4 Levels of Strawberry Shortcake: Amateur to Food Scientist

[can popping]

[eggs cracking]

[knife chopping]

[upbeat music]

I'm Billy and I'm a level one chef.

I'm Gina, I'm a level two chef.

My name is Umber, I'm with Mah-Ze-Dahr bakery.

I've been a professional chef in pastry for 10 years.

[upbeat music]

Strawberry shortcake is the perfect dessert

for having friends over on a Sunday afternoon.

It's like eating air.

You could eat 10 slices and not feel

like total gross afterward.

It reminds me of childhood.

You can't eat strawberry shortcake without feeling happy.

[chiming music]

So with any strawberry shortcake recipe,

you need the cake.

I'm using store bought ready-made biscuits.

This is all about speed and deliciousness

and finding the balance between the two,

and nothing wrong with a good can of biscuits if you ask me.

I get stressed out because opening them

is like a time bomb.

Depending on what kind of person you are,

you either like this or it's, hey, traumatic.

There's two routes you can go.

There's the layer cake version

and then there's the biscuit version.

I'll be making the biscuit kind because I like scones.

We're going to do a lemon pound cake.

Mix lemon zest into the sugar.

I'm gonna put it into the mixing bowl,

and then the next thing is to put in the butter.

I'm gonna start with the dry ingredients.

[Both] Flour, kosher salt, and then I have baking powder.

I'm gonna whisk it together.

If you over-mix your flour,

you activate the gluten in the flour

and that's when you get the chew.

So make sure you don't over-mix.

And then this is cold butter.

You want layers of flakiness.

Cold butter helps that.

This actually feels quite nice.

So now I'm gonna focus on the wet ingredients.

3/4 cups of buttermilk.

I'm going to crack this egg right inside the buttermilk.

I always break my eggs and put them into a separate bowl.

Don't ever break an egg directly into a mixing bowl.

It guarantees that you're gonna find

a piece of shell of in there.

[Gina] I'll whisk it together.

I add eggs one at a time.

It allows the mixture to sort of absorb each egg.

I just want to make sure that I get

a light and fluffy mixture.

The next thing I'm gonna do is add in my dry ingredients.

I have my flour mixture, and I have my-

[Umber And Gina] Buttermilk mixed with lemon juice.

Mix it all together.

I'm a big stickler about getting all of the batter

off of the mixer.

It doesn't leave much for anybody to lick,

but we'll be okay.

So we're gonna do the fun part.

We're gonna dump it on the table and make a big mess.

Welcome to the scone zone.

Fold it together, pat it out into a round shape,

and then I'm gonna take my bench scraper

and press it straight down.

If you think about a snowflake.

I overestimated here [laughs].

A couple of people are gonna get really big pieces of cake.

We've got eight biscuits here.

Arrange them onto the baking sheet.

This piece is for your favorite person

because it's the biggest.

I'm just gonna pop these into the refrigerator

for 20 minutes.

All right, these have been chilling,

so now I'm going to brush them with some buttermilk.

Give a light brushing of melted butter to each.

Now you could imagine that this is going to make them

toast up and look nice and golden.

I'm gonna take a little bit of granulated sugar.

So this is the coarse sugar.

And that's gonna go a long ways towards

these toasting up and looking brown and delicious.

I'm going to pop these into the oven-

[Both] Until golden brown.

Yeah boy.

[Gina] I've got some biscuits.

I'll tell ya, just a little bit of butter and sugar

on top is a good way to elevate some store-bought biscuits.

I'm going to let these cool.

I have a cake ring, and I'm gonna cut out

the ring of cake that I'm gonna be using

for the dessert itself.

She's still gonna be in the kitchen making her cake.

I'm gonna be having Aperol spritz in the garden.

We all make our choices in this life.

And once I've done that, I want to remove the edges.

Do not throw these away.

They are gold.

The next step for me is to remove

the very top layer of the cake.

It's almost like a little barrier.

I want to eliminate that barrier

and let everything to get absorbed into the cake itself.

The next thing I do is cut all the way through the cake,

and now I have two separate pieces.

So my cake is ready.

The last step is to make simple syrup

to moisten each one of the cake layers.

I take a small pot and put it on medium heat.

Add equal parts sugar and water.

I let it boil for just a little bit.

Let this cool, add in my lemon juice, and I stir it around.

The lemon simple syrup is gonna be a great way

for me to reinforce the flavor and the texture

of the cake as I build it.

It's not strawberry shortcake without-

[All] Strawberries.

I've got a bowl of beautiful red strawberries here

just waiting to be sliced up.

Nothing too fancy.

We're gonna kind of combine them

with some granulated sugar in the bowl.

Strawberries are the star of the cake,

so I want to get some good ones,

and these are from the farmer's market.

I'm using these strawberries that come

from a special farm in California.

They are just like full of flavor, full of sunshine,

and full of a lot of juice.

