Catching up…

It’s strawberry season! I can’t quite keep up with the birds, squirrels, and chipmunks in my patch, so I picked up some berries from Herrle’s Market on Friday night. I love that place, and they just opened for the season while I was in Nashville. This Saturday was the St Agatha strawberry festival as well, so it seemed like the time was ripe (!) for catching up with the strawberry shortcake. I’ve also been slacking on my responsibilities to charity, in delivery of baked goods to Gilad, so I gave him the choice – brioche (which I missed 2 weeks ago), strawberry shortcake (which I missed at Easter), chocolate cake (this weekend’s scheduled “Alpha Bakers” recipe), or… brioche made into cinnamon rolls (inspired by a conversation while travelling). He said it all sounded good, but cinnamon rolls sounded the best, so I knew that was going to go into the plans for the weekend too.  Then of course, since I’m trying to catch up, and not trying to fall further behind in my baking, I had to make the double damage oblivion this weekend, too. That’d probably be plenty for a normal weekend, but my parents happen to be in town at the moment, so all of this needed to be planned around spending time with them, too.

Saturday morning. First step, take strawberries out of the freezer to thaw/drain

Next, make the brioche sponge & let it ferment while you go do laundry & some weeding.

Come back to that, add the eggs…

Put the dough in your rising container, and clean the mixer bowl for sponge cake.

This recipe calls for a springform pan for the sponge cake. I’m honestly not sure why, because I’ve never had an issue unmolding a sponge from a regular cake pan in the past, and this time was disasterous. Once the ring is removed, you’re left with a slippery bottom plate on a wire rack, and when you flip it… well, let’s just say bad words were said. And I burnt my finger trying to catch it. 😦

Oh well. At least I only planned on serving this to my husband and my parents.

At this point, we took a brief interlude for shoe & tomato plant shopping. My “nice” sandals are wearing out and causing blisters, and some of my tomatoes didn’t survive transplant. I picked up probably 8 or so tomato plants for $2.50 on sale, so.. yay?

Back home.

Into the fridge with the brioche dough.

Next, syrup the shortcake.

Once I carved out the depression for the berries to sit in, then doused it with red syrup, it looked a bit unappealing, but smelled fantastic.

Piled high with strawberries, then covered in whipped cream… no complaints!

We’re not sure how long my parents are going to be in town, and whether they’ll still be around come my birthday, so we figured we’d celebrate on Saturday night. Ribeye steaks, green beans, and asparagus, all done by Jay on the grill, along with a salad and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Works for me!

This morning, my parents agreed to meet our place at about 8:30, and we headed to Petersburg for the annual father’s day breakfast in the park + car show. It was really nice to get to spend some time with my Dad for Father’s day. Normally, most of Ontario and all of Quebec are in between us. After the car show, we decided to head to the Waterloo Region Museum, where they have a temporary exhibit on beer, and a father’s day craft beer festival. We didn’t actually pay for tastings, but the exhibit was interesting, and we hadn’t yet been to the museum itself, either.  We got home at around 3:30, and my parents headed to visit friends (Bill & Nancy, actually) for dinner. I decided it was time to finish my baking for the weekend.

Next up, cinnamon rolls. I kind of made this up as I went along. Hope it works out.

I stuffed as many as I could fit into a container to deliver to Gilad tomorrow. There were a few that didn’t fit that I may or may not share when I get to work tomorrow morning… 🙂

Oh, and this weekend’s project was supposed to be double damage chocolate oblivion. Pretty easy.. two components, and I chose to use leftover strawberry jam to stick the layers together.

I’m taking this one to work tomorrow for sure. It’ll get shared with my 3 scrum teams. They won’t have any problem making it disappear. 🙂