Strawberries aren’t my favorite fruit. They’re good, but they just haven’t ever been at the top of my list. But this time of the year, when you can get fresh local strawberries, I can see why other folks choose strawberries as their favorite fruit.
The girls love strawberries. They would eat them every day of their lives if it was possible. A couple weeks ago Chitter wasn’t feeling well and she asked me to PLEASE PLEASE stop at the fruit stand on the way home from work to buy her some strawberries.
I did stop, but the stand only had those gigantic strawberries shipped in from who knows where. They said it just wasn’t quite time for the local ones yet. Knowing Chitter really wanted strawberries I bought 2 boxes anyway.
I had recently seen a recipe for strawberry shortcake scones in a Better Homes and Gardens magazine. I decided to give it a try since the strawberries weren’t that great for eating out of hand.
Strawberry Shortcake Scones
- 1 cup chopped strawberries
- 2 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon plain flour (all-purpose)
- 3 tablespoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 6 tablespoon butter
- 1 egg lightly beaten
- 1/4 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
- 1/4 cup whipping cream
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Mix together strawberries and 1 tablespoon of flour-set aside.
Mix remaining flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together in a large bowl.
Cut butter into flour mixture until it looks like coarse crumbs.
In another bowl, combine egg, ricotta, and whipping cream.
Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add the egg mixture, add strawberries. Stir until combined in a loose dough.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead slightly to get mixture to fully combine into a manageable dough.
Pat dough out into a 10 x 4 inch rectangle. Cut in half down the length and then crossways into 6 pieces.
Place the pieces on an ungreased baking sheet. Brush tops with additional whipping cream and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 15 – 18 minutes at 400 degrees until golden brown.
Serve warm. And if you happen to make up a little homemade whipped cream you can serve it with that too.
The scone recipe was a hit and Chitter is back to feeling like a teenager full of energy and ready to go on the next adventure.
Tipper
Until a couple of years ago, I would pick my own strawberries at a local place. Now, doing things on my hands and knees is pretty much out of the question, so I’ll have to buy my strawberries already picked. More expensive and not as good quality, but at least they are local and fresh. I tried buying frozen strawberries this past winter, and they were really poor. The frozen blueberries I bought were surprisingly good though! I’ve always been a “wild only” blueberry person, and these were not the massive tasteless storebought-type blueberries, but just like the ones I pick here in the woods, but which I never pick enough of to freeze. Nice surprise!
These really do look good, don’t they.
Going to have to see if there’s a way to do diabetic scones.
God bless.
RB
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I think I’m in the camp with Ed Ammons. My Dad took a notion to grow strawberries once and we planted a lot for a little KY hill farmstead. Were they ever a lot of work ! Pinch off the bloom and the runners for the first year, weed, pick berries every day or at most every other day and rotate to new plants at year 3 or four. And like Ed, over in the hollow on the way to Grandma’s were the little sweet wild ones. Wouldn’t you know strawberries are my wife’s favorite. Ah well. I forwarded your recipe.
I forgot to mention in my comment earlier that we didn’t let strawberries product the first year. We would have to go through every day and pinch out the blooms to make the plants send out runners to make new plants. We had to move the runners into the row so as to leave a walkway between rows.
That means we always had two strawberry patches. This year’s and next year’s. If we got a late frost it was next year’s and next year’s. Daddy always plowed them under and started over after the second year. He said older plants didn’t produce as good.
When the weather cooperated we got a lot of good strawberries but you know the weather doesn’t like strawberries.
There used to be a lot of work in raising strawberries. I don’t know how they grow them today and don’t want to. There was a u pick strawberry farm right over the hill here until this year, run by a retired couple. I guess they just got too old. I never went down there. I got my fill of planting, watering, hoeing, pinching and picking a long time ago.
You’ve got my mouth watered up for strawberry season!
We love strawberries snd will try this recipe out once the local season is here. Thanks for sharing!
We grew strawberries on our farm when I was growing up. I got paid ten cents a gallon to pick them. I could pick a gallon in about ten minutes. That added up to about 60 cent an hour which wasn’t bad wages at that time. With all us kids picking though, we could cover the whole field in a couple of hours. We only picked them every other day so my total income for a week was about three dollars. Strawberry season only lasted about a month if we were lucky so my yearly income ranged between ten and fifteen dollars. My parents sold the strawberries for a dollar a gallon. If my mother capped and washed them, she got two dollars a gallon. One man who ran a store at Lauada bought most of the cleaned ones. He would buy all we could get to him, sometimes ten or twenty gallons at a time. I never saw them for sale in his store. I think he loved strawberries so much he ate them all himself.
I never ate any of the strawberries (Tennessee Beautys) as I picked because I didn’t like even the ripest ones and I knew where the wild ones grew.
Tipper,
Those strawberry things you fixed
look delicious, but I’m not a big
fan of tame strawberries either.
The other day I got a box of the
big strawberries and some cupcakes and spray cool whip. After I cut up the strawberries, added some sugar and milk, they were still hard as a nail. And like B. Ruth said earlier, “they were white inside!” …Ken
I love strawberries, even the domestic ones are wonderful but I long for the wild berries we used to spend days picking which are so much more flavorful than the tame ones. I think one reason it took us so long to gather the buckets full of the small wild berries that Mom turned into such wonderful Shortcakes, Cobblers and Preserves was that almost as many berries went into young mouths as into the buckets.
Yum-yum! I do love strawberries, especially when you can get nice, big, fresh, sweet, juicy ones!
The first time I ever made scones was when Prince William and Kate got married. My daughter came over and we had fresh hot scones and hot tea to watch the Royal Wedding. It was so exciting!
Pam,
scrap-n-sewgranny.blogspot.com
Tipper,
The scone recipe sounds easy enough…
I’m not fond of store-bought strawberries either. Hopefully, according to one local grower here his first early round of berries should be in by the last of this month…That is if they don’t mold or rot with all this rain…Too much rain is very hard on the strawberry crops here.
We pick up a crate, and try not to eat them on the way home.
I slice some, freeze some whole and just enjoy the fresh ones for a few days…
I quit making the old timey strawberry preserves years ago. After the freezer strawberry jam became popular I started making it, but then it is full of so much sugar, but really good on a hot buttered biscuit…I have not made any freezer jam in a few years now…Just staying with frozen fruits like blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries…Didn’t get but enough blackberries but for a couple of cobblers…Ours dried up quickly last year.
I may give that scone recipe a try when our fresh homegrown berries come in….
I suppose one could substitute blackberries, raspberries or blueberries in the place of the strawberries….ya think?
Thanks Tipper,
PS…Very stormy last night and early this morning…The sun is our now…but cool…
This is looking so scrumptious! My mouth is watering; thanks for sharing this. I think I saw this recipe, but by-passed it. I’ve been trying to drop a couple of pounds and I just love scones.
Tipper–The “patron saint” of angling, Izaak Walton, would disagree with your evaluation of the culinary merits of the strawberry. He wrote (quoting a friend): “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did.”
I tend to agree with him to a point–give me a batch of wild strawberries picked from a sunny field at their peak of ripeness–that’s pure heaven. On the other hand, when it comes to berries for me it’s a toss-up between dewberries and raspberries. A cobbler made from either one is bliss for the hungry soul.
Jim Casada
Tipper, I love strawberries. I eat them non stop through their short season. I don’t bother with the imported berries I wait for the real thing, meaning the local ones. I don’t even make anything with them, just wash them and eat them and I can put away a lot of strawberries in a short time!