Ahhh… May is the month that everything starts to come alive. The grass is green again and things are growing. Fresh crops like rhubarb and asparagus start showing up at farmers’ markets, followed by one of everybody’s favorite fruits, strawberries! Depending on where you live, it can be easy to get strawberries all year round, but there’s something special about buying local ones at the peak of ripeness.
In this episode from way back in 1992, Arlene is making four kinds of strawberry desserts: A strawberry cream pie, a glazed strawberry pie, strawberry shortcake (one of her dad’s favorites!), and an angel food strawberry torte. They all look delicious, and they’re all loaded with fresh strawberry flavor. Which one looks best to you?
Strawberry Shortcake
This is one of Paul Williams' favorite deserts!
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups Bisquick baking mix
- 3 tbsp melted butter
- 4 tbsp sugar
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 quart strawberries, cleaned, hulled and sweetened
- Vanilla ice cream
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Grease a baking sheet.
- In a bowl, combine Bisquick, butter, sugar and milk. Mix into a dough and shape into 6 heart-shaped cakes. Place on prepared baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes or until brown on bottom. Let cool on wire rack.
- To serve, split cakes in half horizontally and place bottoms on serving plates. Spoon ice cream over bottom half of cake and then top with berries and juice. Replace top half of cakes on berries. Spoon additional berries and juice over top of cake. Whipped cream may be added if desired. Makes 6 servings. Enjoy!
Angel Food Strawberry Torte
This fast and easy dessert is so pretty!
Ingredients
- 1 round angel food cake (store-bought or homemade)
- 1 container whipped topping, thawed (12 oz)
- 2 pints fresh strawberries, washed and hulled
- sugar, to taste
- a few pretty whole strawberries
Instructions
- After cleaning strawberries, divide into 2 equal portions. Cut half of the strawberries in halves and toss in a bowl with a few teaspoons of sugar to sweeten to your liking. Cut the other portion of berries into thin slices.
- Cut angel food cake in half horizontally. Place bottom half on a rimmed cake dish.
- Spread whipped topping lightly over bottom layer. Cover with thinly sliced strawberries.
- Turn the top layer of cake upside down. Spread whipped topping over the cut side of the top layer, then carefully place the top of the cake onto the bottom half, sandwiching the berries in the middle.
- Completely cover the cake evenly with whipped topping. (You can create pretty swirl patterns with the back of a spoon, if you wish.)
- By now, the sweetened strawberries should be nice and juicy from sitting in the sugar. Spoon the berries and sweet juice over the entire cake. Decorate with whole berries as a garnish.
- Refrigerate cake until time to serve. Makes 12 to 15 servings. Enjoy!
Glazed Strawberry Pie
Ingredients
- 1 9" pie crust, baked and completely cooled
- 1 pint fresh strawberries, rinsed, hulled, and dried
- 1 package fruit glaze mix, prepared according to directions
- whipped cream to decorate
Instructions
- Cut across the stem side of each berry, making a flat surface. Place on pie crust stem-side down, so that the berries are point up.
- Prepare fruit glaze according to package directions, then spoon over berries, completely covering them. Place whipped cream around the outside edge of the pie, plus one spot in the middle. Refrigerate for an hour or two until glaze is set. Keep refrigerated before serving. Makes 6 servings. Enjoy!
Strawberry Cream Pie
Ingredients
- 2 cups strawberries, crushed
- 3 Tbs sugar
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 1 container whipped topping (8 oz)
- 1 9" graham cracker pie crust
- whole strawberries for garish
Instructions
- In a bowl, combine strawberries, sugar, and sour cream. Mix thoroughly to blend. Fold in the whipped topping.
- Pour mixture into the crust and chill for 4 hours of more. Garnish with additional strawberries. Makes 6 servings. Enjoy!
