Northern Michigan is teeming with fruit.  Orchards and berry patches line the rolling stretch of lakeshore between Charlevoix and Traverse City, and each orchard boasts its own little roadside stand filled with the abundance of summer.

For a brief week or two, almost everything is in season at once:  raspberries and blackberries,  cherries and blueberries, peaches and apricots and plums, all grown right here in the Northern Fruitlands.

I’ve been recommending this drive to customers in our Charlevoix store for almost a week now.  Each fruit stand has its own personality and unique offerings — golden raspberries at one, Balaton cherries at another, or the season’s first tree-ripened peaches, fresh from the field. 

If you’re in Northern Michigan this summer, add a stop at one of our roadside fruit stands to your must-do list.  And bring a big basket.

A few weeks ago, I stood in a field in the early morning light and breathed in the fresh, sweet scent of strawberries.  I’d gone to visit the Bardenhagens’ centennial farm, a series of rolling green hills perched above Sutton’s Bay.  Justin discovered the farm in 1982 during his search for the ideal domesticated strawberry, a strawberry as brightly aromatic and intensely flavorful as the wild strawberries he remembered from childhood. He sampled at least a dozen varieties before falling in love with the Early Glow, a small, low-yielding berry so difficult to grow that  few local farmers even planted it.  

Gary Bardenhagen, our exclusive strawberry source for nearly 30 years, shares Justin’s affinity for the divine but difficult Early Glow.  Other varieties are nice for a while, he says, “but I could eat Early Glows all season long.”  So the low-growing green leaves covering the hills he’s recently passed on to his son Steve shelter thousands of the tiny red berries.

For three weeks each June, three generations of Bardenhagens spend their mornings in the strawberry patch, sorting through freshly picked berries, packing them into cardboard flats, and sending them out to local markets.  A berry picked in the morning could be in your kitchen by noon.

Or it could be in ours, simmering away gently in our copper kettles to be preserved for a year’s worth of intense strawberry enjoyment.

Last month, in our kitchen tour post, we showed you photos of Justin making rhubarb compote.  We didn’t identify it as such at the time, but we can tell you now: it was rhubarb compote and it was delicious.  It was so delicious that we snuck a few jars out of the R&D kitchen and took them down to Zingerman’s with us for a tasting we were scheduled to host.  We tasted our way through an array of classic American Spoon Preserves paired with Zingerman’s favorites and then served our rhubarb compote as the very last course, with a spoonful of whipped cream and a little square of graham cracker.  It was a big hit.  So big that the evening ended with one resounding request:  more rhubarb compote, please.

So we came home, scaled up the recipe, and bought all the local rhubarb we could find.  Then our kitchen staff got to work.  April, Jessica and Paul chopped up all the lovely red and green stalks, macerated the chopped chunks with sugar to soften and sweeten them, simmered the chunks and their pretty pink syrup gently in our copper kettles, and filled jars — 500 of them — with more rhubarb compote.

We’re happy to announce that Rhubarb Compote is now available in our retail stores. When you visit this summer, make sure you sample it on our tasting table.  Each jar is filled with soft, falling-apart chunks of  delightfully tart rhubarb preserved in a syrup that barely whispers of sweetness.   This compote is best served simply — with freshly whipped cream, spooned over Greek yogurt or ice cream, or my favorite way:  with nothing more than a spoon.

Technically, it’s not summer yet. But after a sweltering Memorial Day weekend spent by the lake and water that’s already warm enough to swim in, I’ve officially shifted into summer mode. Summers in Northern Michigan are fleeting. One month you’re wiggling your toes in the sand as you bask in bright sunlight and the next you find yourself regretting that you didn’t fill your summer with enough of that sort of thing. So I’ve been working on a plan that maximizes beach time and minimizes kitchen time, without sacrificing anything in yumminess.

That’s where these shortcakes come in. They’re dead simple and downright delicious. The first fruits of the season — tart rhubarb and succulent strawberries — nestled inside a rich butter biscuit and dressed up with a dollop of freshly whipped cream make the perfect end to a long, sun-filled summer day. The shortcake dough comes together in a snap and bakes up beautifully, turning golden and puffy and a teensy bit crispy after just a few minutes in the oven. From there, assembling this quintessential summertime treat is simply a matter of spooning our Fruit Perfect Strawberries & Rhubarb over the warm biscuits and whipping up some cream. We’ve preserved the taste of summer in a jar, which means you can spend at least an extra 30 minutes on the beach or the boat or in the backyard, packing your summer with as much summer as possible.

Strawberry Rhubarb Shortcakes
(serves eight)
printable recipe

2 cups flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 lb. butter, cold and cubed
1 c. buttermilk
1 Tbsp. butter, melted
coarse sugar, for dusting
1 jar American Spoon® Fruit Perfect Strawberries & Rhubarb
1 cup heavy cream, whipped

1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a food processor, pulse together dry ingredients. Add cubed butter and pulse until combined (the mixture should resemble coarse cornmeal). With the food processor running, slowly add the buttermilk until the dough comes together. It will be slightly sticky.

2) Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead 3 to 4 times until it comes together. Pat or roll the dough into a rough circle about 1″ thick. Cut the dough into 8 wedges or use a 3″ biscuit cutter to cut out rounds.

3) Transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet. Brush the tops with melted butter and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown.

4) Cool the biscuits slightly, then split them in half horizontally. Heap 3 Tbsp. of Fruit Perfect Strawberries & Rhubarb over the bottoms of each biscuit, then spoon whipped cream generously over the Strawberries & Rhubarb. Serve immediately.