Tammy's Strawberry Shortcake

Since Christmas 2007 I have only used white flour one time and that was recently to make some half wheat/half white tortillas. The reason we did that is that we have not found a ww tortilla recipe yet that will remain pliable and not be shoe leather to make enchiladas and burritos to freeze. I'm still working on that one.

Our adventures in whole grains for cooking have been mostly a success though, including desserts. Awhile back I had printed out Tammy's Whole Wheat Strawberry Shortcake recipe and had planned on making it July 4th. Well, we were a day late but it was good.

Because I had flour left over from making spelt bread, I made it with spelt. Spelt is sometimes a little tricky to substitute straight across as it generally does not tolerate as much mixing/kneading and requires less liquid than wheat. However, it has a delightful taste and is not quite as bitter as wheat sometimes can be. I ground the flour fine in my Nutrimill and used 150 grams for the one cup, which is the weight I was told to use for fresh ground wheat per cup, so I don't know if this is accurate. You can see that it looks nice.

I found it needed a little less time to cook in my oven. So I had to use a long serrated knife to cut off some of the bottom. This tasted a little like 'Nilla Wafers and my son ate it with some chocolate syrup on it! Ick! :o) I used two layer cake pans, but would probably consider using one cake pan and cutting it in half next time. I wasn't sure how much it would rise in the pan, having never made it before and did not want to have a Mt. Vesuvius disaster in my oven! LOL

The secret to the light texture of this, was beating the egg whites stiff. This was the first time I have used the plastic bowl and whips that came with my DLX mixer and it worked extremely well. The whites were very stiff and looked like stiff whipped cream! They are folded into the rest of the mix, which makes a foamy batter. The texture of the short cake is not like angel food or the fake chemical shortcakes you find packaged in the produce section with the strawberries. It was somewhere between that and a biscuit, more like a coarse cake. There was a faint vanilla flavor but it was mostly neutral so you could enjoy the whipped cream in the layer and on top, as well as the strawberries.

I highly recommend organic strawberries as I have read several places that strawberries can be washed 12 times and still have unacceptable levels of pesticide on them!

Here is a slice. The kids wanted it with chocolate sauce. We have been buying an organic chocolate syrup from Trader Joe's and they love it. Hubby and I did not like it with the chocolate and felt it interfered with the loveliness of the berries. In the future I would like to make this with mixed berries but the cost was prohibitive this time. I think it would taste great with raspberries, blueberries and blackberries along with the strawberries. If you want to be decadent, perhaps a little more whipped cream. I used 1 cup of heavy cream to whip and it was just right to get a great taste without going over the top!

Oh, what I forgot to say is that you could feed this to skeptics. My Hubby said he would not have known it was made with spelt if I had not told him! And though he has been a good sport in all our nutrition changes, he is much more picky about the taste and texture than I am, so I think this is an accurate statement. Let me know if you try it!