Best Strawberry Shortcake Bake Off

If you’re looking to make strawberry shortcake this summer, I tested nine different biscuit recipes in one day in search of the best strawberry shortcake recipe ever!

In this bake off, I tested nine of the internet’s most popular strawberry shortcake recipes and asked 26 tasters to score each one. Our winner (by a hair!) was Kitchen Projects with its rich flavor and melt-in-your-mouth tender texture. If you’re looking for the best strawberry shortcake recipe for summer gatherings, 4th of July BBQs or summer birthdays, read on to see how all nine recipes ranked.

As I was collecting sign ups for this bake off, I was surprised at the number of people who told me strawberry shortcake is their all-time favorite dessert. But after doing this bake off, I can understand why–a warm, fluffy biscuit with fresh strawberries and lightly sweetened cream is just a perfect combination.

Which brings us to the topic of this bake off: biscuit-style strawberry shortcake. I’m curious to know what pops to mind when you think of strawberry shortcake! According to my newsletter poll, the majority (62%) of readers think of strawberry shortcake as having a biscuit base (historically, this is apparently the original version). But 14% envision a pound cake base, and 13% imagine an angel food cake. The remaining 10% think of strawberry shortcake as a layered chiffon cake.

I personally grew up feeling lukewarm about strawberry shortcake because in our household, it consisted of storebought angel food cake pucks, sliced strawberries and canned whipped cream. It took me years to find strawberry shortcake made on a biscuit–which I think is far superior and worthy of a deep dive to find the absolute best version.

While I had already done a biscuit bake off previously, I wanted this bake off to focus specifically on the sweet style of biscuit that you would use specifically for strawberry shortcake. (If you’re looking for another bake off to showcase summer berries, check out the berry chantilly cake bake off!) Let’s dive in!

Quick results summary

🏆 Top-rated recipe: Kitchen Projects
🙋🏻‍♀️ Erika’s picks: Kitchen Projects, Claire Saffitz or Bon Appetit (with less salt)

• Best overall flavor: Kitchen Projects
• Best for a soft and cakey texture: Claire Saffitz or Kitchen Projects
• Best quick and easy recipe: Serious Eats
• Best for a flaky/tender texture: Bon Appetit
• Best for a sturdy but tender biscuit: Sally’s Baking Addiction, Serious Eats, James Beard, Joy the Baker

Want the details? Keep reading for the full rankings and analysis–each recipe is linked under the Analysis section.

Results

After asking 26 tasters to taste and rate 9 different strawberry shortcake biscuits, Kitchen Projects emerged as our winner!

But if you look closely at the chart, you’ll see that Claire Saffitz is trailing behind KP in the overall ratings by a mere 0.1 (which, in a sample size this small, basically means they tied).

And sure enough, the recipes are quite similar. At first glance, the main difference is that Kitchen Projects uses an egg whereas Claire does not.

If you take out the egg, you can see that the main difference is that Kitchen Projects has a higher flour percentage and lower liquid (i.e. heavy cream) percentage. It makes sense that tasters generally commented that Claire Saffitz’s recipe had a softer, cakier texture vs. Kitchen Projects.

But outside of the top two biscuits, the overall ratings were generally relatively high for this bake off–lots of great recipes to explore, as always! I recommend reading through the analysis section below for a summary of each recipe–what tops the taster charts might not be your personal ideal biscuit for strawberry shortcake.

If you’re interested to see how we got to the results, I’ll share the methodology for this bake off below along with the exact ingredient brands I used below. You can also find my learnings on how to make the best strawberry shortcake along with the recipe summaries.

Methodology

This bake off was focused solely on comparing the biscuit itself–I standardized the macerated strawberries and whipped cream to avoid having a bunch of conflating factors. And to make it logistically easier for me!

• I baked all nine biscuits in one day (the same day as tasting for freshness). Two of the doughs were made the night before (Claire Saffitz and James Beard).
• 26 total tasters rated samples of all nine shortcakes. Each taster received a sample of the biscuit along with a container of standardized macerated strawberries and optional whipped cream.
• Each taster rated each biscuit on a scale from 0-10 .
• Ingredients were measured by weight according to King Arthur (unless the recipe already specified weight measurements).

