‘The Pioneer Woman’: Ree Drummond’s Strawberry Shortcake Trifle Is a Perfect Summer Dessert
Ree Drummond makes an easy strawberry shortcake dessert trifle that’s perfect for the summer months. Best of all, it can totally feed a crowd without the need to make individual shortcakes.
Ree Drummond makes a delicious cake for her strawberry shortcake recipe
Drummond made the dessert on an episode of The Pioneer Woman. “I’m going to make strawberry shortcake trifle,” she said. “It’s everything that’s wonderful about strawberry shortcake but in trifle form.”
The Food Network host started by making the cake for the dessert, sifting together flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt.
She combined softened butter, eggs, vanilla, and sour cream in a mixer, then slowly added the dry ingredients. “All cake batter is delicious. This cake batter may be the most delicious one I’ve ever made. There’s something about it that is so tasty,” Drummond said.
“Really simple cake,” Drummond remarked. “I thought this would be a nice change from individual strawberry shortcakes. This is going to be in a beautiful trifle dish.”
She poured the batter into a quarter sheet pan and baked the cake in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 30 minutes.
‘The Pioneer Woman’ uses a ‘cool trick’ for the strawberries
While the cake cooled, Drummond got to work on the strawberries. “It’s a really delicious way to make strawberries for any dessert,” she explained. “It’s really glossy and juicy and super sweet.”
She hulled strawberries, cut them in half, and added them to a bowl. Drummond heated water, sugar, cornstarch, and strawberry flavored gelatin, stirring until the gelatin dissolved.
“When you’re making desserts for Drummond family gatherings, we tend to stay in one lane,” she said. “We want to make things that everybody’s familiar with. Strawberry shortcake is a no-brainer.”
She poured the mixture into the bowl with the berries. “What you’re doing is giving the strawberries a really glossy, jelly coating,” the Food Network host explained. “Have you ever been to a diner or cafeteria and they have a strawberry pie on display and you just can’t figure out how they got those strawberries to look so juicy and perfect?”
Drummond added, “Well, this is what they do. It’s such a cool trick.”
She stirred the strawberries to coat them well in the mixture, then chilled the berries in the refrigerator.
Drummond made a yogurt cream rather than whipped cream
Drummond made “a scrumptious yogurt cream” for the trifle. She whipped together plain Greek yogurt, heavy cream, sugar, and brown sugar in a mixer.
“The yogurt cream is kind of a nice departure from just regular sweetened cream,” she noted. “It does have a little bit of tang. It’s just a little bit more interesting than whipping cream and sugar by themselves.”
Drummond cut the cake into big cubes for the trifle. “This is a fantastic cake, whether it’s for strawberry shortcake or for a layered cake with berries in the middle,” she said. “In fact, you could probably do several layers of this cake, cut really thin, and do varying layers of berries and this yogurt cream. That would be absolutely delicious.”
She added a layer of the cake cubes to a trifle dish, topped it with a layer of the strawberry mixture, then added the cream. Drummond repeated the layers, added halved strawberries to the top, and chilled the dessert until ready to serve.
The full recipe is available on the Food Network website.
