Summer Desserts -- When the Strawberries Are Finally Ready

June. The light lasts until almost nine now, which means the porch is usable past dinner, which means Helen and I sit outside in the long blue dusk and listen to the peepers and watch Frost patrol the yard for threats that exist only in his border collie imagination. The threats are squirrels, mostly. Frost takes his responsibilities seriously. The squirrels do not take Frost seriously. The dynamic is stable.

I made strawberry shortcake. The strawberries are from Shelburne Farms — not ours yet, ours won't be ready for another two weeks — but good enough. Local. Red. Bursting with the kind of sweetness that supermarket strawberries promise and never deliver. The shortcake is Helen's recipe: flour, butter, sugar, cream. Not cake. Biscuit. There is a difference, and the difference matters, and if you put strawberries on top of yellow cake and call it shortcake, we can't be friends. I don't make the rules. Helen makes the rules. I enforce them.

Teddy finished second grade. David reports that he got straight A's and spent the last day of school reading a book while the other kids played kickball, which is either concerning or exactly right depending on whether you're a normal parent or a retired English teacher. I am the latter. The boy reads. Everything else will sort itself out.

The blog continues to grow. Helen checks the numbers — she's become the unofficial statistician, tracking readers and comments with the same precision she brought to nursing. She reports that last month had the most readers yet. I ask how many. She says it doesn't matter. I say then why do you count them. She says because someone should. This is the marriage in miniature: she counts, I write, and between us the thing works.

I turned the compost pile on Saturday. Hard work, good work, the kind of labor that connects your arms to the earth and your present to every spring you've ever turned the compost. The pile steams in the morning air. Decay becomes growth. Waste becomes food. The garden is a lesson in transformation that I tried to teach with Thoreau for thirty-eight years, and the garden does it better than Thoreau ever did, because the garden doesn't need words. It just needs time and rot and patience. Like most things worth having.

The strawberry shortcake that started this particular June evening got me thinking about all the desserts that belong to summer and summer only—the ones that taste wrong in February and exactly right when the peepers are singing and the light is still gold at eight o’clock. Helen asked me to write a few of them down, so here they are: the summer desserts worth making while the fruit is good and the evenings are long enough to enjoy them.

Summer Desserts

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar, plus more for topping
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 3/4 cup heavy cream, plus more for brushing
• 2 pounds fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
• 3 tablespoons granulated sugar (for macerating strawberries)
• 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream (for topping)
• 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Macerate the strawberries. Toss sliced strawberries with 3 tablespoons granulated sugar in a bowl. Stir gently and set aside at room temperature for at least 20 minutes, until the berries have released their juices.
2. Preheat and prep. Heat your oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
3. Make the biscuit dough. Whisk together flour, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Cut in the cold butter using a pastry cutter or your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs with some pea-sized pieces remaining.
4. Add cream. Pour in 3/4 cup heavy cream and stir just until the dough comes together. Do not overmix—a shaggy dough is the goal.
5. Shape and cut. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and pat to about 3/4-inch thickness. Cut into rounds with a 2 1/2-inch biscuit cutter, pressing straight down without twisting. Re-pat scraps and cut remaining biscuits.
6. Bake. Place biscuits on the prepared baking sheet. Brush tops with a little heavy cream and sprinkle with sugar. Bake 14—16 minutes, until golden brown on top and cooked through. Cool slightly on a wire rack.
7. Whip the cream. Beat 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream with powdered sugar and vanilla extract until soft, billowy peaks form. Do not overbeat.
8. Assemble. Split each warm biscuit in half. Spoon a generous amount of macerated strawberries and their juices over the bottom half, add a dollop of whipped cream, and set the top half of the biscuit over everything. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 420 | Protein: 5g | Fat: 27g | Carbs: 41g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 280mg