Transcript
- Hello, we’re glad you joined us here At Home today. We’ve been reading letters and we appreciate your mails so much. It’s a joy. I told one of the girls in the office it’s like Christmas for me every morning when the mail comes in and we hear how you feel about this program, and it’s our desire to meet a need that I think is there, just to motivate you to try. And, you know, we don’t always have a success but we keep trying because we know if we keep trying, ultimately we’re gonna do it. And today there’s a lot of trying here because we’re going to do something special with strawberries. They’re coming into peak season and they are one of the tastiest morsels, they’re very low in calories, they’re very good for you. There’s apparently some kind of an enzyme in there that does something for your body that’s very good for you. And so I thought that we would do some interesting things with strawberries. If you’ve got kids in your household that likes strawberries, let them eat them, they’re good for them. And if you are in a pinch for a good dessert, and somebody says, “You know, we’re gonna have “a get together, how about you bring in a dessert?” Well, if you’ve got strawberries, you’ve got a quick dessert and we’re gonna show you what to do with them. I had a letter, and this is really timely because this lady who’s from Rillton, PA. We’re always glad to hear from, when Kansas City writes to us, we’re glad you write. When Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, channel 38, our good friends up there, when they write we’re glad to hear from them. And channel 47 here in Altoona, we’re glad to hear from your folks. Channel 40 viewers, we’re glad to hear from you folks. Everybody that’s seeing us, we’re glad to hear it. And this lady is from Rillton, Pennsylvania, and she said, “You know, I really enjoy all your recipes “and watching your great grand program.” Thank you very much. “Which I enjoy and also can’t wait “to see every Wednesday night.” That’s when we’re on here in the Pittsburgh area. “Your cooking and baking is absolutely great. “But I’d like to have a recipe for strawberry pie.” Well, my dear, today we’re making that strawberry pie just for you. Stay with us now, we’ll be right back after this special hint to get started with strawberries. Here’s today’s At Home Hint: To hold strawberries at their peak flavor, keep in a colander in the refrigerator. Wash quickly just before serving. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share with us, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to At Home Hints, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. Okay, I’m gonna show you some strawberries before we get started. The fine folks at Jordan Banana Company, produce company, they provide all of these goodies for us. And I’ll tell you, look at these strawberries. Are they lush or what? Everyone’s a picture, and everyone is so good for you and, uh, there are a lot of things that you can do with strawberries, some of which we’re going to be showing you today. But I want to encourage you, there are some products on the market. This is called fruit pectin. And what it does is helps you to make jams or jellies very easy. There’s a recipe here for a no-cook freezer jam. And if you’re afraid or intimidated by canning in any way, I just want to dispel that fear today because this is so easy to do. You measure the berries, you sugar them down, you dissolve the pectin, you put it together, put it in the jars and you put it in your freezer, there’s no cooking to it. So look for something, and there’s a reduced calorie one that takes less sugar and you get more of the fruit taste. And also there’s one called Sure Jell, Certo is another brand. So look at those. If your family likes jams and jellies, it’s a whole lot cheaper when berries are in season to make some, it’ll keep in your freezer indefinitely, bring it out as you need it, and you have something that you have made. There’s a certain amount of pride to say I made that jam. I cleaned those berries that’s in that jam. So I’m just telling you don’t be intimidated by it. Get some and try it. When you’re in the supermarket, go to your Foodland store, you’ll find that package and just read on there. It’s very inexpensive to do and it’s fun. Well, the first thing we’re gonna do today is make a strawberry shortcake. Now, people think when you say strawberry shortcakes that you’re talking, you take a cake and you put it in, you put some strawberries, and some ice cream. My mom used to make strawberry shortcake that was a biscuit. And I’m using her recipe ’cause this is what she used to do. She used a product called Bisquick. We probably all have seen this. This is pancake mix or waffle mix. It’s a cooking and baking mix. It’s already got things, it’s not just plain flour. So you take two and 1/3 cups of Bisquick, and you take a half a cup of milk. Okay. You also take three tablespoons