Berry Shortcakes Franco American Style—Tuesdays With Dorie—Baking Chez Moi

Today’s post for Tuesdays With Dorie--Baking Chez Moi are Strawberry Shortcakes Franco-Amercian Style (pages 338-340 and 424-425).  They are basically a ladyfinger dough, piped onto a baking sheet.  Two cookies/cakes are sandwiched with fresh whipped cream and berries.  Dorie’s recipes has a great filling with a strawberry compote as well as another option for roasted strawberries.  My family likes fresh berries, so I made the cakes, whipped some fresh cream and washed some berries—raspberries, blackberries and strawberries and let everyone choose what they wanted.

It was fun to make the ladyfinger batter, which I hadn’t done before.  The simple dough is made with whipped egg whites added to minimal ingredients of the yolks, a little flour and sugar and some cornstarch.  So easy and I liked doing something new.  The dough is put in a piping bag and piped into three inch circles and baked for a short time.  The cookies are tender and cake-like.  I tasted a little piece of one.  They could easily be made with a gluten free flour and organic sugar.  I will try that next time. 

If I have learned anything from all my years baking from Dorie’s cookbooks with TWD, it is mise en place—everything in its place.  I love getting everything ready to go before I begin assembling a recipe.  The parchment is ready to go and the piping bag.

Quite the simple batter and piping is easy—don’t be afraid of it.  Yes, filling the bag gets just a little messy, but that’s what baking is all about, right?

Baked to a perfect golden color, the shortcakes are ready to go with whipped creamy goodness and fresh berries!

 

I set up a quick dessert station and let my family have at it.

Glad I participated in this one.  Check out the other bloggers’ posts for their shortcakes here.  Who knew that ladyfingers dough/cookies were so easy?  

TWD—Devilish Shortcakes and Last Week’s Rewind—Blueberry Pie

Last week I mentioned that I planned to make Dorie’s Blueberry Pie for Thanksgiving, but didn’t post it yet because I was making it for Thanksgiving.  Dorie’s recipe is specifically for a double-crusted pie, but I put streusel on top. 

The pie was fantastic and a big hit with our 25+ pies and desserts with our crowd of 60 for Thanksgiving.  This is the only picture I was able to snap of it.

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I made the Devilish Shortcakes on Monday, just in time to also snap a few photos so I could share in my participation with TWD this week.  The shortcakes were chosen by Tania of Love BIG Bake Often.  I started putting the ingredients together without thinking about how big the recipe is, so I went ahead and made all the scones, but only baked six and froze the other 13 for making another time.

Easy enough, but I did cheat and use the food processor to cut in the butter to the dry ingredients.  I sprinkled the tops of the shortcakes with some turbinado sugar before they baked. 

 

To the freezer.

For dessert.

I could only envision these one way.  Nutella slathered on both sides, sliced bananas, whipped cream with a drizzle of chocolate syrup.  Oh, yes I did.

We also had sliced, macerated strawberries to put in the cakes.  Scott had one, Taylor had one, I ate some and made one for Kevin when he got home from work late.  And he ate it and said he liked it!  (He doesn’t really love traditional shortcake or strawberries.  Here’s his.

We’ll be happy to pull a few more of these out of the freezer sometime and bake them up!  Thanks for the fun, different pick, Tania.  She’ll have the recipe on her blog.  Check out other TWD Bloggers shortcakes, too.

Oh so much more to share with you coming up soon, including another CSN Stores giveaway and lots of holiday baking ideas.