. 1 2 3 Hamel, PJ (July 8, 2021). "Imaginative ways to up your shortcake game | King Arthur Baking". www.kingarthurbaking.com. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
  7. ↑ Longbotham, Lori (16 November 2012). Luscious Coconut Desserts. Chronicle Books. ISBN   978-1-4521-0021-0 . Retrieved 21 February 2022.
  8. ↑ Roufs, Timothy G.; Roufs, Kathleen Smyth (2014-07-29). Sweet Treats around the World: An Encyclopedia of Food and Culture: An Encyclopedia of Food and Culture. ABC-CLIO. p. 365. ISBN   978-1-61069-221-2. The "short" in shortcake comes from the 15th-century British usage meaning crumbly like, the first mention of which, as "short cake", appeared in London in 1588.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Marks, Gil (30 May 2013). "Strawberry Shortcake - History and Recipe". Tori Avey. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
  10. ↑ "A Good Huswifes Handmaide, 1594". Foods of England. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
  11. ↑ Leslie, Eliza (1847). The lady's receipt-book: a useful companion for large or small families. Philadelphia: Carey and Hart. pp. 198–199. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
  12. ↑ Civitello, Linda (2017). Baking powder wars : the cutthroat food fight that revolutionized cooking. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. pp. 45, 70–74. ISBN   978-0252041082.
  13. ↑ Levins, Sandy (31 March 2021). "Author of First Cookbook Written by an African American: Malinda Russell". WednesdaysWomen. Retrieved 1 February 2022.
  14. ↑ Russell, Malinda (2007). A domestic cook book: containing a careful selection of useful receipts for the kitchen by Malinda Russell, an experienced cook, Paw Paw, Michigan, 1866: a facsimile of the first known cookbook by an African American. William L. Clements Library. p. 12. ISBN   978-1-4255-8881-6 . Retrieved 13 February 2022.
  15. ↑ Chesman, Andrea; Raboff, Fran (1 January 2009). 250 Treasured Country Desserts: Mouthwatering, Time-honored, Tried & True, Soul-satisfying, Handed-down Sweet Comforts. Storey Publishing. ISBN   978-1-60342-152-2 . Retrieved 13 February 2022.
  16. ↑ "Largest fruit shortcake". Guinness World Records. 20 March 2004. Retrieved 2021-02-12.
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