Ingredients

• Gold Medal bleached all-purpose flour
• King Arthur unbleached cake flour
• Kirkland butter
• Full-fat buttermilk
• Daisy sour cream
• Nielsen-Massey vanilla extract and paste
• Diamond Crystal kosher salt

Factors

When selecting recipes for this bake off, I focused mainly on the comparing the recipe composition of each recipe. Would heavy cream, buttermilk or sour cream perform better as the main liquid source? Would recipes with or without egg make for better biscuits? What ratio of sugar hits the right note of sweet but not too sweet?

You can check out the general ingredient composition of each recipe and some of my conclusions below:

Use both butter and cream for the richest, most tender biscuits

My favorite recipe from the scone bake off comes from America’s Test Kitchen, which uses a combination of butter and heavy cream. (In the U.S., we generally bake with heavy cream that’s at least 36%. Whipping cream is another alternative that generally varies between 30-36%.) It makes sense that high-fat butter plus high-fat dairy equals Very Rich Biscuits, right?

Well, I was also curious if using buttermilk, milk or sour cream would yield a more flavorful or better result than just the classic butter and heavy cream combination.

And the end result was no! The top two recipes both used butter and heavy cream. Though my theory that higher-fat formulas tend to perform better did seem hold true. The third place biscuit (Bon Appetit) uses sour cream while the following recipes generally incorporated the lower-fat buttermilk or milk. While you can certainly use buttermilk if you have it, cream in conjunction with butter will yield the richest results.

Look for recipes without egg for a cakier, feather-light texture

In this bake off, I tested 4 recipes with egg and 5 recipes without. Kitchen Projects (with egg) took top honors while the following 4 recipes did not use egg. As a reminder: eggs are typically used in baking to (1) emulsify the batter and (2) create structure. The protein in eggs coagulate as the dough bakes, providing a more structurally sound baked good.

In the case of biscuit dough, we’re not so worried about emulsifying a batter, unlike a cake. But using eggs can make the difference between a soft, extremely cakey biscuit and one that has a bit more structure. However, in presence of a generous amount of tenderizing fat from the butter and cream, adding a single egg doesn’t seem to change the structure of a biscuit too drastically. My bottom line: if you’re trying to zero in on a more cakey-soft biscuit, try looking for a recipe without egg (but it doesn’t matter as much for tenderizing purposes as the fat content).

Work the dough less for the flakiest texture

Similar to pie dough, the best biscuits have little pockets of butter strewn throughout the dough which will melt and steam as the biscuits bake, creating desirable layers. Many recipes will call for rolling out the biscuit dough before folding it over on itself to create layers.

Of all the recipes I tried, I found Bon Appetit’s method the most intuitive and very effective. Instead of folding the dough over on itself, you simply slice the dough into squares, stack and roll out again. This causes less handling of the dough with your hands, giving the dough less opportunity to warm up and melt the butter before it can go into the oven.

If you have time, I’d always recommend sticking your cut out biscuits in the freezer as the oven preheats (if not longer) to give the butter the best chance of staying cold.

Cake flour leads to a more tender biscuit

It doesn’t take a genius to get to the above conclusion–we know from several other bake offs that the lower protein in cake flour will lead to a more tender cake crumb. In this bake off, I made the decision to test Claire’s recipe with cake flour (as she recommends in her YouTube video) rather than all-purpose flour since she notes that cake flour will give you a softer, more tender texture.

And in fact it did yield a very cakey texture–too cakey for some! I personally loved the soft, melt-in-your-mouth texture, but if you prefer a tiny bit more gluten development and resistance when you bite in, try using all-purpose flour next time. Going forward, I’ll probably save the more expensive cake flour for my cakes and use all-purpose in my biscuits.

