Strawberry Cream Shortcake

The other day, Walmart had strawberries on sale for $1.50, so I bought a box. When I got home, Don’s sister had given me some too. We’ve been eating them with our cereal and still have a bunch. One of Paula’s cookbooks has a recipe for Strawberry Cream Shortcake. I had frozen a small piece of Tiger Cake (chocolate and vanilla swirled poundcake), and I used that instead of the Sara Lee poundcake that the recipe called for. I used half a 3.4 ounce box of pudding, which is 1/3 the amount in the recipe, and adjusted the other ingredients accordingly. Instead of putting it in one big dish, I assembled everything into 4 individual-size dishes. Don thought it looked fancy, like it was an elaborate dessert.

The cream part is similar to the banana pudding mixture, except there is no cream cheese. The texture is really rich. Both of us liked it but thought the chocolate flavor of the cake I used overpowered things a little. On the other hand, the cake was not too sweet and it balanced out the sweetness of the filling. (I think if you used an overly sweet cake, the whole thing would be too sugary.)

Since I made 4, we have 2 leftover for tomorrow…yum.

I guess it is the combination of both pack-rat and shopaholic genes, that I tend to accumulate a bunch of ingredients and overload my pantry, yet sometimes I can’t find anything to cook. Not too long ago I cleared out a bunch of stuff, and now I find I need to do it all over again. I’ve started a list of things that I put in my freezer, on an index card that I keep in a drawer next to the refrigerator, so I know what’s in there without having to open it up and poke around. In my kitchen, I have some hot links, Canadian bacon, arborio rice, Jello, hot dogs, ham hocks, ricotta cheese, provolone cheese, pasta, Panko bread crumbs, a can of Coco Loco, and a foil pouch of Chicken of the Sea Crab Meat, for starters. I’m too embarrassed to put a picture of my pantry on here because it is such a mess!