Strawberry Shortcake from Pioneer Woman

Ingredients

Cake

• 1-1/2 cup Flour
• 3 Tablespoons Cornstarch
• 1/2 teaspoon Salt
• 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
• 9 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter, Softened
• 1-1/2 cup Sugar
• 3 whole Large Eggs
• 1/2 cup Sour Cream, Room Temperature
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla

Icing

• 1/2 pound Cream Cheese, Room Temperature
• 2 sticks Unsalted Butter
• 1-1/2 pound Powdered Sugar, Sifted
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla
• 1 pound Strawberries
•  I also used Blueberries & Raspberries for the topping

Preparation Instructions
IMPORTANT: Be sure to use a cake pan that’s at least 2 inches deep! Before baking, the batter should not fill the pan more than halfway.

• Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, and corn starch.
• Cream 9 tablespoons butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well each time. Add sour cream and vanilla and mix until combined. Add sifted dry ingredients and mix on low speed until just barely combined.
• Pour into greased and floured 8-inch cake pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes, or until no longer jiggly like my bottom. Remove from cake pan as soon as you pull it out of the oven, and place on a cooling rack and allow it to cool completely.
• Stem strawberries and slice them in half from bottom to top. Place into a bowl and sprinkle with 3 tablespoons sugar. Stir together and let sit for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, mash the strawberries in two batches. Sprinkle each half with 1 tablespoons sugar and allow to sit for another 30 minutes. (Note I didn’t mash all the strawberries and left some mixed with other berries for the topping since I choose to do a naked cake)
• Make icing: combine cream cheese, 2 sticks butter, sifted powdered sugar, vanilla, and dash of salt in a mixing bowl. Mix until very light and fluffy.
• Slice cake in half through the middle. Spread strawberries evenly over each half (cut side up), pouring on all the juices. Place cake halves into the freezer for five minutes, just to make icing easier.
• Remove from freezer. Use a little less than 1/3 of the icing to spread over the top of the strawberries on the bottom layer. Place the second layer on top. Add half of the remaining icing to the top spreading evenly, then spread the remaining 1/3 cup around the sides. ( I choose to omit fully frosting the cake)
• Leave plain OR garnish with strawberry halves.

IMPORTANT: Cake is best when served slightly cool. The butter content in the icing will cause it to soften at room temperature. For best results, store in the fridge!

All images below were shot on my Nikon F100 mostly with a 50mm lens (very few with a 35mm) with color film rated at 200 and the B&W rated at 400 and all developed by Indie Film Lab. (Please note I can’t remember if the color film was Fuji or Portra)

Enjoy

And please excuse my fascination with the inhouse gang of roaming chickens at Casa Vecchie, you couldn’t help but be fascinated with them.

My trip was built around a 5 day food photography workshop with Beatrice Peltre, the Tartine Gourmande, which was hosted at the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School run by Fabrizia Lanza. I am still trying to digest (no pun intended) my short stay in Sicily. From meeting these two phenomenal women (I can not began to rave about them enough), getting to know just a slice of the culture, history, and food of Sicily and communing with a great group of people I feel like my command of words is so woefully inadequate and lacking to be able to explain the full impact this experience has had on me. And I feel like my photos are also inadequate at capturing how awe inspiringly beautiful Sicily was.

I am so grateful to Bea and Fabrizia for sharing their knowledge and being such warm and generous teachers. And a very special thanks to Fabrizia for opening up not only her school but also her home to us and making our experience that much more full in taking us to the Feast on San Giusieppe celebration. I also extend a hearty thanks to Linda and Andrew for being so overly helpful and accommodating to our needs. Thanks to Ericha and Melissa for being such great travel companions and surviving almost 10 days with me. And to all my friends and fellow workshop participants it was an absolute pleasure and joy to learn, laugh, and live with you for 5 days.

Below are digital images from our time at the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School, our excursions to the Palermo food market and to a sheep farm, and also our experience at the feast of San Giusieppe.

All are digital images taken with the Nikon D700 and mostly with the Nikkor 50mm f1.4 and some are also taken with Nikkor 35mm f1.4 and Nikkor 105 f2.8

Stay tuned for the film images

All and all Rome was utterly breathtaking. I felt like I was walking through history.

So here I share with you some of my impressions/memories of Rome with some photos of my great companions Melissa and Ericha. (And I encourage you to head over to their blog to see the many images they captured of our short stay in this gorgeous city)

All the images above were captured with my D700 and my Nikkor 50mm f1.4.

And here are some of the sites captured via my iphone

Well a couple of weeks ago I put out an open call for a willing participant to assist me in being a model. My plan was to shoot the entire session with film. This past weekend I did it. After hitting an initial roadblock I took the bull by the horns and faced  fear head on. And IT WAS HARD! It was like learning to shoot all over again. I shot with Nikon F100 and  for the first time with my new Mamiya 645E, which is manual focus and manual film advancement. I shot SLOW.  I was awkward, trying to get a rhythm of  taking meter readings,  changing my settings, and focusing. But out of all the awkwardness and uncomfortableness I got a sense of relief and calm afterwards. And to quote Ashley (my lovely and gracious model)  it was refreshingly organic to shoot in a slow deliberate way, being more in tune with the art you were creating.

I shot 5 rolls – 3 rolls of 35mm and 2 rolls of 120. A total of 138 frames. I packaged up my film Monday and shipped it off to the lab with a little note saying “don’t laugh it’s my first roll of medium format” and now I wait.

Below is a little preview of the session I shot with my D700 and my Nikkor 85mm shot on f1.4. I shot just a few frames digital to have a baseline comparison once the film gets back. (And no it wasn’t cheating!)

Anne Frank

Shot with Nikon F100, 35mm f1.4 lens, developed by Indie Film Lab (film stock is either Portra 400 or Fuji 400)

I have sooooo much to share but for now here is one of my favorite images captured on a street in the neighborhood of Monti in Rome while walking on our way to the Colosseum.

Ciao and I will share all my lovely photos when I get back!

Nicole