Frugal Foodie: Summertime and the Living is Easy

You must be thinking about White Lily. Used to be you could only find White Lily flour south of the Mason-Dixon line; however, Wegman's now carries it and you can find this at the Woodbridge and Bridgewater stores. If you are in the area, it's truly worth stopping to buy some. White Lily has a lower gluten level than All-Purpose flour and the lower the gluten, the lighter the biscuit. It's that time of year when many of The Frugal Foodie readers get that phone call of "We're having a party. Would love to have you attend and could you bring something, too?" Back in the days when The Frugal Foodie attended parties, instead of catering them, she always had a few recipes that could be adapted to a really big barbeque, a nice dinner for 8 or something in between. One of them is the Sausage Pasta Cake. Julia Enerson of Fair Lawn is a business owner and chef. When she’s not cooking for the brothers of Chi Phi, a fraternity house based at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, she’s running a catering business, consulting to other food service professionals and working with individual families to provide quality, time-saving and cost effective meals and planning services. Contact her at 1.201.796.8029 or jmenerson@aol.com. What do you think of the column? Tell us in the comments. [["validates_presence_of",{"message":"Please enter your email address."}],["validates_length_of",{"too_long":"Your email address must contain between 5 and 100 characters.","maximum":100,"allow_nil":true}],["validates_email_format_of",{"message":"Your email address is not properly formatted. Mind giving it another shot?"}],["validates_uniqueness_of",{"message":"The email address you entered is being used by another member. Please try a different address.","client_can_validate":true,"exists_url":"/users/exists?email="}]] [["validates_presence_of",{"message":"Please enter your password."}],["validates_length_of",{"too_short":"Your password must contain between 4 and 40 characters.","too_long":"Your password must contain between 4 and 40 characters.","allow_nil":true,"minimum":4,"maximum":40}],["validates_format_of",{"message":"Your password may contain only letters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens. No emoticons, please. :p","with":["^[a-zA-Z0-9\\_\\-]*?

Strawberry Shortcake Recipe with Cream Biscuits | Cooking On the Side

It turns out that today, June 14, is National Strawberry Shortcake Day (who knew?). Far be it from me to let this opportunity to try the Cream Biscuit Strawberry Shortcake recipe I’ve been holding for months slip by.

No offense to those Twinkie-like yellow strawberry shortcake sponge shells they sell in the produce department at the grocery store…but why did I ever, ever, ever believe for a second that they were the way to do shortcake? This is the way to do shortcake: homemade cream biscuits White Lily didn’t steer me wrong the last time I made their biscuits ( remember the biscuit bakeoff? ) and they were just as light and melt-in-your mouth this time around too. If you don’t have White Lily flour in your area – I picked up two more packages on my recent trip to Atlanta! – you can always use any other brand of self-rising flour in this recipe (I’ve noted the adjusted measurement).

DIRECTIONS:

Heat oven to 425°F. Combine flour and 2 tablespoons sugar. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or two knives until crumbs are the size of peas. Blend in 3/4 cup cream with a fork until dough holds together. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface. Knead 2 to 3 times. Roll to 3/4-inch thickness. Cut using floured 4-inch biscuit cutter (or 2-inch star-shaped cutters, as I did). Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush tops with 2 tablespoons cream. Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons sugar (I used about 1 tablespoon). Bake 18 to 20 minutes or until lightly browned (if you’re making 2-inch biscuits they will take 10 to 12 minutes). Cool on a wire rack. Toss strawberries with 1 cup sugar. Whip 1 1/2 cups cream and 1/3 cup sugar in a small bowl with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Cut biscuits in half horizontally. Optional: Spread bottom half with preserves (I omitted this step). Top with strawberries and whipped cream. Place the top half over the whipped cream. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.