Baked Sunday Mornings: Brown Sugar Shortcakes with Brown Sugar Syrup, Mixed Berries, and Whipped Cream

I was pretty psyched about this week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe, "Brown Sugar Shortcakes with Brown Sugar Syrup, Mixed Berries, and Whipped Cream." I love strawberry shortcake. And as a bonus, this recipe is relatively simple.

To make the brown sugar shortcakes, you combine all-purpose flour, cake flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; cut in frozen butter and shortening; and add cream, an egg yolk, and vanilla. You knead the dough until it comes together and then you're supposed to roll it out and cut it into six 2.5-inch shortcakes. My dough was so damp that I just patted it into a disc instead of using a rolling pin and I cut it into eight shortcakes using the specified-size cutter. I froze the shortcakes briefly before brushing them with a mixture of egg white and cream, sprinkling on some coarse sugar, and putting them in the oven.

The shortcakes spread more than I was expecting -- I assumed that they would rise upwards and not outwards, but I ended up with rather flattish biscuits resembling the shape of hamburger buns. My shortcakes were very crumbly and when I cut them in half with a sharp bread knife, little bits fell off. I filled the split shortcakes with strawberries macerated with a little brown sugar and orange zest, and some vanilla whipped cream lightly sweetened with brown sugar.

I was disappointed with this dessert. Part of the reason was the unfortunate fact that I happened to purchase a particularly flavorless container of strawberries. But I thought that the shortcake itself was really lacking flavor, and the crumbly texture was super annoying. I thought everything needed to be sweeter -- the shortcake, the fruit, and the whipped cream. I just wasn't a fan.

Recipe: "Brown Sugar Shortcakes with Brown Sugar Syrup, Mixed Berries, and Whipped Cream" from Baked Occasions by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.