In the Kitchen: Strawberry Shortcake Cookies

Strawberry season is here! I love finding new recipes to make with all the delicious local strawberries out there right now. Of course, they're great for just eating fresh, but there are a lot of fun ways to use up all those berries.

This recipe came to me from Martha Stewart's Cookie of the Day e-mail, Strawberry Shortcake Cookies. It really is like a portable strawberry shortcake; the cookie itself is like a sweet biscuit. They were amazing - slightly crisp on the outside with a great biscuit inside -  on day 1, but by day 2 were a bit soggy. I'd suggest making them on a day or for an occasion where you know you will consume them all that day. The upside is that they are so easy to put together, it isn't a lot of trouble to make - and eat - them on the same day.

One more note: The recipe from the web site says it makes 3 dozen. I used a bigger scoop than called for and got 1 dozen. Whoops. I am an admitted sugar freak, but I thought the palm-sized cookies that resulted were a good serving size. And since they are best eaten that day, I think 12 larger cookies is much more doable than 3 dozen.


Strawberry Shortcake Cookies
from Martha Stewart Living

12 ounces strawberries, hulled and cut into 1/4-inch dice (2 cups)
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
3 ounces (6 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2/3 cup heavy cream
Sanding sugar, for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine strawberries, lemon juice, and 2 tablespoons granulated sugar. Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and remaining 7 tablespoons granulated sugar in a large bowl. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter, or rub in with your fingers, until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in cream and strawberry mixture until dough comes together.
2. Using a 1 1/2-inch ice cream scoop or a tablespoon, drop dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment, spacing evenly apart. Sprinkle with sanding sugar, and bake until golden brown, 24 to 25 minutes (this might take longer if you make the larger size). Transfer to a wire rack, and let cool. Cookies are best served immediately, but can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 day.

When good diets go bad

There are some ingredients that just mess with my sense of right and wrong.

Perhaps I should explain. A piece of chocolate has never sent me on a robbery spree or landed me in jail on assault charges -although I will not hesitate to throw a few elbows for a corner piece of cake.

I'm saying that I know it's wrong to make a sauce using a stick of butter. I know it's wrong to add a mass of pancetta to that melted stick of butter. But this is gnocchi we're talking about. Delicious, puffy gobs of potato-ey goodness. And this wasn't just any gnocchi. This was sweet potato gnocchi. Rules must be bent.

I suppose I could have done a light marinara sauce. But I wanted to play with that natural sweetness from the sweet potato. A brown butter sauce was a good start. And to the sweet, why not add some salty? The pancetta was calling my name. More likely an artery's name, but what do you know? We're named the same thing. So pancetta it was. A bit of nutmeg, a couple of healthy pinches of cinnamon, fresh rosemary and little grating of Parmesan rounded it out. Yum.

We had a salad with it, so I think that makes it a little better, right? But come on, a little indulgence once in a while is never a bad thing.



Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Pancetta
(makes four servings)

1 lb. of sweet potato gnocchi (I picked mine up from the Dormont Farmers Market.)
3/4 stick unsalted butter
4 oz. diced pancetta
1/2 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
2 healthy pinches ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary
course salt and fresh ground pepper
Parmesan cheese

Melt butter in a medium skillet. Add pancetta and cook until brown and slightly crispy. Add the rosemary and continue cooking for another 2 minutes. Add the nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt and pepper to taste.
Meanwhile, cook gnocchi according to package directions. Drain well and add to butter sauce. Toss with the sauce until coated.. Divide among plates and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Eat now, regret later.

Jammin' on the one

I'm not sure who the masochist is that came up with the idea of jam. Don't get me wrong - homemade jam is, well, awesome. But I just can't imagine the person who, in the middle of the summer, saw a berry harvest and, wiping the sweat off their brow, thought, "Hmm, I think I'll take these berries and heat them until I have a hot boiling pot of sugar and fruit - but I'll want to stand over said hot boiling pot stirring it the entire time. And then, I'll put the insanely superheated result in some hot jars and then put those jars into a vat of boiling water." Getting the theme here? That being said, I guess I'm a masochist. I love me some jam, and I've discovered I love making it.

My first experience at making jam came late this spring after a trip to Trax Farms in Washington County, where we headed out to the fields to pick our own strawberries. If you haven't done a berry picking trip with your kids before, go. The sight of your kids picking those berries, looking around to see if anyone's watching, then sneaking them into their mouths, is worth any complaints you hear from them on the walk to and from the field. Despite the sampling, we ended up with pounds and pounds of strawberries. I hated seeing them go to waste, and - as much as my husband would disagree - there are only so many baked goods one can make with strawberries. So I figured I'd try to make jam. The result was 9 half pint jars of some seriously good strawberry jam, and, surprisingly, it wasn't all that difficult to do.

This time, it was blueberry jam, with fresh blueberries the kids and I picked at Soergel's Orchards. A fair warning - blueberry jam requires a massive amount of berries... all right, 2.5 pounds, but more than my kids were in the mood to pick. They're my babies, not day laborers, so off we went inside Soergel's market to augment our own berries with a few extras.

After the kids were asleep (I did mention the hot boiling vat of sugar and fruit, right?), I set to work. The recipe is easy:

Blueberry Jam
(adapted from Ball Pectin recipe insert)

2.5 lbs (about 4 cups) crushed blueberries
2 Tbs. lemon juice
1 package Ball original fruit pectin
4 cups sugar

1. Combine crushed berries and lemon juice in large saucepan. Gradually stir in fruit pectin, and bring to a rolling boil over high heat, stirring constantly.
2. Add the sugar, stirring to dissolve. Return to a full rolling boil, and boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, and skim foam if needed. Recipe says you'll get 6 half pint (8 oz.) jars, but I got 7.

That's it for the jam. Really. The canning is also fairly simple. I follow the instructions that come with the pectin, using my big pasta pot instead of a canner and it hasn't failed me yet. I won't lie - you'll be sweaty. But yummy blueberry goodness is well worth it.