At some point, I have attempted to grow pretty much every variety of fruit and vegetable that can grow in our climate with one exception: strawberries. It’s not that I don’t love them – I adore them – it is that they are royal pain. Given they need a period of cold and dormancy before fruiting, you must plant them in the spring (some new varieties in the fall) and wait until the following season to harvest. This means weeding and tending for a full year with zero reward. The following spring you get your hard-earned fruit but so does every other critter that scurries, flies, burrows and can recognize the color red. Unless you plant an acre of them, your crop will be pillaged by the local furry and feathered bandits. Not to mention the scourge of all strawberry plants, the tarnished plant bug. All of this is to say, if you have a local strawberry grower be very nice to him or her and pay them what they ask with a smile because growing strawberries is challenging.
Making this dessert, however, is a cinch. When we first developed the Ginger Root Infused Maple Syrup this shortcake idea was one of the first recipes that came to mind. You make a basic strawberry shortcake recipe but instead of macerating the strawberries with granulated sugar, use the Ginger Root Infused. The resulting sauce is rich with a hint of ginger. I have two recipes for shortcakes; the first is James Beard’s version from the website Food52, and the second is good ‘ol Bisquick. Make whichever one you have time for.