of sugar. It’s so nice to have all of these measured out. Bet you wish you had somebody at your house that was doing this. I wish when I was home cooking, I had somebody do all that ’cause that’s the biggest part of the work. And there are three tablespoons of melted margarine that we’re gonna put in there. Sounds like something’s cooking over here that shouldn’t be. Let me just move that off. Okay now we mix this up because this is like a short biscuit. When my mom would make this when strawberry season would come in, my dad would say, “Well, Lillian, “when are we gonna have strawberry shortcake?” And she’d say, “Oh, probably, get me the berries, “and I’ll make it.” And that night supper was not a big heavy supper because this biscuit is heavy, so you’d want a light dinner. Sometimes, you’d make maybe a pot of homemade soup or something light, maybe some scrambled eggs, or something like that. You don’t want a big heavy, heavy dinner because this biscuit is very filling. And she would make this, and, oh, my goodness, my dad couldn’t wait. If he’d come in and he could smell that this had been baking, he knew, hah, this is the night we’re having the berries, and he would be thrilled. And he’d, “Do we have the milk? “Do we have this?” “Oh, yeah, we’ve got everything.” This was a big production at our house because my mother truly lived to serve her family, and foremost to serve God, but really her responsibility to our family was so great. And I really miss her now that she’s gone to be with the Lord, but I know that one day again I’ll see her. So anyway she would make this, and this dough should kind of be kinda like that consistency or a little bit dryer. If you’ll follow the recipe, it’s right on the side of the box. They say you’re supposed to spread this in an eight inch square pan but my mom never did that. See, then you would cut it after it baked and that’s how you’d serve it. My mom made little patties-like or little cakes, individual cakes. So this needs to be a little dryer so that your hands, it’s not sticking all over your hands when you’re making the little biscuits. And you have your baking sheet there. And she would make them, ’cause this is gonna raise, this has a leavening in it so these are gonna raise. But don’t make them too big because they’re gonna puff up. And she would just get her hands in there. That’s good, nothing wrong with that. Make them about like that. This will probably give you four, five maybe. Maybe four good ones. And, oh, my dad, he just couldn’t wait for this. It was a big production. You know, my brothers, he’d say, “Come on, this is berry night. “Come one, hurry up. “Come on, don’t be late for dinner tonight. “This is a night you don’t wanna miss. “This is berry night.” And hardly ever were there any strawberries leftover because you know yourself if you have something that tastes good, it’s usually gone unless you’ve made a whole, whole lot of it. But when you make little things for your family, special things, like these biscuits, it doesn’t take much, you know, it’s just a few ingredients here. But, oh, the kids appreciate it, your husband appreciates it. He thinks, “My goodness, I have married a woman “that really knows her way around the kitchen.” And you’re doing something that you’re gonna feel good about because you are preparing it for your family, and that’s an investment that is worth everything. Okay, so I think we have these just about ready. This made five. You could probably get six smaller ones but I’m doing the way mom did it and this is the way mom did. So we’ll put those in the oven. It goes in a pretty hot oven. And we’ll put those in for about, let me see. Let’s do them for about 15 minutes, okay? I wanna set my timer because if I don’t, they will look like marbles ’cause I’ll probably overcook them. Okay, that’s the first one. I’ll show you what to do with those once they get baked, all right? Now we’re gonna move along. As I told in the beginning about the berries, you know, you get them, you bring them home, you keep in your colander in your refrigerator until you are ready to use them because they’ll stay at their peak flavor. If you decide that you want to make the shortcake, you’d need a sweetened berry to go over that ’cause there’s not much sweetness in the biscuit. And this is what the sweetened berries look like. Now all I have done is I have taken a small paring knife. Well, I’ll use this big one. The way you clean a berry is you take the berry. I don’t wash mine first, I’ll tell you why. You take the berry and you just take the top part off, the least amount. You see this? You just take that off and then you decide, do I wanna leave them whole? Do I wanna slice them? Do they get mashed? Or however you like to serve them. Now these I have made specifically with sugar over them because after you have cut them. And I would cut this in very small pieces, if this is what I wanted to do with them, like