I’ve always been intrigued with math. In one point in my college career, I considered myself a math major. It’s funny how life takes you in different directions.
Once I wrote a piece about all the strawberry dessert possibilities. I revisited that, updated it with more possibilities, chose only my favorites, and did the math. Yes, there really are 1,932 possibilities. You can come up with more.
Strawberry Desserts in Four Parts
There are four parts to our strawberry desserts:
- The berries
- The cake
- The sweetener
- The topping
You can make desserts with raspberries, peaches and mangoes too but for this exercise, we’ll stick with the strawberries.
Here’s how the math works (for the geeks of course). Multiply the number of cake possibilities times the number of sweetener possibilities times the number of topping possibilities. That’s the number of possible combinations to put with your strawberries.
The Cake
I actually reduced the number of cake possibilities here, staying only with my favorites.
I love strawberry shortcakes, the biscuit-like authentic kind. I love the crispness of the shortcakes against the softness of the whipped cream. So shortcakes go to the top of the list.
- Traditional biscuit-like shortcakes.
You can use a recipe but a good biscuit mix works just fine. If you take our just-add-water professional biscuit mix and use milk instead of water and add two tablespoons of sugar for each cup of mix, you’ll have very passable authentic shortcakes.
Make shortcakes the easy way with this biscuit mix
- Add cinnamon chips to your traditional shortcakes. Use this cinnamon chip guide to tell you how many.
- Use this recipe to make chocolate shortcakes.
- Strawberries and almonds go together very well especially when married with whipped cream. Use this recipe to make almond shortcakes.
Often strawberries are severed over angel food cake. But have you considered a chocolate or cinnamon angel food cake? Here are some other choices:
- Classic Angel Food Cake
- Cinnamon Ripple Angel Food Cake
- Chocolate Angel Food Cake
- Tupelo Honey Angel Food Cake
I like orange or lemon coupled with strawberries. So consider these recipes.
We love fruit on gingerbread, either light or dark gingerbread. The gingerbread carries its share of flavor; you are not relying on the strawberries alone for flavor.
If you like the idea of strawberries and gingerbread, you’ll love strawberries on our spiced pear cake. It’s a great cake, moist like a carrot cake with lots of pears and with candied ginger. It’s milder than gingerbread but with a sweet spice and fruit combination.
The combination of this cake, strawberries, and whipped cream is incredible.
- Try strawberries with this very special spiced pear cake mix.
Chocolate and strawberries are very good, especially tempered with whipped cream.
- Try strawberries and our chocolate baby cakes mix.
Likewise, chocolate and brownies are very good.
- Choose a brownie mix and add strawberries.
Or choose one of these brownie recipes:
- Mayan Chocolate Chip Brownies
- Cheesecake Brownies
- Fudgy Walnut Brownies
- Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies
- Hollywood Brownies
- Chocolate Lover’s Brownies
A flourless chocolate cake with strawberries and whipped cream is terrific.
I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest loading pannekoeken with strawberries and cream. (The image on the right is a mini pannekoeken with raspberries but you get the idea.)
You can make mini pannekoeken as dessert cups or a larger pannekoeken. You can use the classic pannekoeken mix or the chocolate pannekoeken mix.
- Strawberries and pannekoeken Recipe
That takes us to 23 different choices for the cake. Obviously, there are many more.
The Sweeteners
The strawberries are often just tossed in sugar. Why not grate a little orange or lemon zest in with your sugar?
- Citrus infused sugar
We have a perfect lemon syrup, made from a mix, that is just the right tone, a sweet lemon more like a lemon meringue pie. It works very well drizzled over a strawberry dessert.
- Lemon syrup drizzled over strawberries and the cake of your choice.
Obviously, you can drizzle any syrup over your strawberries instead of sprinkling them with sugar. Coconut cream syrup on strawberries is exceptional. Buttermilk syrup is caramelly, almost like a butterscotch, and is very good.
So here are six recommended sweeteners.
The Toppings
Certainly, you can put vanilla whipped cream over your strawberries.
But other flavors in whipped creams are very good. These are some of my favorites with strawberries.
- Vanilla Whipped Cream
- Chocolate Whipped Cream
- Lemon Cloud Whipped Cream
- Orange Cloud Whipped Cream
- Caramel Whipped cream
- Strawberry Cheesecake Whipped Cream
Designer dessert sauces are great and attractive with strawberry desserts. Consider these:
- White Chocolate Designer Dessert Sauce
- Chocolate Designer Dessert Sauce
- Lemon Zest Designer Dessert Sauce
- Kiwi Lime Designer Dessert Sauce
Chopped nuts and candies sprinkled over the dessert are great. I particularly like chopped salted snack nuts sprinkled over the whipped cream. I love the contrasts, the salty and the sweet, the smooth and the crunchy of salted nuts with whipped cream.
- Chopped nuts.
- Lemon candy and white chocolate decorations
- Strawberry candy and white chocolate decorations.
And of course, ice cream works well.
- Ice cream
So we have 14 recommended toppings
The Math
So, if we do the math, that’s 23 cakes times 6 sweeteners times 14 toppings or 1,932 possible combinations. Obviously, you can mix and match forever to find just the right combination for you.
The Strawberry Slicer
By the way, all these neatly sliced strawberries that you are seeing in these pictures-they are done with a strawberry slicer. A strawberry slicer will make your desserts prettier and I love them because they cut prep time by about two-thirds. They are not expensive at all.
Spend a few bucks and get a strawberry slicer
Donna RoyceJune 12, 2013
Oh my, I just gained 10 lbs reading these suggestions. What a 'volume' of good strawberry ideas.. Thank you,