Fresh Fruit Shortcake

Shortcake just seems to taste even better when you use foraged, gifted or seasonal fruit from your own backyard.

Update (2025): Since posting this recipe many many ago, it has become a regular ‘go to’ for virtually any seasonal fruit. I’ve used fresh plums as a filling (sliced thinly), as well as a batch with fresh apple (again sliced thinly). As per the recipe below, sprinkling sugar on top before applying the top shortcake layer helps sweeten the fruit however, adjust quantities of sugar/cinnamon depending on the natural fruit sweetness (ie: you may need less than shown in the ingredients below).

The idea of ‘fresh fruit’ is that you don’t need to stew it first. When slice thinly, and sprinkled with sugar, they cook nicely during the baking process.

Doubling the shortcake ingredients will work for a deeper rectangular baking tin and provide for a generous bottom and top shortcake layer. The original ingredients work well for a shallower small pie dish and/or a basic square baking tin.

Original Post (2016):

Excess Harvest – Feijoa and Guava

Both have fallen from their respective trees and have expelled a sweet aroma. Enjoy them while you can!

This is my second year in the old 1920’s bungalow. I’m still enjoying the surprises that the backyard dishes up each season. While the stone fruits have long gone with summer, lemons and mandarins are quietly underway for a grand winter display and the guava trees are overflowing.

I am blessed to have three guava trees dotted at various ends of the backyard with both red and yellow variety on offer. The birds certainly love them as do insects, especially when they fall. So timing it right, to pluck ripe fruit from the branches rather than picking fallen fruit up off the grass, is the best way to ensure pest free fruit that’s not bruised nor skin split.

Last year I made Guava Paste (I still have several jars left) but this year I’ve been eating a lot more seasonal fruit, making the most of the goodness that each month brings.

Feijoa & Guava Shortcake

Ingredients

100g butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg, medium
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
8 feijoa
12 guava, seeded
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
juice of 1/2 lemon

Method

Preheat oven to 180ºC fan bake. Lightly grease a shallow pie dish (or square baking dish) or line with baking paper.
Beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy; add egg and beat that in well too. In the same bowl, sift flour and baking powder. Mix as much as you can with a spoon then with floured hands, roll into a ball and onto a lightly floured bench.
Use approx 1/2 of the dough and press it into the base of the pie dish. It may be sticky so poke and prod it so re-flour your hands to make easy work of this. Reserve the remaining dough for the top.
Scoop out the feijoa flesh then roughly chop it into chunks. Scoop out the guava seeds (if they are large and hard) then roughly chop the skin/firm flesh into chunks. Take your fruit and layer it onto the base. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on top and drizzle with lemon juice.
A spoonful at a time, take the remaining dough, flatten it with the palm of your hand and layer it over the top of the fruit, much like a patchwork quilt! As it bakes they will spread together.
Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.
Wait until cool to slice (if you can resist the urge to dive into it sooner).
Serve with yoghurt or ice-cream. Yum.

At any other time of the year, this could be a different shortcake! Any fruit filling will work: apricots, pear, apple, rhubarb, strawberry, blackberry, peach – so adapt as you will and enjoy it year round. For rhubarb, you may wish to stew it for 10 minutes or so with sugar, as the cooking time alone in the oven won’t soften it enough.