The Best Strawberry Shortcake Is Made With Biscuits

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My favorite early-summer tradition is twilight strawberry picking. Some friends and I drive over to a farm on Sauvie Island, where we proceed to pick (and eat) as many Hoods and Marys Peaks as we can fit in a flat. Then we enjoy field-side strawberry shortcakes as the sun sets. It is just as idyllic as it sounds.

Usually, we don’t get too fancy with the cake or the whipped topping — a store-bought pound cake and aerosolized can of whipped cream have served us well in the past — but this year I thought I’d show off. I baked up a batch of Whipped Cream Biscuits and made and chilled some of our Tangy Whipped Cream, then packed the latter in a cooler and brought it all to the field.

I’ve always been a fan of biscuit-based shortcakes and these are some of the best — and easiest — biscuits I’ve ever made. They can be mixed, baked and cooled in under an hour, so you can whip up a batch whenever the craving strikes. And they are lofty. If you’ve ever struggled with flat biscuits, you owe it to yourself to make these.

In addition to chemical leaveners, you get an assist from a combination of heavy and sour cream, whipped to soft peaks. The air trapped inside the mixture helps the biscuits bake up extra tall, while the dairy keeps the crumb tender by interfering with gluten formation. They teeter on the edge of scone-ness, and I mean that as a compliment. As an aside: If you’re looking for a crispier, savory biscuit, give these Rice Flour Biscuits a try (and watch our culinary director Wes Martin make them on Youtube). We also have a traditional Buttermilk Biscuit, if that’s more your speed.

Then there is the whipped cream topping. For years, I was an unsweetened-whipped-to-soft-peaks-only purist, but this whipped cream is on another level. A little sour cream adds a delightful tang that complements the acidity in the berries but, more importantly, it stabilizes the topping so you can prep it ahead of time and take it to a picnic, party or strawberry field. (Even after hours of sitting in a not-quite-cold-enough cooler, it had yet to begin weeping.)

A little brown sugar sweetens the cream, a nod to the iconic combination of strawberries, sour cream and brown sugar. If you’ve never dipped a strawberry in sour cream and then dipped it in brown sugar, I recommend you do so as soon as you are able.

I like to keep the strawberry component of my shortcakes as fresh as possible. Hood strawberries are candy-sweet, so they don’t need any doctoring, and they definitely don’t need any cooking. If you want a saucy, syrupy situation, all you need is a little sugar. The sucrose will draw the water out of the berries, creating a vibrant, jewel-toned syrup while softening the fruit. (That’s osmosis, baby.) We like to add a little lime zest, just to keep things interesting.

Even after all that shortcake, I still have a lot of berries. And the clock is ticking. The Hoods go bad within 24-48 hours, so those found their way into some ice cream. I like our Strawberry-Balsamic Ice Cream, which can be made using a food processor instead of a proper ice cream maker. They also make a great sangria.

But my favorite thing to do with farm-picked berries? Eat them. They’re so perfect this time of year and it’s hard to improve upon perfection.

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Claire Lower

Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.