Who doesn’t love Strawberry Shortcake? This is a recipe I created to combine one of my favorite desserts with my favorite beverage.

Ideal beers for this recipe are malty barleywines, scotch ales, hearty stouts or Imperial Stouts. One of my favorites is the Rogue Chocolate Stout.

Ingredients
• 1 (18.25-ounce) box strawberry cake mix (pre-made pound or angel food cake works also )
• 4 cups fresh strawberries, sliced
• 1.5 cups sweet, malty beer at room temperature for reduction plus some for cake recipe
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• Fresh whip cream
• Fresh strawberries, for garnish

Directions
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
• Follow cake directions as written on cake mix box. Substitute half of the water in recipe with beer.
• Bake in a pound cake pan (gives it a great shape and appearance).
• Remove from oven and cool cake completely. Once cool, invert cake onto platter.
• Combine strawberries, sugar and beer in a pan and reduce. Let cool.
• Pour reduced strawberries over cake.
• Serve with a topping of whip cream and extra strawberries.
• Serve warm or chill in fridge for an hour and serve cold.

**Letting the beer come to room temperature will help release some of the CO2 in the beer.
**For those not into baking, you can use store bought pound cake or angel food cake and just do the strawberry-beer reduction but you’ll miss out on the nice flavor the beer adds to the strawberry cake recipe.