The Women’s World Cup has wrapped and Wimbledon is officially underway. We’ve been glued to our set with hours of competition to divert us. I was never much one for sports growing up, but marrying into a family of soccer players who own a local soccer club has had me broaden my horizons. Both soccer and tennis are both sports that were straightforward enough for me to understand right away and I don’t have to focus on the entire time in order to get the jist what’s going on from time to time.

Wimbledon is particularly known for it’s strawberries and cream. Eating strawberries during the matches goes back to the 1920s when affluent spectators would snack on them during the matches. Summertime is the season for berries, so it’s no surprise this was the refreshing snack of choice for the competitions. For more about the history, CNN has a great article here; and for more about current culinary offerings, you can read about those here.

Inspired by the strawberries and cream of Wimbledon, I decided to make James Beard’s Strawberry Shortcake recipe from Alex Guarnaschelli’s The Home Cook cookbook for dessert at a family dinner. I couldn’t find the exact recipe online, but here is a fairly close copy. Alex adds raspberry sorbet to the top of hers as its sweetness tempers the more savory nature of this take on shortcake.

I will admit, I used salted butter in this recipe which I feel added a touch too much salinity, but all in all the dish was a pretty fresh (and invigorating) take on strawberry shortcake. It wasn’t overtly sweet and due to berries being so fresh in Summer, it was a light and refreshing finish to a dinner of fresh Summer catches and hush puppies. Maybe the elite really had something going there in the 20s. Fresh strawberries and cream are the perfect midsummer snack.

What are your favorite things to snack on in the heat of Summer?