Add vanilla for a sweet note to compliment the berries

Vanilla extract is such a standard in most baking recipes that I didn’t even realize most of the recipes in this bake off hadn’t included it until I was tasting them. As the sole recipe that included vanilla, Kitchen Projects had the clear flavor edge to me (and many tasters).

If you’re making biscuits for a sweet application like shortcake, adding a little vanilla is the easiest extra step to giving them a little flavor boost!

Analysis of the best strawberry shortcake recipes

Read on for a review of each recipe I tested in this bake off:

Inspired Taste: a soft but somewhat bready and sturdy, not-too-sweet shortcake

Admittedly, I suspected this recipe might not fare well against its butter- and sugar-laden counterparts, but I just had to see! This recipe features just a 6% ratio of butter compared to 15-20% across most other recipes. It also uses a whole cup of milk (another relatively low-fat ingredient compared to cream) and an egg. While I was fairly sure these biscuits wouldn’t take top honors given its low proportion of fat, I wondered if you could still make a tasty, if less-rich, biscuit with a more humble list of ingredients. Note: While the recipe calls for baking these in English muffin rings, I didn’t have any–so I used the alternative recommendation to make these as drop biscuits.

These ultimately turned out just as you might imagine a low-fat drop biscuit might turn out. Somewhat lumpy mounds of matte biscuits (these don’t get brushed with fat or topped with sugar the way most others do) yielded an open-crumbed interior with a slight soft, spongy chew. The sturdy biscuit base stood up well to being layered with juicy strawberries and cream, but the extra juices still didn’t transform the biscuit into my desired tender, melt-in-your-mouth texture. There’s no real contrast between the outside of the biscuit (where I’d like some crisp!) and the spongy interior.

The biscuit itself isn’t too sweet or flavorful–I’d personally prefer a bit more sweetness. On the positive side, these are a breeze to make with ingredients you likely have on hand. If I were to make these again, I would start by increasing the sugar in the biscuit itself and brush the tops with milk and finish with sugar before baking.

Taster comments:

• A little too cakey and dense but still a great bite with all the toppings.
• Moist and dense drop-biscuit texture with very little appeal on its own. Extra points for being so sturdy with strawberries and whipped cream
• This tastes like pancake batter and wonderbread had a baby. No layers – just a cloud of fluff.
• Even assembled with the other ingredients, it didn’t save the flavor much which I think says a lot because I think the strawberries are flavorful enough to hide some of the dryness or flavor from the other biscuits.
• Don’t love this one! It has a somewhat dry, spongy texture which I don’t find pleasant when eaten on its own. Flavor is pretty bland as well, lacking salt and butter presence.
• This one took me aback. I think taste wise there’s very unambiguously little to be desired. It tastes very bland. And texture wise it resembles a sponge— not my favorite although I feel if the taste were right the texture could come together. It almost gives the impression of being gluten-free.
• Texture is like chewy bread, almost like sandwich bread. It has a bit of spring to it and would be okay sopping up juices, but I would never eat this on its own and the flavor is totally bland.

Joy the Baker: a slightly bland biscuit with a close crumb and slightly tacky bite

Joy’s recipe was one of my top picks from the biscuit bake off and is a recipe I’ve used for strawberry shortcake before. This is another recipe that includes egg along with an equal measure of butter and buttermilk. It calls for the typical cutting in of butter into the dough before a series of folds. Ratio-wise, this recipe stood out to me for its relatively high ratio of flour (46%) and equal ratio of butter to buttermilk (22%).

The expert number of folds clearly shows in the height of this biscuit–this reaches lofty heights with visible layers along the sides. The interior is close-crumbed and tender, though I found it did stick to my mouth a bit more than others with a slightly tacky consistency as you chew.

I was surprised to find the flavor lacking most for me in this biscuit. Though this was one of the sweetest recipes in the biscuit bake off (meant for generally savory applications), in the context of strawberry shortcake, these were relatively not as sweet. Joy’s recipe uses 3% sugar–second lowest only to Bon Appetit (1.5%) compared to 4% in Kitchen Projects to as high as 10% in All Recipes. Though I expected some tang to come through from the buttermilk, it wasn’t easily detectable for me.