The other strawberries that I'm gonna use

on the outside of the cake as more decorative,

but still just as incredible in flavor,

are a varietal of strawberry from Japan

that hasn't normally been available in the United States.

All about the same size, they're going to be displayed.

So if I have a lot of different strawberries

or different sizes, it looks a little bit less uniform.

Nothing complicated.

I take the top off like that.

I go as close to the inside of the stem,

and I just make a small little circular motion,

and it's preserved as much of the strawberry

as I possibly can.

One slice, two slices, and then we get

four total out of it.

It's starting to look like a murder scene,

but that's okay.

It's a very tasty murder scene.

I'm just making little cubes of the strawberries.

Strawb is prepared.

[Gina] I'm gonna transfer all the berries into the bowl.

Sweeten them up a little bit more.

Not that strawberries aren't already sweet,

but a little bit of granulated sugar.

That little bit of molasses gives you

almost an earthy flavor.

It's slightly caramel, slightly maple.

It adds complexity.

It doesn't need to be super sweet.

You're basically using the brown sugar to draw

the natural juices and sweetness of the strawberries out.

Lemon is gonna add some brightness and some tang.

Corn starch is going to thicken the mixture.

I'm gonna toss the strawberries a little bit with a spoon.

Strawberries have been chopped and dressed

with the corn starch and lemon mixture,

and now it's gonna be ready for the stove top.

I'm gonna move into the pretty strawberries,

not that beauty is everything, but you know,

it kind of is here.

I'm gonna cut them in half,

and I'm gonna keep them all sort of put together

so that they don't dry out.

I'm going to put these into the saucepan,

drizzle some honey.

Oh, so cool.

The color got even brighter.

That looks really pretty.

Also looks like guts, you know, I don't know.

I think we're about done.

I'm gonna let this chill,

and we're gonna use that to put in our cake.

Now, whipped topping.

Didn't get too ambitious, kept it straight forward.

If you'll bear with me, we're going to try

to do it right now.

A one, and a two, and a three, there we go.

And my whipped topping is ready.

I love Reddi Wip.

I shouldn't tell you why, but it was the cheapest high

you could get when you were 12 years old,

I'll tell you that much.

We're gonna make some whipped cream.

It comes together real quick.

So now I'm into the fun stuff, diplomat cream,

which is whipped cream mixed together with pastry cream

to get a luscious, luscious filling.

I'm gonna start with the pastry cream.

The first thing I do is put a pot on medium heat.

I add the cream in.

Lock it in.

Some powdered sugar.

And then I add in the milk.

While the milk and cream are heating up,

I'm gonna mix together my egg yolks,

sugar, a tiny bit of salt.

Whenever you make pastry or anything sweet,

add a little bit of salt.

It'll find that balance much better.

Then I add in corn starch,

because you want the pastry cream to be a little bit thick.

I whisk all of these ingredients together

until I have kind of a yellow paste.

This is a process called tempering.

By slowly adding hot liquid to my eggs,

I'm avoiding making scrambled eggs,

and I'm getting everything to the same temperature.

Now I'm gonna add all of the egg mixture

back into the rest of the milk,

and now I'm gonna heat this liquid.

I whisk a bit, I stop, I check, I go back into whisking.

You want this to feel like pudding.

As soon as this is ready to come off the heat,

I put it into another container.

I'm gonna add in some-

[Both] Vanilla.

I love to use vanilla bean paste.

You get the actual little pieces of vanilla,

so you get the caviar of the bean on the inside.

[Gina] We're gonna add like a little dollop of sour cream.

I take half my butter, room temperature.

If you don't put butter in,

it's probably not considered pastry cream.

Once I've gotten that melted in,

I'll add the balance of the butter.

So I have my pastry cream, and it looks so divine.

Put this on an ice bath for about 25 minutes or so.

Put this in the refrigerator.

I leave it overnight so it's completely cold.

It gives it the ideal temperature to mix it

with the creme Chantilly, which is French

for Chantilly cream.

The first step is to put water into a small bowl,

and then I sprinkle a little gelatin on top.

I mix this up, and then I'm gonna microwave it

to dissolve the gelatin in the water.

I can see now it's clear.

Put heavy cream into my mixing bowl.

I'm gonna mix it up just a little bit.

Now I'm gonna put the gelatin in.

I am looking for a smooth and eventually-

[Both] Stiff peak.

What that means is when I lift the bowl up,

there should be some of the cream left here,

and it should look like a more defined peak

than it does now.

See how fast it is?

Yeah, so fast.

Now I have stabilized whipped cream.

And the next and final step to the filling

is to mix this with the pastry cream.

Pour this into the bowl.

All right, finished.

And now I'm done.

What I have now is diplomat cream.

Have I heard of diplomat cream?

No.

I can neither confirm nor deny

whether I have heard of diplomat cream.

It's a diplomatic answer.

I'm going to put it into pastry bags.

Diplomat cream is lighter in color, has more structure,

and is gonna work beautifully inside the cake.

Sliced strawberries, baked biscuit,

can of whipped topping.

