Four Season Toronto’s Strawberry Shortcake

A few weeks ago, the Four Seasons Toronto reached out to see if I wanted to try my hand at recreating their Chef Steven Tran’s famous Strawberry Shortcake to have a taste of Café Boulud from the comfort of my own home. With all of the baking and cooking that I’ve been doing lately, I jumped at the opportunity. Peter and I been cutting back how much we’re spending on eating out in order to alleviate our finances, so I’ve been itching for a taste of restaurant quality food (not to belittle our cooking, because I think that our food is pretty bomb) and this seemed like the perfect chance to get the taste of dining out again without having to actually dine out.

They sent over a fully stocked little basket of all of the ingredients perfectly measured out along with a recipe card detailing exactly how to prep it. Today I wanted to share my take of it with you so that if you get inspired to indulge in a delicious dessert, hopefully this floats your boat!

Once again, I made some slight alterations to the recipe and will be calling them out in the instructions below, so please see fit to make any of your own as well. Most of it on my end was in regards to the presentation, except for some minor tweaks to the actual recipe here and there, but the process itself is quite simple and yields a deliciously crumbly dessert.

---

Prep time: 60 mins
Bake Time: 20 mins

---

---

Method

Strawberries

1. Wash the strawberries and remove the stems. (Optional: you don’t necessarily need to remove the stems, I just have an aversion to them and would rather do it during the prep process as opposed to when I need to consume them)
2. Cut 4-5 strawberries in half from the top-to-bottom. Leave the remaining to be sliced and fanned out. (Optional: you can leave your strawberries whole, or even cut them up however you desire, this is just how I chose to display them)
3. In a small mixing bowl, mix together the sugar and lemon juice.
4. Add in the strawberries, cover the bowl and place in the fridge to chill and marinate.

Biscuits

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F.
2. In a large mixing bowl, mix together the dry ingredients until they have all combined together.
3. Cut the cubed butter into the dry ingredients. There are many methods of doing this, but I personally like to squish the cubes of butter in between my index and finger and my thumbs. Continuously cut in the butter into the dry ingredients until you’ve created a flaky mixture or coarse crumbs.
4. Pour in the milk and gently mix everything together until it has combined. Be sure to not over work your batter.
5. Fold the dough 3-4 times in order to create some layers.
6. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough into a 1 inch thick slab.
7. Cut out 6 rounds out of the dough. (Note: we used a glass cup for this as we don’t own a ring cutter, and we had to re-roll the dough a few times to use all of it up to get 6 biscuits)
8. Cover your baking sheet with parchment paper and place the rounds onto the parchment sheet so that they are close together. (Note: our baking sheet tends to stick to products that we bake which is why I used a parchment sheet, though it isn’t completely necessary)
9. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden. (Note: my oven is quite powerful, so it only took me about 20 minutes for the biscuits to fully bake through)

Whipped Cream

1. In a large bowl, combine together the whipping cream and sugar.
2. Whisk together until medium peaks form. (Note: we don’t own a mixer of any sort which is why we used a whisk, but I would highly recommend a hand mixer if possible because it takes quite awhile and can be tiring)

Constructing the Strawberry Shortcake

1. Allow your biscuits to completely cool before putting together the strawberry shortcake.
2. Cut each biscuit in half.
3. Arrange 4 strawberry halves together onto the base of a biscuit, leaving an empty square in the centre to be filled with the whipped cream.
4. Fill the empty centre completely with whipped cream.
5. Arrange the top portion of the biscuit and plate with a fanned out strawberry. (Optional: all of these plating details are completely optional and you can decorate your strawberry shortcake as you see fit)

---

And there you have it, the famous Strawberry Shortcake by the Four Season Toronto’s Café Boulud’s Chef Steven Tran at your fingertips without ever having to leave your home! I hope that this recipe inspires you to venture a little further outside of the typical home dessert of cookies that everyone has been whipping up during quarantine and to indulge in some finer delights! Let me know if you end up trying this recipe out and how you ended up plating your strawberries and whip cream with the biscuits! Bon appétit!