Strawberry Shortcake

Preheat the oven to 450F. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Cut in the butter until the mixture is like very coarse sand. Beat the egg and stir it into the 2/3 cup cream. Mix these into the flour, blending in very lightly with a fork. Do not overhandle. Turn out onto a lightly floured board. Roll until about 3/4" thick and cut into rounds with a biscuit cutter. Set on a cookie sheet lined with parchment and bake at 450F for 15 minutes (watch the timing. Take out when they're light brown - don't let them burn on the bottom). Set on cooling racks. Top the strawberries and reserve at least 8 of the very nicest-looking ones (if they're small which the best ones will be, 16 is a good figure). Mash the rest up in a bowl with a potato masher quickly. Don't mash too far. You don't want to create sauce. Just mash long enough that no whole strawberries are in the bowl. Take the remaining cup of cream and whip it until stiff. Split the shortcakes in half. Spoon a very generous portion of mashed strawberry onto the bottom of each shortcake. Spoon a dollop of whipped cream over them, then cover with the top half of the shortcake. Spoon another dollop of cream on the top, then set 1 or 2 of the whole reserved strawberries in the center on top of the cream. Serve (with bibs?). Serves 8. A few notes. This recipe makes big, very messy shortcakes. These are the kind people love to attack and stuff their face. They are not dainty and elegant. You will get the best results by using strawberries grown where you live, in June. These will be the small, very heart-shaped, very red ones, not the huge, lobed, pale-red varieties bred mostly for robustness in shipping. Be sure to get a cream specifically labelled "heavy cream". "Whipping Cream" won't give good results (despite the name, it doesn't whip very well.) In Britain, you have it made - use double cream, or if you want to be truly no-holds-barred, clotted cream (which, of course, won't require whipping)