Polenta shortcake with blackberry compote
Cakes
Italian cuisine
"Even when strawberry shortcake is crummy it delivers, which is something fast-food franchises and commercial manufacturers have known and banked on forever. They pay people good money to know what people like! Good Humor ice cream bars and KFC parfait cups, even the McDonald’s strawberry sundae -- each flirts with the strawberry-cream construct. But there is a Grand Canyon-esque gap between a perfect strawberry and the strawberry-like flavoring you find in those desserts. Even at the supermarket, those red-skinned, white-fleshed strawberries don’t have much to them. Nothing like the sex bombs you find at your local farmers’ market in the heat of June. It isn’t June right now where I am, and I’ll assume it isn’t where you are either: Use blackberries instead. They are far easier to manipulate into something delicious when they are not at their peak. A bit of sugar and lemon and you can get an inky purple-black mess that will be great. If you have kids, put them to work on this one. For once they can earn their keep. The legacy of this recipe should be mini handprints of seedy blackberry goo on the wall of your kitchen and your pant leg. (Or the sticky shortcake wreckage pictured.)" --Brooks Headley, from Brooks Headley’s Fancy Desserts <br /> <br />Reprinted from Brooks Headley’s Fancy Desserts: The Recipes of Del Posto’s James Beard Award-Winning Pastry Chef by Brooks Headley with Chris Cechin-De La Rosa. Copyright © 2014 by Brooks Headley. Photographs copyright © 2014 by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
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