Where the heck is the strawberry capital?

I actually had trouble finding the answer to this. I will say that my county produces very large, very red and very tasty strawberries.  In fact, we don’t buy strawberries from the grocery store. No, we go to “The guy.” We locals talk about the guy like he’s a close family friend. The guy has what we want and we gotta have it. And he knows it. He won’t sell you a few to get you by, see he’s in the big leagues; he only sells to people that are serious about their strawberry addiction.

Why all this talk about strawberries? Well, we recently became a family of five: our foreign exchange student, Eva, is here for about three weeks.

I wanted to make her something truly American, so we decided on strawberry shortcake for tonight. The recipe I use is my mother in law’s, with just a few tweaks. I never really cared for the stick-to-your-teeth spongy cake. When my MIL made her’s with biscuits, I knew I’d never buy angel food cake again.

This is a great recipe for kids to help out, so hands washed and plastic knives ready, my kiddos went to work cutting, slicing and hacking away at the berries. [I make sure to put sliced fruit like this in a plastic, glass or ceramic bowl because metal bowls with juices (which contain acid) don’t make for tasty food.]

I preheated the oven, popped open a can of biscuits and brushed with melted butter, then sprinkled with granulated sugar. After I popped the biscuits in the oven I put a metal bowl in the freezer. I do this before beating heavy whipping cream. I find the colder the bowl and cream are, the better.

With the girls still chopping away, I squeezed half a lemon into the plastic bowl then used my microplane grater to zest a lemon into a small side bowl.

This is when I realized that strawberries were being eaten by my child laborers, so I finished the slicing task, added a little sugar and a little honey; a quick stir and then I hid the bowl from my “helpers.”

Homemade whipped cream is super easy and costs equal or less than a tub from the store. You can add different ingredients to diversify it too: chocolate syrup, vanilla extract or lemon zest. Tonight, I went with the latter and of course, some powdered sugar.

Warm biscuits are the best because the strawberry juice soaks into it just a bit but you still have the crispy crust on the top. 

Eva seemed to really enjoy one of our go-to American desserts. The only problem is, we used nearly our entire inventory of berries, so I think I’ll be visiting “The guy,” tomorrow. He won’t be surprised to see me twice in one week.

Have you added something to heavy whipping cream? Tell us what it was!