[2] Americans are more familiar with the French-style génoise (zhen-WOZ), a strawberry shortcake that’s a sponge layer cake with whipped cream. Here’s the recipe for this cake (photo © Fun Cooking).

Sweet summer berries and stone fruits beg to be turned into shortcake. It requires only three ingredients: the fruit of choice, whipped cream and the biscuit or cake base.

The original shortcake concept, from the U.K., uses a slightly sweetened baking soda or baking powder biscuit or scone: a crumbly bread that has been leavened with baking powder or baking soda.

Split in half, the base is piled with fruit and whipped cream, then topped with the other half, often with more fruit and whipped cream on top.

Just to confirm: The classic shortcake isn’t cake, in the American sense.

To us, it’s a dry biscuit: a crumbly, roll-shaped bread that has been leavened with baking powder or baking soda.

As time marched forward, the classic biscuit base remained, but new variations evolved. The history of shortcake continues below.

June 14th is National Strawberry Shortcake Day.
 
 
RECIPE #1: CLASSIC STRAWBERRY (OR ANY FRUIT) SHORTCAKE

If you don’t have to bake the biscuits, this is a pretty easy recipe to assemble. There’s a shortcake biscuit recipe below, but other choices include:
 
For The Biscuits (Choose One)

 
For The Whipped Cream

 
We intentionally omitted Cool Whip imitation whipped cream. Many people love it, but we can’t get past the ingredients, which include hydrogenated vegetable oil and high fructose corn syrup.

RECIPE #2: SHORTCAKE BISCUITS

Shortcake biscuits add a bit of sugar to a conventional biscuit recipe.

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 450°F. Grease a cookie sheet.

2. SIFT the dry ingredients together. Beat 2 eggs with milk and set aside.

3. MIX 3/4 cup shortening with the dry ingredients. Add the milk and eggs and knead on a board for a few minutes.

4. ROLL the dough out 3/4 inch thick. Cut with a round cookie cutter and bake 10 to 15 minutes on greased cookie sheet. Cool on a rack.

5. ASSEMBLE: Cut biscuits in half. Spoon some of the fruit and any juice onto each shortcake bottom. Top with whipped cream and add the shortcake top (you can serve the shortcake open face if you prefer). Spoon more fruit over the top and serve.
 
 
SHORTCAKE HISTORY

The first known strawberry shortcake recipe appeared in an English cookbook around 1588. The original concept used a slightly sweetened baking soda or baking powder biscuit or scone [source].

The next recipe of note was published in 1847 by food writer Eliza Leslie in The Lady’s Receipt-Book.

An 1850 recipe creates the dish with biscuits, butter, strawberries and sweetened cream. Perhaps a way to create a tea-time dessert from leftover breakfast biscuits, softening them with biscuits and cream?

By 1850, strawberry shortcake was a well-known biscuit-and-fruit dessert, served hot with butter and sweetened cream.

But by 1910 the modern version emerged, using whipped cream as the topping, as the French did with their own version, the strawberry génoise (more about that in a minute).

American Shortcake

The concept of using a biscuit traveled across the pond. Split in half, the base was piled with fruit and whipped cream, then topped with the other half of the biscuit, often with more fruit and whipped cream on top (photos #1 and #6).

In the U.S., shortcake parties were held as celebrations of the summer fruit harvest, typically using berries and stone fruits.

Some of the earliest American recipes used pie crust rounds or broken-up pieces of baked pie crust. According to Wikipedia, that recipe that can still be found in the South.

However, another version of shortcake emerged, based on the French sponge cake, called génoise (zhen-WOZ).

Sponge layers were filled with whipped cream and strawberries, and the cake was frosted with more whipped cream (photos #2, #5 and #7).

Some housewives baked a standard sponge cake in a tube pan, sliced it horizontally and used the same filling.

To make the dessert easier for housewives, some commercial bakeries created sponge dessert cups—individual sponge cake cups that only required strawberries topped with whipped cream.

More recently, Japanese bakers created a hybrid of the American and the French versions.

As the concept has evolved, biscuits and sponge have been replaced by everything from:

 
For June 14th, National Strawberry Shortcake Day, have whatever style of shortcake you like.

How about a pot luck where everyone brings his/her own creation?

Please invite us!
 
 
MORE SHORTCAKE RECIPES

[3] Ice cream can replace the whipped cream. Here, homemade rhubarb ice cream joins stewed rhubarb on a shortcake (photo © The Chefs Collaborative Cookbook).

[4] Think outside the biscuit: a variation made with a loaf of pound cake. Here’s the recipe (photo © The Baker Chick).

[5] The best strawberry shortcake layer cake. Get the recipe in Birthday Cakes by Fiona Cairns (photo © Rizzoli).

[6] Grilled peach shortcake, shown here with ice cream, can be served with whipped cream instead. Or, why not both (photo © Go Bold With Butter).

[7] Strawberry shortcake has become popular in Japan. Here’s the recipe for this Japanese Strawberry Sponge Cake (photo © Recipe Tin Japan).

