T1B

I've been fooling around with different variations on the basic recipe for a number of years.

The "easiest" way, and it's pretty good, is just to buy a box of Bisquick and follow the recipe. Not bad, but I don't like "frozen whipped topping" (I'd rather use real whipped cream) and I would like to minimize the amount of refined sugar. So here's my variation.

For the shortcakes, just follow the recipe on the box. But for a variation add the zest from a couple of oranges to the dough before baking. You can smell the orange as it cooks and it adds a nice, subtle citrus flavor to the shortcake.

All the dry ingredients - Bisquick, a couple tablespoons of sugar (I haven't found a way to avoid this yet) and the orange zest.




This is the dough after adding milk and melted butter.






Six shortcakes before baking.






Just out of the oven.





I picked up a half box of strawberries (six baskets) from a local farm yesterday. They don't look as awesome after a day in the fridge, but still pretty decent. I used half of these for the recipe. The rest will go into smoothies.




The recipe on the Bisquick box says to slice them up and add like a cup of sugar. I halved them and added about a half cup of honey and a couple tablespoons of balsamic vinegar. They still give off a lot of juice after a couple of hours in the fridge, with a lot more interesting flavor than if you just use sugar.

These are ready to go but we won't be eating for another hour or so. I'll post some pics later of the final product.

Slice the shortcates down the center, lay them open face in a bowl.

Add the strawberries and a couple spoonfuls of the juice, which gets soaked up by the shortcake. You can absolutely taste the honey, which adds a nice sort of floral flavor that you don't get with using sugar. The balsamic is also slightly sweet but adds a nice tartness to the final result. Combined with the orange zest in the shortcake this is an order of magnitude improvement over the basic recipe.

Topped with canned whipped cream.

The final result:

I love the bisquick shortcake recipe. I always make the whipping cream also. (What could be more simple than whipping up your own cream?) The store bought stuff is not good. The orange zest idea sounds epic. I will have to try that.

You'll have to forgive Mikey. He buys his bacon in a can, too.

Nothing wrong with canned whipped cream.




From a local dairy, it's fresh cream and sugar, charged with nitrous oxide. Not the focus of this dessert anyway.


I'll not lower myself to the frozen whipped toppings, though. Those are just fucking nasty.