Relative to the other biscuits, this didn’t stand out flavor-wise–but eaten in isolation, I think you’ll love this recipe. A great way to use up any buttermilk on hand!

Taster comments:

• Tastes like a very authentic southern biscuit! Loved it
• The most dry so far but very buttery flavor. Kinda similar to popeyes biscuit.
• This one has more saltiness which I like but lacks sweetness. Decent texture but a touch dry.
• The biscuit is mostly flavorless, not really buttery, not sweet. I think I would like the biscuit of a strawberry shortcake to have a bit more flavor. I feel like assembled it also wasn’t anything extraordinary.
• Pretty dry and floury. The layers looked beautiful and impressive – but the flavor fell flat. The texture would have rated higher, if not for the predominance of a flour texture and aftertaste coating the tongue. It got super pasty as you chew and kind of stuck my mouth together. Maybe a bit of bitterness comes through (too much raising agent?)
• This was my least favorite flavor, not sweet at all. Has an ok texture. Reminded me more of a dinner biscuit rather than a dessert biscuit.

All Recipes: a flat and craggy, lightly crumbly biscuit that’s reminiscent of cornmeal

This recipe by Chef John was requested on Instagram thanks to its unusual inclusion of brown butter. Virtually all shortcake recipes call for cutting cold butter into the dry ingredients for a flaky texture–not Chef John! In this recipe, you brown the butter and pour the warm butter directly into the dry ingredients along with milk and cream. You’ll simply mix everything together, roll it out and cut out the biscuits. Note: for the self-rising flour, I used a ratio of 1 cup flour to 1.5 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp kosher salt.

These felt full of potential–but made as directed, these were among the flattest biscuits with a craggy-topped texture. A few tasters commented that these almost seemed like they might include cornmeal given the crumbly, coarser crumb. Some loved the gritty textural contrast against the strawberries and cream, though I found the texture a little too crumbly instead of fluffy. Similar to Inspired Taste, the interior texture was a bit holey and open with a slight chew to the biscuit that I didn’t love.

Flavor-wise, I could almost pick up on a hint of the brown butter if I was really looking for it–but it doesn’t stand out in the way that I would hope for the extra effort. Personally, I probably wouldn’t go to the trouble of browning butter for biscuits in the future (I don’t think the juice is worth the flavor squeeze, though some tasters may beg to differ).

But I think these biscuits have potential! If I were to make these again, I would try using heavy cream in place of milk, and I’d bump up the butter to 6 tbsp. I would also incorporate a series of folds (using the Bon Appetit slicing and stacking technique) to give the biscuits some more layers and height.

Taster comments:

• I honestly like this one a lot because I think it has the most flavor so far. It tastes slightly of corn to me and I think the texture could be similar to cornmeal a bit (which makes the texture points lower) but the corn flavor is good so I rated the flavor higher. I think when everything is put together with the strawberries, this one tastes really balanced.
• Slightly coarser crumb. Vanilla aroma, nice sweet flavor. By itself it eats kind of dry, but that’s not noticeable with whipped cream. Structurally sound and makes a nice level shortcake. Well balanced flavor with strawberries and cream. I find the coarseness actually adds a bit of textural contrast against the cream. Solid!
• Liked the harder almost crunchier exterior, a little sweeter and flatter than the other biscuits and on the drier side. I feel like it compliments the other components of a strawberry shortcake well.
• Texture was very crumbly but taste was reallly nice. I wish it was taller and fluffier. Crumbles quick.
• This shortcake has good flavor but I didn’t really like the texture. It sits much lower than the others, didn’t rise as much, and falls apart easily.
• Resembles more a breakfast scone. I was not a fan of the lumps and crags. It had a harder shell that did not work with my conception of a strawberry shortcake. The flavor was good for a breakfast scone – but not for this particular purpose.
• Nice sweet/salt balance. I don’t l love the texture – it is very dry, crumbly, and dense, definitely benefits from the whipped cream and strawberries. Flavor is nice but the texture is a miss for me.

