Strawberry Shortcakes {recommended recipes}

The day I made this recipe was filled with some of the best bits of summer. In England the sunshine definitely worth waiting for, because it brings strawberry season, and trips to Garson's Pick-Your-Own Farm. Last year we went in September, and came home loaded with punnets of soft, sweet, juicy plums. This year they had raspberries beginning to be ripe, perfect gooseberries, broccoli, spinach, and delicious sugarsnap peas. Strawberries were the main crop, the huge field filled with neat rows of ripe strawberry plants.

This year my little sister was old enough to enjoy what was going on and she loved pulling carrots and picking gooseberries and strawberries. Imagine her surprise when she pulled up a plant from the ground and found a carrot! Everyone gets pretty excited actually, to see so much growing and to pick some, especially as our own gardening efforts haven't gone too well. 

As we picked we talked about what desserts we would make, gooseberry cream crumble, raspberry roulade, strawberries and cream. When I was searching for what to make that evening I decided, on a whim, to find out what strawberry shortcake was. There were a lot of big cakes, but Nigella's recipe had perfect little individual scone-like shortcakes with crushed and fresh strawberries, plus cream.

The dough is made with cream and it's very soft, producing a shortcake that with heavenly lightness. For me, they were a definite improvement on scones. Half the strawberries were mushed with sugar and balsamic vinegar (absolutely delicious) and put under the fresh strawberries. It's great to see the strawberries growing, pick them, and then 5 hours later to eat them. Cream would have been an improvement, but they were delicious without. I would totally recommend this recipe, it feels like the perfect celebration of summer!

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Now I am getting a little busy to do so much blogging, I thought I'd start a new series. {recommended recipes} will be reviews and photographs of recipes from the internet that I've successfully made. See all of them here. Enjoy!