what’s in this bowl, which are really called, um, like almost bits of fruit in a juice. You want a juice. So you cut them small, and then you put your sugar on them, and you take a knife and you go down this way and you cut through them. You’re cutting the sugar into the berry. And what that does, you put them in the refrigerator, and then the juices from the berry come out, mix with the sugar. You have this wonderful, wonderful strawberry juice. That’s what this is. If you wanna slice them and just put them out like this because you’re gonna decorate with them or you don’t put sugar on them because the sugar breaks them down and you won’t want to do that with this. Now I have to tell you we did this yesterday and they have held up beautifully throughout the night in the refrigerator. Okay, the next thing we’re gonna be making, this is a store bought angel food cake. Remember I told you this was gonna be a quick dessert that somebody called and said, “Oh, what can I bring?” This is the one we’re talking about here. Now there’s two ways to cut this and to save time I’m gonna do it the traditional way with a knife. But, you know, if you have a very tender angel food cake, you can take a piece of string, line it up and pull it straight through a cake. It’s a little harder with this sponge cake because the egg white in this type of cake makes it firmer but if you have a regular cake and you wanna get a nice, even, just take your piece of string or a thread and pull it straight through, you’ll get two even layers. Whole lot better than sawing away with a knife because it crumbles, it’s a very delicate batter. This one is more firmer and this is a little bit hard to do with this type of a cake. So what I’ll do is just take my knife, and again, you wanna use a serrated edged knife. That’s a knife that has these little bumps in it because it saws through rather than plunging through. So you just take your knife. I’m gonna go about halfway down, get it started, then come in the center. Okay, just keep the right gauge that the whole way around this cake, you’re gonna go halfway. Looks like the biggest bagel I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Look at that. Okay, so you have two pieces now. I’m gonna put the one piece, this is on the serving tray. You wanna put something, you wanna present something that’s very beautiful, so you want to have a beautiful tray to put it on. Now what I’m gonna use here, I’m gonna get my Cool Whip. Mkay. Told you, you’re in a hurry, right? So when you’re in a hurry anything goes. Except that nobody opened my Cool Whip for me and I now have to take a little time but that’s all right. That’s all right. Cool Whip is a life saver. It used to be you had to whip up the whipped cream and you had to, you know, sugar it down, and you had to do all these. And I’ll tell you that sometimes takes time that you don’t have when you’re in a hurry. So you take your Cool Whip. And what I do is put a layer of the Cool Whip on. Now, you say, “Well, why are you doing that?” I’ll tell ya, you put this on because if you don’t the berries are gonna into your cake and by the time you’d get to where you’re going, your cake’s gonna be soggy. You don’t want that to happen. So you just put thin layer Cool Whip. Doesn’t matter if it goes down the sides, don’t worry. At this point in this cake, neat just doesn’t count, when we’re doing this. Then you’re gonna take your strawberries. You’re gonna lay them all over the cake. Just, you know, let the kids help you out. Make sure that they got their hands clean, they’ve washed them. And then turn them loose on the berries, let them work on it. You know that’s what it’s all about. Fun in the kitchen with the kids, even if dad decides he wants to help, that’s all right. That’s good. It’s a family project and that’s wonderful. Now if your kids really like strawberries or your family does, put lots on. If they don’t, don’t put so many on. Just however your family likes it, there’s no specific recipe. Okay, now the key is that you want ice the top part that’s gonna go over it because you’re gonna sandwich those berries between Cool Whip and cake. All right. Now, you say, “Well, what if I don’t have time “to get the strawberries ready?” Well, you can use the frozen strawberries that have thawed down in their own juice. That’s fine, no problem there. Again, make the most. It doesn’t matter if you had strawberries two or three days in a row because they’re good for you and you have to eat them when they’re at the peak. Okay now we’re gonna take this part and we’re going to put it over the berries. Isn’t that nice? Let’s see if it fits all around. Yeah, it looks pretty good. Again, we’re gonna start. Get some of these. Time to clean up here a little bit. This is called a spatula. It doesn’t have a point. It’s strictly for spreading things. And if you don’t have one of these, they’re less than $2. It’s a worthy investment because