Strawberry Shortcake

Posted on 25 Aug 2010 - by Katkat In: Operation: Julie and Julia

One day, I came home from work to find a box – not a small one – of red plump juicy strawberries. My dad had a shopping spree at a farmer’s market that day and bought variety of fruits. Immediately that came to my mind was redemption from my previous failed strawberry cake. I’d make another strawberry cake! This time I’ll use different recipe. I stumbled upon Strawberry Shortcake recipe of Keiko.

To make this strawberry shortcake, I decided to have the right tools. After a series of baking failures, I realized that maybe my oven needed temperature recalibration. I researched over the internet how to calibrate my oven and what I needed was an oven thermometer. Well the calibration procedure was unsuccessful but with 2 oven thermometers sitting inside the oven, I can somehow monitor the temperature of the oven properly.

I think making this strawberry shortcake was fated. I needed a lot of baking items: round pans, weigh scale, whisk, cooking thermometer, oven thermometer…I wouldn’t have started this project without these things. I don’t want this project to fail again so I was adamant to use the proper tools. I was resigned to buying these stuffs from Williams Sonoma however that weekend my father, who loves to go to garage sales, was able to procure me all the items that I needed from the rummage sales that he went to. That saved me a lot!!!! Ordinarily these baking stuffs will total to 50bucks but my dad got it for under 5 bucks. Cool!!!

I’m not going to post the recipe here because it’s copyrighted and Keiko (the creator) deserves all the acclamation. Here’s Keiko’s website http://bit.ly/agwcrN She makes wonderful pastry and makes a good tutorial too. She gives step by step procedures and tips and instructional videos to make her recipes. I have tried her cream puff and it turned out good…if not for my oven temperature acting up.

So what happened to my strawberry shortcake? Here are pictures to prove it.

Yummmmmm! Despite a very crumbly cake, it was good. Strawberries and whipped cream are very good combination. The cake tasted good too. With baking technique however, I needed more practice. My whipped cream was not smooth as I liked it to be but at least it was delicious. My cake decorating too needed ~~some~~ a lot of work. I asked Keiko why my cake was crumbly and she told me I underbeat the eggs and overmix the flour. So…practice, practice, practice!