James Beard: extremely tender, melt-in-your-mouth shortcakes with a denser crumb

Years ago, I read about a similar shortcake that used hard-boiled egg yolks on Smitten Kitchen and have wondered about this method ever since. I was thrilled to finally try it out in this bake off! Along with hard-boiled yolks that get pushed through a sieve to yield a powdery mass (a nightmare of a kitchen task), this recipe uses a slightly higher ratio of cream to butter. The biscuits get brushed with butter, sprinkled with sugar and refrigerated for an hour before baking.

Unfortunately for those who would hate shoving a moist, cooked egg yolk through a sieve (me), these shortcakes were INCREDIBLY tender with a melt-in-your-mouth powdery quality. These felt texturally most similar to Joy the Baker (just a hair lighter and airier to eliminate any tackiness as you chew) or Sally’s Baking Addiction (a little sweeter and slightly denser). This had a notably denser bite compared to the fluffier crumbs of Kitchen Projects and Claire Saffitz.

To me, the flavor of these were spot on with my ideal level of sweetness and tenderness, though some tasters thought it could be a little less sweet. More than one taster noted that this biscuit was a bit flat, an issue that I think could be easily solved by incorporating a few folds into the dough. (The original recipe doesn’t call for any folds.)

So is grating egg yolks into the shortcakes worth it? I do think it yields a DELICIOUS powdery-soft biscuit, but I don’t think it’s the key or even necessary to the most tender and cakey texture if that’s what you’re looking for. Note that the grated yolk also leaves somewhat subtle flecks of yellow throughout the biscuits which is not the prettiest aesthetic if you’re looking closely.

Taster comments:

• Rich, sweet enough, my favorite. Balances well with the whipped cream/berries. Great flavor!
• Sweet, soft. Shortest texture of all of them. Despite the “shortness”, it held up well to the strawberry shortcake sandwich test and didn’t fall apart. Nice backdrop to the strawberry and cream flavor. It’s not to the point of it being overly sweet, but for my personal preference, it could be a tiny bit less sweet.
• This one texture wise was a lot lighter than the other two. Closest to feeling like an actual cake. But the butter forwardness and sweetness felt much more subdued, making for a bland bite.
• It is airy and sweet. I like the fact that it’s lighter than the typical biscuit. At the same time I think sweetness without a hint of saltiness does not stand out.
• I like the texture of this one a lot because I think it’s slightly more dense and more similar to cake. It’s lightly sweet which is nice. I do think the flavor is good but still bland. For instance, I can’t sense vanilla on this one.
• This is the one that reminds me most of shortbread. It has a sandiness to the crumb that’s highly reminiscent of shortbread, and you can kind of see it in the profile too — very flat, even if not dense.
• Similar to [Sally’s Baking Addiction] but a little sweeter and less buttery. A little too sweet for my liking for the batter.

Serious Eats: a slightly bready but rich, easy to make biscuit

This was our second drop-style biscuit (the only other besides Inspired Taste). After finding this recipe, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Could such a simple 3-ingredient recipe stand up to the more complex recipes? This features self-rising flour (again, I used the ratio of 1 cup flour + 1.5 tsp baking powder + 1/4 tsp kosher salt), a little sugar, and just enough heavy cream to bring it together. The wet dough gets scooped, topped with more cream and sugar, and baked. Couldn’t be easier!

Ultimately, these were no beauty queens–they’re on the smaller side (Kenji calls for a 1 oz scoop, but even with my generous 1.5 oz scoops, they were still smaller than any other recipe) and lumpy in the fashion of drop biscuits everywhere. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the texture and flavor! Thanks to high ratio of fat from the heavy cream, these were relatively light and lacked the chewy stodginess of Inspired Taste. They’re not very sweet, but they worked well under the macerated strawberries and cream. These felt like a good mix of sturdy yet tender enough to satiate my desire for a strawberry shortCAKE.

