Throw a Strawberry Party with These Fresh, Fruit-Forward Recipes
Like sweet gems, local strawberries are fragrant, fragile and fleeting—here for a month, then gone for a year. They eat like candy but bruise more easily, blooming stains on fingertips and lips. After your trip to the u-pick patch, the clock on their perfection runs down fast. So here's what to do: gather friends for the juiciest, rubiest party of the season.
Pimm's Cup for a Crowd
Made with a gin-based liqueur called Pimm's No. 1, this old-timey summer cocktail calls for fizzy lemonade and a salad bowl of garnishes—strawberries, cucumbers, oranges and herbs. If it sounds like a drink to sip during a croquet match, you're exactly right, so feel free to dust off the lawn games for your berry bash.
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Quick-Pickled Strawberries
A clever use for slightly jostled or past-peak berries, these tangy gems soak in a simple brine of white balsamic vinegar, sugar, salt and peppercorns. Serve with a charcuterie board or spoon them over toasted bread with goat cheese, honey and thyme leaves.
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Summer Chicken Salad with Strawberry Vinaigrette
Heap a platter with butter lettuce, poached chicken, green beans, avocado, berries, chives and basil. (The cooked components are easily made ahead.) Admire your creation, then douse it in pink.
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Earl Grey Strawberry Shortcakes
Tea leaves speckle the shortcakes and infuse the whipped cream, giving this favorite summertime dessert a pinkies-up twist. (Fun fact: Earl Grey's floral flavor comes from the oil of bergamot, a knobby Italian citrus fruit. A grating of orange zest in the strawberries echoes those notes.)
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Double-Strawberry Ripple Ice Cream
No one really needs two desserts, yet here we are. Because when berry season strikes, you lean in. Sour cream and balsamic vinegar lend tartness and depth to the creamy base; a swirl of glossy jam pumps up the glam.