Strawberry Cake

Strawberry shortcake's delicious debate: biscuit or cake?

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Strawberry shortcake is like potato salad: Everyone has their own version.

“It comes down to one of two camps,” says Chapel Hill cookbook author Sheri Castle, “Biscuit people or cake people.”

With strawberry season upon us, we set out to explore this divide among strawberry shortcake lovers.

The biscuit folks, who tend to be Southern, will serve either individual biscuits topped with berries and sweetened whipped cream or make one large biscuit with the same toppings but cut like a cake. (Castle prefers this version and adds one more treat to the mix: chocolate gravy. Her recipe appears on page 4D.)

The cake camp is more fractured. They will serve sliced strawberries and whipped cream with a slice of pound cake, angel food cake, shortbread or sponge cake, including those sold in groups of six, wrapped in plastic and stacked next to theberries at the grocery store.

Southern food writer and television cooking personality Nathalie Dupree considers a biscuit traditional for shortcake, where the dough is made “short,” or crisp with a high ratio of fat to flour. But Dupree says, “I don’t think it really matters as long as it doesn’t decompose and is sturdy enough to be broken easily with a fork.”

Source: Charlotte Observer