One taster noted that it was harder to assemble a true strawberry shortcake stack with this biscuit given its shape. If you’d prefer a consistent thickness throughout, try patting the dough into a neater, more even shape before baking

Taster comments:

• Very moist and soft. Less flavorful than the other biscuits but I loved how moist it was. Goes well with cream and strawberry.
• Woah! I’ve never had a texture like this in a biscuit before. It has a soft, pillowy, almost cloud like texture. The interior is nicely moist – not dry at all! Flavor is pleasantly sweet, but could use a touch more salt.
• This is a solid biscuit with the flavor of quality ingredients, we liked the dough the best. Great bite and fluffy middle.
• Texture was soft, a little doughy. Flavor was a nice balance with sweet and buttery.
• Soft and almost cakey if you wait until just the right moment for the cream to set in. It’s funny, I wasn’t a fan at first — it felt a bit mealy almost? But once the cream really got in there, it made the texture somehow make more sense and feel more like a tres leches than a halfway-there biscuit.
• I was pleasantly surprised by this one because it looked like a drop style biscuit, much like [Inspired Taste] which I really did not like. It had a well balanced flavor, a nice texture that didn’t turn pasty or gummy as you chewed it. HOWEVER, I had to dock a lot of points for texture because it absolutely fell apart as I tried to make a sandwich out of it. This is probably in part due to the shape since it isn’t the same thickness throughout.
• Floury aftertaste and a little lackluster in flavor. Not very remarkable one way or another.

Sally’s Baking Addiction: a tall, plush, buttery biscuit with a moderate sweetness and light crumb

Sally’s popular biscuit recipe was the only recipe I tested that uses butter and buttermilk with no egg. With one of the highest ratios of butter (21%), I suspected this recipe would do well. I used Sally’s suggestion of cutting the butter into the dry ingredients using a food processor. After a series of folds, biscuits get punched out and baked close together on a baking sheet or cast iron skillet–unlike any other recipe I tested, these should be touching on the sheet (the proximity can help promote a higher rise).

These were some of the tallest circular biscuits of the bunch–rivaled only by Joy the Baker and Kitchen Projects. Though these looked very similar to Joy the Baker, these layers felt slightly airier. Overall, these felt similar to Joy the Baker–just a bit sweeter and lighter with a tender bite that didn’t stick to my mouth. These felt like a platonic ideal of a biscuit with a nice buttery, lightly sweet flavor, a slightly crisp exterior and plush, tender middle. It’s an excellent, well-written recipe–just a tiny hint less flavorful and plush than the top-rated recipes. I would happily make this again if I had buttermilk to use up.

Taster comments:

• Liked it as a standalone biscuit best. Good crumble and butter flavor, nice and moist and light with a good bite.
• Fairly mild in flavor with a pleasant butteriness. Springy and crumbly texture. I enjoy this one both on its own and paired with the strawberries & cream.
• I like how it’s dense and scone-like and has a little sweetness. Has almost a corn flavor to me which I like with the strawberries. Standard but not special
• I enjoy the soft, pillowy texture—it has some nice elasticity with an almost doughy quality to the middle. Nice buttery notes.
• Soft and plush, this one felt the most pleasantly neutral to me–lightly sweet rather than total blank canvas.
• Soft, tender. Mild flavor. A little sweet, a little salty. Well balanced. A touch coarse. Goes well with strawberry and cream. The biscuit flavor is not overpowering.
• It’s a little dry and less on the sweet side. I think it lacks in flavor a bit and just tastes like regular biscuit. It’s buttery which I like, but I think it could give more which is why I put it in the middle of the road with the ratings.

Bon Appetit: slightly salty, beautifully tender and layered biscuits with a hint of lemon

This recipe by Molly Baz came highly requested and after looking at it, I was intrigued! I hadn’t come across any other recipe that called for sour cream in the biscuit itself, though I figured it would have a similar effect as buttermilk. This recipe is most similar to Sally’s Baking Addiction, though Molly’s recipe uses a little less sugar and butter and almost 10% more dairy liquid. This was also one of two recipes that used lemon zest–an ingredient I *almost* omitted since lemon zest tends to be divisive. But in the end, I chose to follow the recipe to the letter and include it.