it really helps out. We’re going to ice in this whole cake with Cool Whip. Now, angel food cake has no cholesterol, has very little sugar and it’s very good. If people are diabetic, it’s wonderful for people who can’t eat a lot of sweets. The berries are very low. You know this, I didn’t put the sweetened berries on it. Well, not yet, I didn’t anyway. And that makes it very low calorie. You can get the low calorie Cool Whip and without much fat. Even the regular’s only 12 calories per tablespoon. So, really, by comparison to chocolate cake or something, this could be considered a low calorie dessert. And it could be very helpful in satisfying your children’s sweet tooth too. So, we just ice in, icing, ice in. Trying to hurry here ’cause I wanna get it all done. I wanna show you how to decorate the outside. ‘Cause once this is totally covered with Cool Whip, we’re not finished. There’s other things to do. Do on the top. Now, I did take a cake decorating, I told you this before, I took a cake decorating course one time. The things that you learn there are incredible. Fun things to do with, like, your husband’s old flannel pajama that he doesn’t wear anymore, there’s things you can do with that that really help your cakes to turn out. Maybe one day when we bake a cake, I’ll share that with you because that was the most astounding thing. I thought I’d just throw them in the rag bag. Oh, no. So start collecting your husband’s flannel pajamas, it’s really important. Okay, I think we just about have it there. Go around the circle, go around the inside. Now, on top of this, remember you would have to keep this totally refrigerated. We’re gonna put some berries on the top and some juice. Not too much juice. Mostly just the berries. Okay. Okay. Here we go. Just let them pile up. Does that look good or what? Crew, does this look good? Does it look good? Okay.
- [Man] Yes.
- All right. There’s the director. I mean that sounds like God speaking when you hear that voice coming down. Now you wanna save some of your nice big berries, some of the prettier ones, because you wanna decorate with them. And all you’re gonna do is just lay them strategically here and there around the cake. Well, it’s got a little icing on the leaf. That’s all right. Just here and there. And I’ll tell you, how many minutes have we spent this? Very few. Is this the biggest berry you have ever seen? Look at that berry. That thing is huge. I’ll tell ya Jordan Bananas has wonderful produce. But just all around, we just, not that one, let’s use this one over here. Because, this, when people see it, that’s what’s gonna wet their appetite. What do you think? Is it pretty? There’s our strawberry cake. I love it. I think it’s nice. All right, now we’re gonna move on to the pie because we don’t have a whole lot of time. And I’m going to make, this is a strawberry cream pie. We have our cold shell already done. And this is very quick also. We’re gonna make some instant vanilla pudding and this is low calorie. Okay, low calorie. And we use the whip, two cups of milk. We use the whip. This will thicken up very quickly. I hope it does. Anyway, maybe it will, maybe it won’t. It’s debatable. But this will thicken up and we’re going to put the strawberries on top of it. We’ll use a sliced strawberries on that. That’s in a regular baked crust. Let me show you what we’re gonna do with a graham cracker crust. Have you ever gone to these places and they have this wonderful big berry pies? Well, sometimes they’re in a graham cracker, sometimes they’re in a baked one. And I was gonna put the cream in this but I think I’ll put the cream one in that and I’ll make the big stand up berry pie in the flaky crust because we wanna put a glaze over it. All you do is start putting your berries, line them up, they have to be cleaned. Try to keep them all about the same size. And we line them up in the crust. It’s already been baked and cooled. Okay. We just keep lining them up. Woops. I’ll tell ya, get the kids involved, let them clean and cut the berries, and that’s the way you learn. If you don’t do that, you never learn. You line them up. They look nice? Mm-hmm. It’s a wonderful strawberry pie. And then there’s something on the market and it’s called a Glaze pack. It’s for fresh fruit tarts and cakes. And this pie, because it has the fresh strawberries, if there’s a few little empty spot, you can fill them in with some more berries or just some slices. That will work out fine, don’t worry. It would really be nicer to keep all the big berries, whole berries, but sometimes you just don’t have enough and you’ve already cut them up like I just did, that’s okay. Okay, now you buy this, it’s a glaze, and what the glaze does is just kinda preserve the berry and puts a little sweetness to it. Now that package, I forget what the ingredients, it’s not a lot of ingredients but you make it and when it has softened, you spoon it over the berries. And