I'm ready to assemble my strawberry shortcakes.

First thing I'm gonna do is take one of these biscuits

and they should open up comfortably without,

yeah, without a knife.

Thank you modern commerce.

Ta da!

Ooh, texture looks very fluffy,

which is exactly what we want.

I have the same cake ring that I used

to size out the cake pieces earlier.

I'm going to add a piece of acetate

because it gives it sort of an added level of security

that the cake isn't gonna fall apart

after I'm done constructing it.

I'm gonna take the bottom layer of the two layers of cake,

and paint the top of the cake layer

with this gorgeous lemon simple syrup.

Let's start with the whipped topping.

Healthy dollop.

Take the fancy strawberries, and this is the design part.

And now some strawbs on top.

It's about, you know, two spoonfuls,

maybe three if you love the person more.

I'm going to very lightly fill in the cake.

Top that.

A little bit more creme on top.

I'm going to add the macerated strawberries

to the inside of the cake.

I'm gonna make a garnish.

This is like where you could get fancy.

Put the lemon simple syrup on the cake.

There it is.

What I have now is a star tip,

which just makes a really beautiful little flower.

The last and final step.

I took freeze-dried strawberries,

chopped them up using the back of a spoon,

and now I have a really beautiful decoration.

Isn't she so pretty?

And this is my strawberry shortcake.

And this is my strawberry shortcake.

And this is my strawberry shortcake.

[gentle music]

It's not gonna win a beauty pageant.

It might win a tummy pageant.

It looks yummy, and all the things are melting.

Oh my gosh [laughs].

I would call it a [speaks French],

an American strawberry cake.

This kind of dessert is the reason why

we eat our regular food so quickly,

so we can get to dessert as fast as possible.

It is time to taste.

I bet you it's gonna be a delight.

I'm gonna try to get a little bit of everything in one bite.

Mm, that's delicious.

Oh my gosh.

You're in and out of the kitchen

in the time it takes for the biscuits to bake,

10, 15 minutes total, and you got something delicious

to serve to your friends and family.

There's that ultimate Asian dessert compliment,

where people say, it's not too sweet.

So it's not too sweet.

It's really yummy.

I get the strawberries in every single bite,

so I know that this is strawberry shortcake,

but everything else around it is just so perfect.

You're gonna have to turn that camera off

because I am gonna eat this whole thing.

[sign banging]

Strawberry shortcake is such a sweet summer treat.

Let's see how each of our three chefs made theirs.

[drums banging]

Billy made pop and serve biscuits.

Pressure inside the tube is greater than outside,

compressing tiny air pockets in the dough.

When opened, the pressure's released extremely quickly,

the dough expands, and as it pushes against air,

sound waves are generated.

It's always a little scary to open these things.

Gina made biscuit-style shortcake.

This is a method of combining a flour mixture

with a solid, flavorful fat like butter.

The butter is cut into the flour mixture,

where it coats all of the gluten proteins.

This shortens the gluten molecules,

hence the name shortcake.

It prevents interactions between proteins

and water molecules, and inhibits gluten development,

which keeps the biscuits tender.

Umber made a lemon pound cake, originally named such

because you would use a pound of each ingredient.

Pound cakes have a very tight crumb,

with tiny air pockets evenly distributed

throughout the entire cake.

The intense lemon flavor is from limonene,

a compound found in high concentration in the peel.

[drums banging]

Billy simply sliced strawberries and added sugar.

Sugar initiates osmotic changes

and draws water out of the strawberries

to create a viscous, sweet sauce.

To accomplish this, you only need a small amount of sugar.

Gina made a cooked strawberry sauce with honey

to amplify sweetness.

She also added corn starch, which gelatinizes

when it's combined with the macerated strawberries,

thickening the strawberry juice.

[drums banging]

Billy used a can of Reddi Wip.

The can is pressurized using nitrous oxide

as a spray propellant.

When you press on the nozzle, pressure is released,

the nitrous oxide expands, and quickly infuses

into the cream as it's released,

resulting in a sweet, fluffy whipped cream.

Gina whipped heavy cream, which is upwards of 35% milk fat.

It foams well due to the proteins that form

around tiny pockets of air as it's whipped,

preventing the air from combining

with the water molecules present,

which would deflate the whole mass.

The cold fat stabilizes the proteins

which is why that high fat percentage is necessary

for stable whipped cream.

Yo, America, look.

Look what science has done for you.

Umber's diplomat cream is an intricate mix

of pastry and Chantilly creams.

Chantilly cream is sweetened whipped cream

which Umber stabilized by adding gelatin,

or hydrolyzed collagen.

It's the result of a reaction with water

that breaks peptide bonds and increases

the number of free amino acids.

I mean, are you really gonna go home

and make your own creme diplomat?

No, you're gonna buy a can of whipped cream,

just like I did, and there is no shame in that, okay?

Next time you have strawberries

and you're craving a sweet, summery treat,

we hope you'll take some of these tips

from our three creative chefs.