College Candy

The quintessential dessert of summer is the strawberry shortcake, and for good reason. There’s even a licensed character named after the dessert, for crying out loud. So when you make one, you want to make it good—and no, that does not involve picking up a four-pack of preservative-loaded, Twinkie-like “shortcakes” from Walmart.

What, you’ve never made your own shortcake before? Then you, my friend, are seriously missing out. Allow me to be your guide for your first foray into the world of better-tasting shortcakes—once you’ve entered, you’ll never look back.

For two nice-sized shortcakes (a little bigger than those store-bought lumps), you need:

• 2/3 cup flour

• a generous sprinkle (about 1/8 tsp) salt

• ½ tsp baking powder

• 1 ½ tablespoons sugar

• 1/3 cup heavy whipping cream

• ½ tsp vanilla

Preheat your oven to 350, and take out two separate bowls. In one bowl, stir together the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar until it’s well combined. In the second bowl, whisk together the heavy cream and vanilla.

Make a well in the center of the bowl with your dry ingredients, and drizzle in the whipping cream mixture while you stir or whisk the contents of the bowl. This can be difficult to do by yourself, but it doesn’t really matter if you kind of mess it up. Shortcakes are forgiving (and delicious—oh, so delicious).

When you’ve poured in all the cream, you should be able to mix the resulting mass together into one big ball. If it’s too sticky, add a little flour (and if it’s not sticky enough, add a few more drops of cream). Using floured hands, separate the big ball into two smaller balls.

Grease a cookie sheet or coast it with parchment paper, and set the two shortcake balls on the sheet at least three inches apart (they will spread out a bit). Pop them in the oven, and about 27-30 minutes later you will have two lovely, beautiful, mouth-watering shortcakes that will be just dying for you to heap them with strawberries and cream.