The specialty food business is full of entrepreneurs who follow their dream, creating products they’d like to buy but haven’t found in the marketplace.

In the soda arena, sparkling juice pioneers like Izze and Fizzy Lizzy have offered a lighter, fresher, all natural alternative to soda pop, simply by combining juice with carbonated water.

Sprizz-O, new in the market, is even lighter, an ethereal, minimally sweet carbonated beverage that you’ll either find to be very refreshing, or not flavorful enough.

We were divided in those opinions at THE NIBBLE’s tasting of samples we received. Sprizz-O is so light, it takes getting used to. But all of us finally got there, declaring it a fine refreshment for a scorching day.

Made from juice, carbonated water and a bit of cane sugar, each 12 ounce bottle contains contains 50 calories.

If you’d like to try a carbonated drink with a much lower sugar level, Sprizz-O is available in Cranberry, Grape, Grapefruit, Lime and Orange.

The vanilla Greek yogurt adds delicious creaminess to a traditional frozen lemonade cocktail.

You can make it “mocktail,” without the vodka, or you can substitute gin or tequila.

And here’s how to make the best sugar rim.

RECIPE: FROZEN LEMON SPARKLERS

Ingredients For 3-4 Drinks

Preparation

1. PREPARE glasses with optional sugar rim.

2. COMBINE all drink ingredients into a blender and fill with ice. Start with a handful of ice and keep adding as necessary. Blend on high/ice crush until smooth.

3. FILL the glasses and serve immediately with a straw.
Visit Celebrations.com, a member of the 1-800-Flowers family, for more creative entertaining ideas.
  

A new way to enjoy carrot cake! Photo ©
WeHeartFood.com.

In 10 years of writing THE NIBBLE, we’ve covered a lot of ice cream, especially during July—National Ice Cream Month. But here’s a first for us: carrot cake ice cream.

It’s part of today’s tip: Envision a fantasy ice cream flavor and make it.

This week, The New York Times acknowledged National Ice Cream Month by publishing a master recipe to help you make any flavor you like.

We had already found this recipe from the blog WeHeartFood, where Chris and Lisa took one of their (and our) favorite cakes, carrot cake, and turned it into ice cream.

The recipe incorporates the ingredients of carrot cake—spiced nuts, whiskey-soaked currants and carrots (they’re candied). The recipe takes time, but at the end of it we’ve included our own quick version of carrot cake ice cream.

Ingredients For 1 Quart

For The Spiced Pecans

 
For The Bourbon-Soaked Currants

 
For The Candied Carrots

For The Ice Cream Base

 
Preparation

1. MAKE the spiced pecans. Heat the oven to 350°F. Toss the pecans with the butter. In a small bowl, whisk together the cinnamon, cloves, brown sugar and salt. Pour the mixture over the pecans and toss to coat completely. Spread the pecans on a baking sheet and cook for 12 minutes, gently stirring halfway during baking to candy the nuts. Remove the tray to a rack and cool the nuts completely. Once cool, coarsely chop the pecans. Set aside.

3. MAKE the candied carrots. In a medium saucepan, combine the carrots, sugar, corn syrup and water. Bring to a low boil and cook until the syrup is reduced to about 2 tablespoons and the carrots are translucent and candied, 20 to 30 minutes. Keep an eye on the carrots during the last few minutes so they do not burn. Drain the carrots and set aside to cool.

4. MAKE the ice cream base. In the bowl of a stand mixer, or in a large bowl using a hand mixer, blend together the cream cheese, sour cream, sugar and lemon zest until smooth. Chill thoroughly.

5. FREEZE the base in an ice cream maker. After churning, gently fold in the spiced pecans, soaked currants and candied carrot cubes. Freeze until firm.
 
EASY CARROT CAKE ICE CREAM

You can use this recipe with any leftover cake, including any icing. This recipe adds inclusions (“mix-ins”) appropriate to carrot cake. If you’re making a different flavor of cake ice cream, consider what to pair—chocolate chips with chocolate cake, for example.

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. CUT cake into half inch cubes. Blend into softened ice cream with optional inclusions.

2. RETURN to freezer and let firm until ready to serve.

That’s why you can eat the white portion of watermelon rind—it tastes just like cucumber—or turn it into pickled watermelon rind, a.k.a. watermelon pickles.

And how about these tiny watermelon cucumbers (in photo), an heirloom cucumber variety native to Mexico and South America? They look like miniature watermelons, but taste like cucumbers.

They’re available now at Melissas.com.

The small fruits are often marketed as Mexican sour gherkin cucumbers, although they are not sour. Rather, they have a slightly sweet, refreshing flavor with a hint of lemon. They are cute, crunchy and perfect for pickling.

 
TIP: Always store whole cucumbers in the vegetable crisper section of your fridge.
 
MORE EXOTIC CUCUMBERS

Take a look at the lemon cucumber and the crystal apple cucumber which look, respectively, like lemons and apples.