Summer fun in the kitchen: 5 recipes for strawberry treats

It’s strawberry season, so here are 5 simple recipes for making marvellous things with them. Get in the kitchen with your kids and these strawberry delights will forever be remembered as the taste of summer…

by Misti Traya

If summer had a flavour, it would definitely be strawberry. Strawberries are so full of sweetness and sunshine. Just walking past a patch on a warm summer’s day and breathing in that heavenly scent can lift your mood. The TCFC team loves picking them too – it’s a favourite family day out….

A weekend strawberry picking expedition for TCFC’s Paul, Clare and family


Fresh strawberries – with our without cream –  are delicious, but in summer months, when you get a glut of them it’s nice to make things with them too. Here are 5 of my favourite recipes for all things strawberry that you can make with the kids. 

1) Strawberry sundae with shortbread

For me, this is the ultimate summer sundae. The inspiration for it comes from one of my favorite milkshakes in Los Angeles – the strawberry shortcake from MILK on Beverly Boulevard. It’s creamy and crunchy and bursting with strawberry sweetness. Though homemade shortbread is lovely, do buy it if it’s easier, no one will mind!
 

Ingredients for the strawberry sauce:

• 400 g strawberries, halved
• 1/2 cup apple juice
• the juice of half a lemon
• caster sugar, anywhere from 2 tbsp to 1/4 cup depending on how sweet you like it

Method: Place all ingredients in a saucepan and heat over a low flame. Stir until all the sugar has dissolved then turn up the heat and bring it to a boil. 

Simmer for about 10 minutes. Remove the saucepan from the heat. Purée the mixture with a hand blender.  Pour it into a small pitcher and allow to cool. Once room temperature, chill the sauce in the refrigerator.

And if you want to make your own shortbread too…

Ingredients for the shortbread:

• 2 oz caster sugar + a little extra for dusting
• 4 oz room temperature butter
• 6 oz plain flour
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Method:  Preheat the oven to gas 5/190C/375F. In a large bowl, mix the butter, sugar, and vanilla until smooth. Beat in the flour a bit at a time until incorporated. The mixture will be extremely crumbly. Use your hand to push the dough together in the bowl.  Shape it into a disk. Cover it with plastic wrap and chill it in the refrigerator for half an hour. After this time, remove it and roll it out on a lightly floured surface. I actually prefer rolling mine out on wax paper. Roll it so it’s about 1/2″ thick. Cut out shapes with cookie cutters. Place them on a baking tray. Sprinkle them with a bit of sugar and bake for about 15 minutes. Do not let the cookies brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.
 

To assemble the sundaes: Here’s the bit the kids love doing! Crumble part of a shortbread biscuit in a bowl. Add your ice cream. (I like a scoop of vanilla and a scoop of strawberry or sometimes a bit of strawberry sorbet.) Top with the strawberry sauce and the rest of the shortbread crumbles.  Put on the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever and enjoy.

2) Strawberry, rhubarb and ginger crumble

Image credit.

Kids love making crumbles almost as much as eating them. Here’s a summery strawberry variety…

Ingredients:

Fruit filling

• 2 stalks of rhubarb, chopped into 1 1/2 – 2 inch pieces
• 1 1/2 cups strawberries, washed, hulled and halved (‘hulling’ means taking the green stems off – here’s an easy way to do it)
• 1 teaspoon crystallized ginger, chopped
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar

Crumble topping

• 1/3 cup Demerara sugar
• 1 cup oatmeal
• 1/4 cup flour
• 4 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small cubes
• a pinch of salt

Method: Preheat oven to Gas 5/375ºF/190ºC. Place the rhubarb and strawberry pieces in a small ceramic baking dish. Add the brown sugar and crystallized ginger. Gently stir to mix.

In a medium sized bowl, combine the butter, flour, oatmeal, sugar, and salt. Rub with your fingertips until it forms a coarse meal.

Sprinkle the topping over the fruit and bake for an hour or until the crumble is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling.

Serve with creme fraiche, Greek yogurt, ice cream or whatever you like. (And to eat it like my Great-Grandma did, be sure to have it with a game of Scrabble.)
 

3) Strawberry nectarine popsicles with raspberries

Popsicles are a great American hot-weather treat that I find always goes down extremely well with British kids!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup fresh washed and hulled strawberries
• 1/2 a banana (for sweetness more than actual banana flavor)
• the flesh of one peeled nectarine
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2/3 cup Greek yogurt
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• a carton of fresh raspberries

Method: In a blender combine all of the ingredients except for the raspberries. Those you will divide amongst your popsicle molds. Pour the mixture into the molds over the raspberries and freeze until solid, approximately 4 hours. To remove pops from the mold, run them under warm water.  Now enjoy!  
 

4) Strawberry rosewater popsicles with cardamom

This recipe was inspired by the exotic flavors of Mashti Malone’s, a little shop in LA owned by two Iranian brothers who pack the magic of the ancient world into their products. My favorite treat of theirs is the orange blossom ice cream. It tastes like a flower garden frozen in cream. This is a great way to get kids into exotic flavours. One bite and I feel like a Persian princess ready to take a carpet ride with my loyal pet tiger…

Ingredients:

• 2 cups fresh strawberries, washed, rinsed, and hulled
• 1/4 cup rose water
• 2 tablespoons honey
• the contents of 2 cardamom pods

Method: Purée all ingredients in a blender until smooth.  Pour into popsicle molds and freeze at least four hours.
 

5) Strawberry jam

Careful supervision is obviously needed – they’ll mostly be watching, really, and perhaps naming the jam – but children love the idea of making their own preserves…

Ingredients: 

• 1 kg of strawberries
• the juice of 1 lemon
• Preserving and jam sugar

Method: First place a small plate in the freezer. Use a damp paper towel to clean your berries. Then hull them. Put them in a large bowl and weigh them. Mark down this measurement then get your calculator app and multiply it by 0.76. This will give the weight of sugar you should use – I find 76% is a good ratio.  

Put the berries is a large maslin pan with the sugar and the lemon juice. I use a combination of both preserving sugar and jam sugar as strawberries are very low in pectin and pectin is what helps make jam set. Jam sugar has pectin added to it, but don’t use it exclusively. It’ll make your jam set too hard. I only use about 80 g of it. Stir everything over low heat. Once the sugar has dissolved, bring the heat up to high and let it rapidly boil. After about ten minutes, check to see how your jam is setting. Turn off the heat and place a little of your mixture on the frozen plate. Stick it back in the freezer for a minute. Check it again. If you press it with your finger and it wrinkles, it’s set. If it’s still too runny, bring your mixture back to a boil and cook it for a few more minutes then test the set again. When it’s ready, allow it to cool for about 5 minutes. Stir in a tablespoon of butter if you like. 

Pot into warm, sterile jars – and your family will be able to spread the taste of summer on toast all year round…
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