Spiced Pickled Strawberries with Heat (and a bonus faux Cream Scone recipe)

It’s the Mr. again and I’m going to be a little more regular around here again. And I’m going to do things a little different.

I am going to post a recipe regardless if it works or not. Sure, 95% of the time, we post recipes on our first cooking of them, and they’re generally successful recipes. Or, at the least, not failures. We just don’t post the real failures. But, I’m going to post the recipe I made, regardless of whether it was good or bad. And I hope I get some failures. I want everyone to recognize that no one is infallible in the kitchen, we all make mistakes, miscues and just pure bad ideas. I really want to share those failures with you.

Unfortunately, this recipe isn’t quite the failure. Although I’m not ready to call it an unmitigated success.

This was born of my fevered imagination, a simple google search, my wife having a pickle-making party and a realization that, in this part of the country, we have really great strawberries and I wanted to showcase some of the other things you could do with them, aside from the jams, jellies and shortcakes. Well, and just eating them straight out of the green cardboard pint containers.

So I considered pickling strawberries. None of our pickling or canning books had anything for strawberries beyond the standard jelly/jam/conserve/leather. So, off to google and, the first hit looked very promising, except, hey, I like some heat. So I thought I’d add a little heat, but due to a little organizational mishap, I couldn’t find our jar of padron peppers.

Luckily, there is Zane and Zack Honey Company with their Habanero Infused Organic Cane Sugar (which, sorry guys, I really need to learn how to make so I can have it in bulk). This is a sweet heat that is just begging to be used in desserts across the board.

I had one other ulterior motive to doing this recipe. We are locavores. But we are tempted, often. Strawberries are one of those temptations. The smell of a California strawberry, the kind that make it up here, is intoxicating but the taste always leaves something to be desired. I wanted to figure out if we could make these strawberries taste good, which, at the same time, would lead to something even more tasty with local strawberries.

Plus, if I’m going to experiment, I want to experiment with strawberries that are… well… less expensive and less good, because honestly, I want to eat the better local strawberries in formats that I know are going to be good. Forgive me?

You might be looking at this and thinking ‘What the hell am I going to do with this stuff?’, don’t worry. We’ll talk a little bit about that down below the recipe, along with a couple things that we didn’t do.

Spiced Pickled Strawberries with Heat, adapted from Wright Eats who took it from The Complete Book of Pickling, by Jennifer MacKenzie

• Hulled strawberries, 4 cups
• Sugar, 1 cup
• Pickling (or canning) salt, 1/3 tsp
• Ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp
• Ground cloves, 1/8 tsp
• Ground allspice, 1/8 tsp
• Habanero infused organic cane sugar, 1/3 tsp (to taste, see note)
• Cider vinegar, 2/3 cup

1. Prepare the strawberries by cutting larger ones in half (or quarter, for the really big ones) and pierce with forks.
2. Fill a large canning jar with some hot, but not boiling, water to bring it to temperature.
3. Put the remaining ingredients into a saucepan and bring to a boil.
4. Stir until the sugar and salt have dissolved and remove from the heat to let cool for 10 minutes or so.
5. Put the strawberries in a large canning jar and pour the pickling liquid over the strawberries.
6. Seal the jars and, over the next 12 hours, flip the jar once or twice to ensure everything gets some soak time.
7. Refrigerate and eat within, lets say, a couple weeks.

Notes: We should point out, we made a partial batch. Check out the recipe on Wright Eats for what is, effectively, a full batch. What we made is about a 1/3rd batch.

We also found that the strawberries actually needed a second batch of the last set of ingredients due to the size of the strawberries, as well as a second jar.

With regards to the habanero sugar, I’m not entirely sure how much I used. I gave it 3 or 4 shakes, maybe more. The idea isn’t about reproducing what I did, but about putting the heat you want into it. Want it spicier? Padron pepper. Want it sweeter and hotter, add a little extra sugar (and maybe pull out some of the plain sugar.)

You’ll note that this recipe is not actually processed, but the recipe at Wright Eats is, so, if you want it processed, please follow that.

Now… what to do with this? How about putting it atop ice cream? Or cheese cake? Or mixed into yogurt? Or just on a spoon?

Or… well, ok… So, I’ve lived here in Seattle since 2001. I’ve Done the Puyallup, and I’ve had a fair scone, those lovely warm little scones, split in two and filled with jam. In fact, I wasn’t a diabetic yet, so I may very well have had 4 or 5. But Patricia hasn’t been here as long, and we’ve yet to make it down to the Fair, so she hasn’t had her chance.

Until this past weekend when, while shopping at University Village, lo and behold, there was a food trailer selling fair scones. At a buck twenty-five, I had to expose her to this horribly tasty treat. Smartly, I made sure we didn’t have a bite until we were in the car and driving away. It wouldn’t do to walk away, have a bite, and be told to return and get a half dozen more.

She was smitten with the snack as well, and, when we tried this recipe, the Mrs said ‘Lets make scones.” And so we did.

Since it was so good, we thought we’d add an extra bonus recipe here for the faux Cream Scones. Why faux? Because someone… ok, me…. accidentally bought half and half instead of whipping cream.

Luckily, the recipe still worked.

Faux Cream Scones adapted from The Art and Soul of Baking

• Flour, 2 cups
• Sugar, 1/4 cup
• Baking powder, 2.5 tsp
• Salt, 1/4 tsp
• Butter, 1 stick (8 tablespoons/.5 cup), cut into half inch slices
• Half and half, 1 cup

1. Preheat oven to 425F.Put flour, baking powder, salt sugar into food processor bowl and pulse just to combine.
2. Add butter and pull the food processor for five 1 second intervals, just to get the butter cut down into medium sized chunks and slightly mixed.
3. Add cream to food processor and pulse 15-20 times, just until the dough is just beginning to come together.
4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface.
5. Gently gather the dough together, taking care not to knead it, just pushing it together until it is beginning to stick together.
6. Flatten the dough into roughly an 8 inch circle and cut into 8 wedges.
7. Brush the top of each wedge with the egg wash.
8. Place the wedges on a cookie sheet and bake for 14-18 minutes, until a toothpick comes clean out of the scone and the tops are just beginning to brown.

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