People I work with should know better than to tell me what came in the CSA this week. I’m the human equivalent of snakes in a can when it comes to talking about ingredients and produce, particularly at this time of year, when my long lost friends – greens! asparagus! strawberries! – finally come back into my life.
And I mean real strawberries. Not the white golf balls with red paint from the grocery store (which, I admit, I buy as soon as they go on sale each spring out of desperation.) In-season, local strawberries are brilliantly red, sweet and tart at once, and have a much more complex flavor than store strawberries. I’ve learned my lesson, and I now buy several pounds each time I visit the farmer’s market. Of course, that means that I have lots of strawberries to use up in a very short time – the real strawberries never last as long as the golf balls – and these are some of my favorite recipes to use, sweet and savory. (But mostly sweet.)
It doesn't get much more summery than this.
1. Strawberry Salad
I’m not giving you a recipe for this one, but here’s another Burghilicious unrecipe. Slice up your strawberries, combine with a tangy cheese (goat and blue are my favorites), and sprinkle on some chopped pecans or slivered almonds. Serve over fresh summer lettuce topped with olive oil and balsamic.
Balsamic brings out a more pronounced strawberry flavor
2. Strawberry Balsamic Cupcakes
Balsamic vinegar helps the strawberry flavor in these cupcakes really sing. You reduce a pound of berries, a lot of sugar and a good measure of balsamic to a heavy syrup that you use to flavor both the berries and the icing. The balsamic brings out the natural tartness of the berries… which you then sweeten up considerably, because hey, it’s a cupcake. Bonus: the recipe makes more strawberry balsamic syrup than you use in the recipe, and it’s delicious on just about anything.
Strawberry Balsamic Cupcakes on Burghilicious
A somewhat savory take on strawberries
3. Strawberry Balsamic Flatbread
I’m newly addicted to Joy the Baker, where I discovered yet another use for in-season strawberries (and balsamic, for that matter.) This yeasted flatbread is subtly orange-flavored and topped with sliced strawberries. I added finely, finely sliced red onion for some additional savory bite. Out of the oven, you sprinkle on crumbled goat cheese, chopped mint and sea salt. I further mussed around making the bread with half whole-wheat flour (came out fine) and adding chopped basil in addition to the mint (also great.)
Strawberry Balsamic Flatbread on Joy the Baker
You are lucky you got a photo of this at all, because I was busy eating it right out of the pan.
4. Strawberry Summer Cake
Speaking of addictions, my 4+ year addiction to Smitten Kitchen continues unchecked, thanks to Deb’s finely honed ability to choose recipes that brilliantly highlight single ingredients… like strawberries. Then, she goes and take pictures that have me licking my iPhone screen while I ride the T to work, which is just embarrassing. It’s much better to lick the top of this cake instead: the whole strawberries bake at a low temperature for more than an hour, turning them into oozy pockets of jam surrounded by a lightly crunchy cake, thanks to a sprinkling of sugar.
Strawberry Summer Cake on Smitten Kitchen
So red it blew out the red sensor on my camera.
5. Strawberry Sorbet
And finally, this one is the motherlode: the distinct crystallization of everything strawberry. This is what you make when you buy three pounds of berries on Saturday, make the flatbread, consume four strawberry-topped salads, eat at least half a pound just on casual trips through the kitchen, and then crap! have to go back to work on Monday. The berries are hovering right on the edge of funk, but this will use them all up in a jiffy… and it will keep in the freezer for a month (or more), letting you relive strawberry season over and over.
What’s your favorite way to eat strawberries?
Strawberry Sorbet
A Burghilicious Original
Yeah, balsamic shows up here too. But so does dark rum, which helps to keep the sorbet from freezing too solidly. If you want to be super fancy, you can strain out the seeds after you puree the berries, but I didn’t find it necessary.
1 pound farm-fresh strawberries, hulled and halved
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon dark rum
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
Pinch of salt
Combine the halved strawberries, sugar and rum in a large bowl and let stand for an hour or two, until the strawberries release a good deal of juice. Add the balsamic and salt, then whiz in a blender until completely smooth. Transfer to a container and refrigerate overnight. Churn in an ice-cream maker according to manufacturer’s directions. Freeze two hours before serving.
Once it’s good and frozen, you may need to let the sorbet warm on the counter for 10 minutes before scooping.
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Thanks for those suggestions! I’ve been feeling the exact same way. We went and picked about 8 pounds of strawberries over the weekend–and yet I still could stop myself from buying more at the farmers’ market on Monday! Needless to say, I’ve been looking for creative uses for all those berries before they shrivel up in the fridge. These all look great, and the pictures are mouthwatering.
I can’t get to the recipe for the strawberry balsamic cupakes! The link does not work. Help!
Thanks for catching that! The link is fixed now.
Those are great ways to use strawberry in. I gotta try all 5 one day. Thank you for sharing them with us!