The last few months got away from me. I (Anna) had a major project to finish up, but it’s done now. I’m back. And will try to post recipes regularly again. Sorry about that!
Local Wisconsin Strawberry Farms are common in our neck of the woods. Every June, we order 5 or 6 huge boxes of strawberries that we preserve for our guests for the whole rest of the year. We use these preserves for our Summer Strawberry Shortcake recipe!
Strawberry Preserves
Helen and the ladies take a whole day to clean, dice, and prepare the fresh-from-the-field strawberries for the fall and winter season.
While it’s a little late in the season, if you are interested in putting up your own strawberries, here is the recipe:
Frozen Strawberry Preserves
Ingredients
For Storing
- 8 cups diced, fresh strawberries
- ½-¾ cup white sugar
For Sauce from Stored berries
- 8 cups frozen, preserved berries
- 2 tbsp strawberry Jell-O
- 2 tbsp corn starch dissolved in ¼ cup water
- water
Instructions
Preserving the Strawberries
- Wash, de-stem, and dice the strawberries
- Put the strawberries in a large bowl
- Sprinkle the strawberries with sugar. Start with ½ cup. Mix well and let the berries sit
- The sugar acts as the preservative, so it's important to have enough to keep the berries from losing their flavor and coloring. If you added enough sugar, the berries should release a lot of juice and turn a deep shade of red. If that doesn't happen after 5 minutes or so, add more sugar. You can try tasting the juice from the berries, and if it's moderately sweet, then that should be enough sugar.
- Once the berries have changed color, dump all the berries and the juice into a freezer-safe container.
- Add a date and freeze!
Strawberry Sauce
- Thaw strawberries in strainer over bowl to reserve juice
- Once strawberries are thawed, measure out juice. You will need 1½ cups juice. If you don’t have enough juice, add water to juice to make a combined mixture equaling 1½ cups liquid.
- In a medium saucepan, whisk together Jell-O and strawberry liquid until combined.
- Place the saucepan over medium heat and cook the strawberry mixture until it comes to a boil, about 2 minutes.
- Once it's boiling, whisk in the corn starch and water mixture. Bring back to a boil.
- Once it's boiling, stir in strawberries and bring it back up to a boil. Then take off heat.
- Serve right away or let sit if you want it cooler.
SUMMER STRAWBERRY SHORT CAKE
From Helen: This cake recipe came from a magazine that Grandma Toinie found. It’s actually a jellyroll recipe, but we always made it as a cake, using flan pans. You can use a regular cake pan or make a layer cake with it. It’s the only cake that I have that uses no fat, and it freezes well.
Summer Strawberry Short Cake
Equipment
- flan pan x 2
Ingredients
- 5 eggs
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ tp baking powder
- 1 tp almond extract
- ¼ tp salt
- ¾ cup sifted flour
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Place the eggs in a bowl of warm water for 10 minutes. The eggs must be warm for this recipe so they will be light and fluffy when beaten.
- In a mixing bowl, crack the eggs, and then add the sugar. Beat the eggs and sugar on high until fluffy, about 5 to 10 minutes.
- Reduce speed to low, and add baking powder, almond extract, and salt until well blended.
- Add the flour slowly, one tablespoon at a time, until just blended. Be careful not to over mix the batter or the cake may collapse when baking.
- Grease two flan pans and divide batter evenly between the two.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the cake is browned and springy to the touch.
- Let cool for 5 minutes. Then invert onto serving platter.
- Top with Strawberry Sauce and vanilla ice cream!
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