An exceedingly good berry shortcake

Strawberries, raspberries or, later in summer, nectarines or plums… Here's a treasured family recipe to make with whichever soft fruit is at its lushest. Two crucial words apply: simple and delicious.

Thanks to Jason Wain for letting me use this luscious illustration, created when our family recipe was featured in a book he produced for charity a few years ago

There’s nothing quite like the first strawberries of summer, warm from the sun.

NOT white-topped Elsantas grown and picked before they’re ripe, somewhere far, far away. No, not those.

The garden is drenched with much needed rain as I write this, but the sun has just poked through the clouds in a golden sliver and everything is glistening. We’ve grown strawberries for the first time this year (rewarding) and they are roundly, sweetly fragrant, quite unlike any berries I’ve tasted before. Or maybe that’s because the act of growing has imbued them with a romanticised taste of ‘wow – we did it’. There aren’t many of the buggers, though, and they’re ripening in ones and twos, so those shiny red gems are eked out and savoured, nibble by nibble.

When friends’ children were little we used to take them strawberry picking to the PYO farm near where we lived in south-east London, heading just out into Kent, and it’s wonderful how many of those (now grow-up) kids mention memories of those happy hours spent mooching along straw-strewn strawberry rows, metal-handled cardboard trugs in hand. We’d hold the berries by their stalks and eat them like upside-down lollipops, picking more than ever made it into the punnets to take home. I’m amazed they didn’t weigh everyone before and after.

Back in the car, the warmth, the sweetly vegetal smell of straw, the intoxicating smell of the strawbs, some a little overripe and bruised with the faintest hint of fermentation about them: those moments were, it turns out, the stuff of strawberry-pink memories.

Back home, the berries were hulled and sliced with a sharp little pointy knife, ready for action with yogurt, maybe with ice cream, maybe unadorned. Sometimes I’d use them in (or with) my mum’s shortcake recipe from her old battered ringbound folder. Here it is, below. It used to say RECIPES on a lined scrap of paper Sellotaped to the front, but that fell off somewhere along the way. Still, the book is a treasure.

Dogeared and loved: the ringbound recipe folder

I say ‘in or with’ because the recipe makes two shortcakes. They’re a cross between a scone and a cake: softer and thinner than a scone; not as spongey or light as a cake. Mum used to top one with a billowing pile of whipped cream, followed by lots of sliced strawberries or raspberries, then on went the second shortcake, nubbly side up, before being given a cough-making dusting of icing sugar. The shortcake is best assembled and served within an hour or two of baking, when the cakes are at their tender best.

I’ve taken to serving the pudding unassembled as the double layer risks overshadowing the glory of the fruit. Instead, I macerate the berries in a tablespoon or two of maple syrup or cassis and toss in a few shredded basil leaves, maybe mint, just before serving. Then I dust the shortcakes with icing sugar, cut them into wedges and serve in a tottering pile to eat alongside the macerated berries with a pile of cream: sometimes clotted, sometimes whipped Jersey, sometimes extra-thick spooned straight from the tub. It’s more relaxed, and people can choose to have one wedge of shortcake or three.

Leftovers can go in a tin to have with a lick of butter and raspberry jam, scone-like, the next day.

Any which way, this is a summer delight.

Here, below, is the shortcake recipe.

PS Look out for another treat, coming soon, for what I reckon is the best cake to make with the last of the summer rhubarb.