that’s what puts, if you’ve ever gone to a restaurant where they have this tremendous, so appealing, the strawberries, they’re all shiny, and there’s glazes over it and taste so good. Well, that’s essentially what they’re doing. They’re taking a fresh pie crust and they’re standing the berries that have never been cooked into the pie crust, and then they’re putting a glaze over it. And once I get this glaze, ’cause this will thicken up real quick, you need to make this just as you use it because if you don’t, when it gets cool it thickens up, then you can reheat it like I’m doing now. Just making sure. I think we’re about there. I don’t want it to thin. Okay now you just spoon. You see the glaze is clear. So you just spoon it over the berries, all over the berries. Sometimes they use a paintbrush to do this. There are some restaurants I’ve seen. I’ve seen them demonstrated, I should say. See how shiny it makes the berries? It makes them so much more appealing. And, uh, it’s a wonderful, tasty, scrumptious strawberry pie. Now what I would put on this would probably be the regular, like a Reddi-wip, or some kind of sweetened whipped cream, that type of thing. And remember it’s good to try to get it over all of them because if you don’t, you’ll be able to tell which has the glaze on it, which doesn’t. Okay, there it is. Now I would put Reddi-wip on that and that would be ready to serve. There’s our strawberry pie. Let me show you. Our pudding’s nice and thick. We’re gonna put this into our graham cracker crust. It didn’t take too long after all. And it’s just a vanilla pudding. And this is also a sugar-free pudding. We’re really getting into that a lot now. There’s a lot of things on the market that have reduced sugar content. Just spread it around. Just spread it around. All right. You know I’ll tell ya, I always get good to the last drop. Okay. And we would use our sliced berries. And this one, you would want to make it look really nice because you want a design on it. So it’s important to lay them out so that it does look nice. If I can remember which way I’m going here, here we go. And keep the prettiest berries. Oh, there’s the buzzer. I think our shortcakes are about done. And we’ll be right back to finish the whole program and show you all of it in just a minute. Let me get the oven.
- [Narrator] To receive the recipes presented on today’s program plus many more great recipe ideas, send your best donation in a stamped, self-addressed, business-sized envelope to At Home, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. You’ll receive Arlene’s heartwarming newsletter, Enjoy! Featuring an entire month of At Home recipes including today’s mouthwatering dishes. Be sure to include Enjoy issue number with your request.
- Well, this is what the biscuits look like, the shortcake biscuits, when they come out of the oven. And you split them, like we have here, put some berries on, put the lid back on top of it, add a few more berries and some juice because that will soften. That’s such a really delicate dough. And the crowning touch, my dad will then pour cream over the top of it. And that softens that biscuit and you almost have strawberry milk, really. Next to it then is our wonderful, with the graham cracker crust, it’s a cream pie. Look at that. Does that look wonderful? Next to that is the glazed. Sorry, the glazed strawberry pie in the flaky crust. And then of course our strawberry torte. If you would like these recipes like you have just seen and we told you, send your self-addressed stamped envelope. Be sure to request recipes number 103. It’s a new system that we’re starting because we want to serve you better and make sure that you get just those recipes that you need most. And it’s always a pleasure to be with you. We enjoy doing these types of programs. And if there’s something that you would like to see us make, not that we’re great cooks but we’re trying just like you’re trying. And if there’s something that you haven’t seen or like to see, jot it down when you’re requesting your recipes and we’ll give it a consideration. Just like the lady today said she like to see a strawberry pie, we made two. And you can do it, too, all you have to do is try. I hope that you’ve enjoyed it. We’ve enjoyed it. Don’t forget to buy strawberries ’cause they’re at their peak right about now. And please be sure to join us the next time because it just wouldn’t be the same without you right here At Home, see you then.
- [Narrator] Fresh produce provided by Jordan Banana, wholesalers of fresh fruit and vegetables in Dravorsburg, PA. Cookware provided by Wholey’s. Your favorite gourmet deserves the best for less at Wholey Balcony Cookware. Groceries provided Foodland, where the answer is always yes. Cornerstone television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.
- Have anything to do with me again, that I could not be…
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