Triple Berry Shortcakes

It's about that time of year in Minnesota that we have to start pretending it's spring to keep ourselves sane. Winter is still dragging along here with more cold and snow in the coming weeks. I took my six year old skiing this morning and we made it about an hour before we gave up and headed home. We're going to some friends house for dinner tonight and they asked us to bring a dessert so I thought I'd make these berry shortcakes as it was as close to summer as we're going to get for awhile.


These shortcakes from Ina Garten are simply amazing and with a few tweaks they were made even better. I increased the sugar to make them just a bit sweeter and also added some vanilla to finish it off. Make sure that you don't mix in the butter too much, you want to have chunks of butter throughout the dough when it bakes. Of course if you use fresh berries it will be even better but I used a triple berry blend that I had in the freezer and I still got some glimpses of the summer to come. If you don't have berries you could experiment with just about any fruit in the middle.

Triple Berry Shortcakes
adapted from Food Network

Ingredients

nocoupons2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
12 tablespoons cold unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), diced
2 extra-large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup heavy cream, chilled
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 egg beaten with 2 tablespoons milk, for egg wash

To Assemble:

nocoupons1 cup heavy cream, chilled
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 cups Triple Berry Blend or any other fruit combination

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Sift the flour, sugar, the baking powder, and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Blend in the butter at the lowest speed and mix until the butter is the size of peas. Combine the eggs, vanilla and heavy cream and quickly add to the flour and butter
mixture. Mix until just blended. The dough will be sticky.

Dump the dough out onto a well-floured surface. Flour your hands and pat the dough out 3/4-inch thick. You should see lumps of butter in the dough.

Cut 6 or 7 biscuits with a 2 3/4-inch fluted cutter and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Brush the tops with the egg wash. Sprinkle with sugar and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the outsides are crisp and the insides are fully baked. Let cool on a wire rack.

To assemble, whip the cream and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment until soft peaks form. Add the vanilla and continue to beat until the peaks are stiff.

Split each shortcake in half crosswise and place the bottom half on a plate. Spoon whipped cream on top, then place the fruit mixture on the whipped cream.  Place the other half of the shortcake on top and serve.