Fruity Springtime Delights

Most days I forego candy and desserts. I eat fruit every day but avoid sweets although I have quite the sweet tooth. While grocery shopping this weekend, I came across some good-looking strawberries at a good price and decided to make strawberry shortcake for Sunday’s dinner.

I use reduced-fat Bisquick (actually, Betty Crocker now calls this version of Bisquick “Heart Smart Healthy”) and SmartBalance for the shortcakes. To top off the dessert, I use light whipped cream from the can. While browsing the canned whipped creams, I made an exciting discovery. OK, it was exciting to me — chocolate-flavored whipped cream.

I assume food purists scoff at something like canned chocolate whipped cream but after I checked the nutrition information, I didn’t hesitate to put the can of chocolate Reddi-wip in my cart. A tablespoon has 15 calories and one gram of fat. Wowsa. And it turns out, this product has been around since 2001.

While I was preparing the strawberries for the shortcake, I sliced one of the bigger berries in half and topped it with some of the chocolate whipped cream. Oh my. It was yummy. Granted, it wasn’t as good as the true strawberry shortcake that came later in the day but it was darned good. A real treat that was low in calories, low-fat and somewhat healthy. A few strawberries, say six large ones, plus three tablespoons of the chocolate whipped cream provide vitamin A and satisfy my sweet tooth at under 100 calories.

Oh, and if you want to make the strawberry shortcakes, a couple of hours before dessert is served, slice the strawberries into a sealed container and add sugar to taste. For a lb. of strawberries, I use about a half cup of sugar. After I add the sugar, I put the lid on and shake it all up. Refrigerate until ready to serve. I confess I do some interim shaking — I swear it helps the juices flow. The juice soaked into the shortcake is the best part of this dessert.

And now to the shortcakes. To top the dessert, I actually prefer the plain rather than the chocolate whipped cream. Go figure. This recipe is from the Betty Crocker Web site. Disregard the part about prepping the berries — you’ve already done that if you’ve been following along. The parenthetical comments are my modifications:

Classic Strawberry Shortcakes

2 1/3 cups Original Bisquick® mix (I use the heart-healthy version.)
1/2 cup milk (I use skim milk; last time I used vanilla soy milk.)
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted (I use SmartBalance.)
Sweetened sliced strawberries
Whipped topping or whipped cream (Reddi-wip!)

1. Heat oven to 425°F.
2. Stir Bisquick mix, milk, sugar and butter until soft dough forms. Drop by 6 spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet.
3. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown. Split warm shortcakes; fill and top with strawberries and whipped topping. (Sweeten strawberries before making shortcakes so sugar has time to dissolve; for each quart of sliced strawberries, stir in 1/2 cup sugar.)

High Altitude (3500-6500 ft): Heat oven to 450°F. Decrease sugar to 1 tablespoon.