Last week I took my family strawberry picking for the first time. It was a great way to get everyone out of the house and enjoy a little family time together. It was a simple outing, but the kids had a lot of fun picking their own fresh strawberries. And though my son doesn’t eat them (because of the picky eater he is), even he enjoyed it.
We arrived at Farms View Roadstand sometime in the afternoon. Luckily, it was a really nice day out with temperatures in the high 60’s, the perfect day for strawberry picking. The staff kindly gave us the rundown and directed us to the strawberry plants out in the field. Then we were off!
I had no intention of picking and buying as many strawberries as we did, but once we saw them and got to work, we had a box full in no time. We bought just over 2.5 lbs. of strawberries!
When we buy strawberries from the store, about half of the package typically goes bad before we get around to eating them, so I had no idea what we were going to do with all of these. But we’ve had no problem this past week going through the 2.5 lbs. we picked from the farm.
When we got home, I decided to bake us up some Strawberry Streusel Squares and boy were they delicious. They were gone by the next day!
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- ½ cup white sugar (break down into ¼ cups)
- 1½ cups of flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- ½ cup butter (1 stick, cold and firm)
- 1 egg (beaten)
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 cups freshly chopped strawberries
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees and prepare a square dish by lining it with parchment paper (if you don't have parchment paper you can also spray the dish with non-stick spray). Parchment paper allows for quicker cooling time and easy cutting.
- In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients (brown sugar, white sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon). Only use ¼ cup of the white sugar.
- Add the butter, egg and vanilla to the bowl and do a rough mix. It's easier to slice the stick of butter before adding it to the bowl and I suggest using your hands to do the rough mix. The mixture should be a thick, crumbly consistency when ready.
- Place half of the mixture into the bottom of the dish. Mash it into the dish so it creates a solid base.
- In a separate bowl, mix together the strawberries and a ¼ cup of white sugar. Add the strawberry mixture to the dish, spreading it evenly.
- Crumble the remaining streusel mixture on top of the strawberries. It's okay if the remaining mixture doesn't cover the entire top of the strawberries.
- Place in the oven for 35 minutes and when done remove the dish from the oven. Then, using the parchment paper, remove the treat from the dish and place on a cooling rack.
- Let it cool completely before cutting into squares (9 or 12 squares).
This recipe only used up a small portion of the strawberries we had picked, so I had plenty left to make a second batch of Strawberry Streusel Squares. As for the rest of them, we’ve just been snacking on fresh strawberries all week. I can’t wait until we go strawberry picking again!
