Strawberry Shortcake with Homemade Biscuits

Summertime means fruit desserts. And summertime fruit desserts are the only thing for which I will make an exception to my chocolate-required-for-it-to-count-as-dessert way of life.

Amid the plethora of berry cobblers, stone fruit crisps, and cherry pies (all of which I love and would gladly eat as breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner) stands the humble strawberry shortcake: The simplest dessert to ever taste so good.

Do you ever forget how much you like a food until you start eating it? That's exactly how I feel about strawberry shortcake. Before I take my first bite - every time - I think to myself, this is a lame dessert. And then I taste that sweet, syrupy strawberry with the fluffy biscuit and whipped cream and all my doubts disappear. I'm pretty sure my very next thought is, must get more.

While I'm not usually an advocate for adding sugar to fruit because, um, fruit is already sweet, I always do it for my strawberry shortcake strawberries! It doesn't take much, but letting your cut-up berries sit with some sugar mixed in transforms them into the juiciest strawberry flavor bombs AND gives you a delicious strawberry syrup which will soak into your shortcake and be ah-mazing.

I make biscuits instead of shortcake (gasp!). I love the buttery flakiness of homemade biscuits, and I find leftover biscuits to be easier to use up than leftover shortcake. Since they're not super sweet, you can eat them with pretty much whatever you're having for dinner, or make delicious breakfast sandwiches out of them the next morning.