This recipe calls for a layering technique that, as I’ve mentioned above, I prefer to the typical letter fold. You simply cut the dough into four equal squares and stack them before rolling it out again. These also get frozen for 10 minutes before getting baked.

These were one of my favorites texturally–the biscuits are fabulously flaky and tender with crisp edges and just a slight resistance as you bite in to a plush, moist middle. No notes on the texture! Sadly, I missed the comment section where several commenters noted that these biscuits were too salty–that was my main critique of these biscuits (and I’m generally a salty sweet fan!). The saltiness really overpowered the overall flavor for me, though some tasters loved the salt level. I didn’t mind the light notes of lemon–as expected, some loved the lemon, but others would have preferred the biscuits without. More so than the biscuits made with buttermilk, I felt like the tang of the sour cream came through a bit more in these.

Overall, I think I’d love this biscuit made with just 1 tsp of salt instead of 1.5 tsp (more standard for a recipe that uses 2 cups flour). A flaky, moist-centered dream of a biscuit!

Taster comments:

• Very buttery, moist, and flavorful biscuit. Loved addition of lemon, came through well. Perfect crunch of sugar. Well salted and just yummy. Goes well with cream and strawberry
• I really really like the texture of this one because it seems moist and buttery, not too light and not too dense. The hint of lemon would have been nice if the biscuit was sweeter. I’m not a fan of the sugar on top—I think the sugar should just have been added to the biscuit mix itself. With everything put together, I think it tastes the most of what I imagine a strawberry shortcake to taste like though.
• This is a damn good biscuit and to me is how they’re supposed to taste. It felt the most southern style. Maybe a touch of lemon or zest gave it some zing.
• I like that the texture is more dense and moist and melt in your mouth. It has almost a salty but also sweet flavor which is really nice with the sweet berries and cream.
• Beautiful amount of salt. Love the light citrus note and the tiny crunch of sugar. A beautiful pairing with the strawberry – but it can also stand on its own as a pastry. One could say too much citrus, if not a citrus lover (which I am).
• Texturally I liked this! Moist, not too dense. But a little more on the savory side than I’d prefer. The lemony taste threw me off and I don’t like that for a strawberry shortcake.
• This has kind of a sharp salty note that’s surprisingly hard to conceal — even with the strawberries and cream, it felt very much like “the salty one” compared to the others.

Claire Saffitz: a crisp-edged, melt-in-your-mouth cakey biscuit with a distinct sweetness

Although butter and cream is a classic pairing in biscuit recipes, Claire’s recipe is actually the only one I tested with butter and cream, no egg. I was prepared to make the recipe as laid out in her cookbook until I watched her YouTube tutorial, where she makes the biscuits with cake flour instead for a more tender texture. Since all other bake off recipes called for all-purpose flour, I decided to test the cake flour option. Claire’s recipe uses a middling percentage of butter (18%) with a relatively high percentage of heavy cream (36%). Given all these factors, I had a feeling this biscuit was going to be a hit–the only wildcard that I thought might throw off some tasters was the teaspoon of lemon zest.

Upon cutting into this biscuit, I immediately knew it was going to be good. There’s a delicate crisp to the edge that gives way to a soft, moist and tender center. After trying this biscuit plain, it immediately took my number 1 spot with its tall, tender layers and exemplary melt-in-your-mouth texture. To me, this had the perfect balance of buttery and sweet with subtle note of lemon (if anything, I found it a tiny bit salty but still in the realm of delicious).

After trying this with strawberries and cream, I found that the biscuit was a bit more delicate than others–it will definitely lose structural integrity more quickly than some. Some found the texture a little too cakey or doughy-centered, but to combat that, you can make this with all-purpose flour instead of cake flour for more bite and structural soundness.

However, I am a cakey girl through and through and this was an outstanding shortcake to me. My only tweak next time would be to add a splash of vanilla.

