Brown Sugar Shortcakes with Blueberries and Cream
Memorial Day marks the start of summer dessert fest in our family, when just about every weekend, I’m making rustic berry pies, cobblers and shortcakes to go with our lazy Sunday family dinners.
There’s something about blueberries and patriotism that I can’t quite put my finger on — they just go together. Maybe because blueberries are at their peak in July; maybe because of the color; maybe both, but every Memorial Day and every Independence Day, we fill our yard with red, white and blue, and fill our bellies with blueberry desserts.
Although blueberries are in season May through October, we don’t usually see them in abundance, at an affordable price, until July. Organic frozen blueberries are a great alternative — they’re picked when perfectly ripe, quickly frozen and retain their shape well when thawed.
Wild frozen blueberries are often much smaller than farmed blueberries, but pack an intense blueberry flavor in those tiny rounds. They sometimes offer a better punch of pectin for pie baking too, allowing you to cut back on the thickeners. The larger berries work well for cobblers and shortcakes, giving you a bigger blueberry bite with the whipped cream and biscuits.
Brown Sugar Shortcakes with Blueberries and Cream
Yields: 6 shortcakes
Method: biscuit method
Allergy Info: soy-free; contains wheat, gluten, dairy
Fancy Equipment: pastry cutter, parchment-lined baking sheet, biscuit cutter
Shortcake ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
pinch of Kosher salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 cup organic brown sugar
8 tablespoons salted butter, chilled and cut into small cubes
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup milk or buttermilk, plus more to moisten
Blueberry filling ingredients:
3 cups frozen blueberries
1 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of Kosher salt
1/4 cup organic sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Whipped cream ingredients:
1 pint heavy whipping cream
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons organic sugar
Make the shortcakes:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a large, shallow bowl, add the flour, salt, baking powder and sugar, and mix until well combined. Add the butter and cut into the flour mixture with the pastry blender until it resembles coarse meal. Add the apple cider vinegar, vanilla and sour cream, and cut into the mixture. Add 1/4 cup of milk and mix until just combined, mixture will be lumpy. Add additional milk, 1 tablespoon at a time, as needed until the dough is dry, but sticks together when squeezed in your hand.
Push the dough together and turn out onto a floured work surface. Gently pat or roll the dough to 3/4″ thick. Using a 2″ or 3″ biscuit cutter, cut as many circles out of the dough as possible and place the rounds on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bring the scraps of dough together again, gently roll and cut additional circles until you have 6 circles on the baking sheet. Place in the baking sheet and biscuits in the freezer for 5 minutes to chill.
Bake for 10 minutes and turn the baking sheet in the oven. Bake for another 3-5 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow biscuits to cool on a cooling rack.
Make the blueberry filling:
Add the blueberries, cinnamon, salt, sugar and lemon juice to a medium saucepan. Stir to combine and heat on medium-low heat until the berries have thawed. Remove the berries, leaving the juice in the pan, and set berries aside. Return the pan to the stove and bring the juice to a boil. Reduce the juice until thick and syrupy – time will vary, depending on how much juice the blueberries produced. Pour over the berries and set aside.
Make the whipped cream:
Add the cream to a large bowl and beat on medium speed with a hand held mixer until the cream begins to thicken. Add the vanilla extract and continue to beat until soft peaks just begin to form. Add the sugar and beat until stiff peaks form.
Assemble the shortcakes:
There’s really no right or wrong way to assemble these shortcakes, but we like to do the following:
Cut a shortcake biscuit in half. Place the bottom half of the biscuit in a bowl and spoon blueberries and juice over the biscuit bottom. Add a generous spoonful of whipped cream and place the top of the biscuit over the whipped cream. Add additional whipped cream and blueberries to the top of the biscuit top. Take a bite, bigger than your mouth can hold!
Chef’s Notes:
We’ve found that, because of the uneven temperatures in our oven, some of the biscuits stay perfectly shaped and tall, while others spread and look more like drop biscuits. Don’t panic if this happens – they still taste buttery and sweet, and because you’ll be cutting them in half, no one will notice.
Speaking of drop biscuits, instead of rolling the shortcake dough, you can also gather the dough into 1 1/2″ circles and bake as drop biscuits.
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>I've never made the connection between blueberries and patriotism but now I'm starting to remember all those 4th of July blueberry desserts in magazines.
Your dessert looks delicious!
>This looks amazing! Has one of my favorite summertime ingredients, blueberries! I can't wait to try.
>up until two minutes ago, i would've said that my favorite summer dessert was strawberry shortcake. now, i'm completely convinced that this would trump that a hundred times over. gorgeous–bring on the blueberries!
>These look fabulous! OMG!