Shortcakes are one of America’s great culinary contributions, somewhere between sponge cake and scone, over there sandwiched with (often) sweetened cream and strawberries, but I love them too like this, Oz-style: the cream softly whipped and innocent of vanilla or sugar, and with almost astringently aromatic passionfruit scooped out on top. It’s the perfect ending to a garden-fragrant summer lunch.
A more Anglo-version, to be eaten on an idyll of a blue-skied afternoon, replaces the scooped-out passionfruit with rubied dollops of hands-free, home-made fresh raspberry jam. This is so simple, so effortless and so summery, that I have to reprise the recipe, quickly, from How To Be A Domestic Goddess: put 250g raspberries into one ovenproof dish and 250g caster sugar into another (a flat, round pie-dish shape is best). Cook both in an oven preheated to 180°C/gas mark 4 for 20–25 minutes, then remove from the oven and add the hot sugar to the hot berries. As you do so, so your jam is made, an instant, molten, red-gleaming river of it. Pour into a 250ml jar and leave to cool and set before storing in the fridge. Spoon out on to cream-clouded shortcakes, as suggested – or eat any way pleasure suggests.
325g plain flour
half a teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
5 tablespoons caster sugar
125g unsalted butter, frozen
1 large egg, beaten
125ml single cream
1 egg white, lightly beaten
for the filling:
250ml double cream
3 large passionfruit (or 6 small)
Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6.
Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into a large bowl and add 3 tablespoons of the sugar. Grate the butter into these dry ingredients, and use your fingertips to finish crumbling the butter into the flour. All you need to do is use the coarse holes of an ordinary grater, but if you prefer just cut the butter into pea-sized pieces and work it into the flour either by hand or with the paddle attachment of a free-standing mixer.
Whisk the egg into the single cream, and pour into the flour mixture a little at a time, using a fork to mix. You may not need all of the eggy cream to make the dough come together, so go cautiously.
Turn the dough out on to a lightly floured surface, and roll lightly to a thickness of about 2cm. Using a 6.5cm round scone or biscuit cutter, dipped in flour, cut out as many rounds as you can. Work the scraps back into a dough and re-roll if necessary to form six rounds in all.
Place the shortcakes about 2.5cm apart on a baking sheet, brush the tops with the egg white, and sprinkle them with the remaining 2 tablespoons of caster sugar. (If it helps with the rest of your cooking, or life in general, you can cover and refrigerate them now for up to 2 hours.) Bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden brown, and let them cool for a short while on a wire rack. The shortcakes should be eaten while still warm, so this stage doesn’t take that long. But don’t panic if they aren’t warm when you eat them; the one thing you don’t want to be doing is hovering nervously about the oven when you’ve got friends over.
Either before you sit down to eat or as you go to assemble the shortcakes, whichever suits you best, whip the double cream until floppily thick. Just before you want to bring them out, split each shortcake across the middle, dollop some of the softly whipped double cream on to the bottom piece, cover with the scooped-out half (or whole if using smaller ones) of a passionfruit then set the top back on. Don’t squish it down: you’re after a jaunty, rakish angle. Proceed with the remaining five and set all six on a large plate, and let people help themselves as they want.
Serves 6.