Taster comments:

• Love the texture! Somewhat crispy on the outside but with a fluffy, melt in your mouth interior. Perfect sweet/salt balance, and I love the addition of the lemon zest.
• I liked this one a lot because it’s what a biscuit is supposed to be. None of the ingredients compete with the others, the touch of salt was noticed. Really nice recipe.
• I like how it’s moist and dense but still feels light. Love the sugared top and lemon-y flavor. Very nice with the strawberries and cream.
• The biscuit was noticeably more buttery than the previous one, giving it a good flavor. The texture was nice too, not too heavy.
• I love the layered biscuit texture!! Also has a little bit of a lemon aftertaste, but can’t tell if I’m imagining that. Either way, it works well of this biscuit, very subtle. Doughy.
• This one tasted more cake like than number one. I noticed what felt like a more crisp mouth feel on first bite. Overall the taste was a little less lovely than the previous. It’s not sweet enough to feel fully cakey.
• Soft, sweet, lemony, slightly floury. Very plush, very buttery. Docking points for texture because it disintegrated when trying to cut open and construct a strawberry shortcake. Docking points for flavor because lemon flavor overpowered strawberry. As a biscuit by itself, I would’ve rated it higher, but since this is a strawberry shortcake bake off, I am rating it as a strawberry shortcake biscuit.

Kitchen Projects: a close-crumbed, very tender, sweet and vanilla-scented biscuit

This recipe is essentially the foil to Claire Saffitz’s recipe. It also uses butter and heavy cream, but adds an egg to the dough. In comparison, Bronwen’s recipe uses a slightly higher percentage of flour and lower percentage of butter and cream. If I had to predict which recipe would have won, I would have gone with Claire’s–I thought the extra moisture and protein from the egg might have made the shortcake more cakey or a hair tougher.

In reality, this biscuit was just as melt-in-your-mouth tender as Claire’s! With incredibly flaky layers and a tall rise, this biscuit looked just as perfect as it tasted. Like Claire, this biscuit is also on the sweeter side–adding strawberries and cream to it felt almost like eating cake (I’m not complaining!).

Surprisingly, this was the only biscuit recipe that called for vanilla extract and many tasters complimented the vanilla flavor as a highlight. While I had a slight preference for the texture of Claire’s biscuit, I had a slight preference for the vanilla-forward flavor of this biscuit. Like Claire, this biscuit manages to exude a buttery flavor and moist texture without feeling heavy. Though each bite feels incredibly light and delicate, the biscuit still feels sturdy enough to hold the strawberries and cream. A few tasters thought it was borderline too sweet–but most (including me) thought it was virtually perfect.

Taster comments:

• My favorite of the recipes. Just a tall, rich shortcake that can be enjoyed alone, then coupled with strawberries/whipped cream make it a burst of flavor.
• She’s perfect. Flaky and buttery, but still sweet enough, with lots of crystallized sugar on top. The syrup from the strawberries melts into the biscuit, making for an overall lovely experience.
• This was also incredible on its own and with whipped cream/strawberries. It almost melted in your mouth as you ate it. I could taste the butter, but it didn’t feel too rich or greasy. Buttery and soft but not too light or dense.
• The height and layers were impressive. The crunch of sugar on top was a nice touch. It maybe has a touch of vanilla in it that adds a lovely roundness to the flavor.
• I like the flavor! Nice sweet/salt balance, and it has a pleasant vanilla flavor. The texture is really nice, tender and somewhat airy, the fine sugar sprinkled on top pairs nicely. I love the moisture level of this one.
• This was heavier when combined with all ingredients but the biscuit itself was delicious and more sugar-forward.
• Very vanilla scented. Very sweet, borderline like eating cake both in texture and flavor. High sugar content making it soft and cake like? The sprinkle of sugar on top feels a little overkill with how sweet it is already. I could see some people liking this because it eats kind of like a strawberry shortcake CAKE, but if I wanted that, I would just make cake.

Let me know which recipe sounds like your ideal strawberry shortcake and happy baking!