Time to embrace the Great British Summer…
Summer has arrived! The sun is shining, the parks are filling, picnic season is upon us, and everything tastes better in the sunshine. What greater flavour to bring to the party than the classic strawberry – known for its bright red colour, sweet aroma, and juicy texture. Although not a new flavour, this attractive little fruit continues to rank as one of the UK’s top favourite flavours every year, and this year is no exception.
As we celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee and Wimbledon all in one month the shelves are exploding with strawberry-flavoured products – could we get more British? Sweet options include M&S’s recently launched strawberry and cream cake, Patisserie Valerie’s all berry cake ready for summer and Sainsbury and Asda are battling it out for the best strawberry and vanilla Neapolitan. With sweet options flooding in, let’s not forget about strawberries’ versatile nature as we top salads with strawberries, or
as we go into burger season take a leaf out of Lucky Roast Chicken in Japan, as they release their special fried chicken burger topped with buttermilk and strawberry jam – it counts as one of your five a day, promise!
Depending on what the strawberry is being paired with may alter the favour profile. Lucky Roast Chicken opted for a sweet but acidic strawberry to complement the Unami savoury nature of the burger, whereas Patisserie Valerie required a fresher green strawberry to complement the already sweet cake.
This is when flavour descriptors become vital for understanding the outcome and flavour profile required for the final product. A great flavour combination is strawberry and tomato, which may sound unusual but when paired together the sulphates and acidity available in the tomato helps boost the fruitiness in the strawberry – with them both containing a lot of similar aroma chemicals, it’s like a marriage made in heaven. Awakened your curiosity? There is so much more to experience.
Everyone has a unique perception of what they believe strawberries to taste like, whether it’s the taste of fresh strawberries straight from a field or confectionary type strawberry found in jams and milkshakes we have a variety of strawberry flavouring designed for this purpose. For our concepts we wanted to embrace the summer season and choose a ripe, green strawberry type; Strawberry 085/22487 – ideal for bakery, dairy, and chocolate applications.
This little pound cake is flavoured with Strawberry 085/22487 and Grass type 085/22496 to create an extra green fresh summer flavour of ripe strawberries in the base. The sponge is then filled with a Strawberry 085/22487 flavoured panna cotta and finished with a Coconut 085/21168 flavoured meringue. The coconut meringue generates an added level of creaminess, as well as balancing the fruity notes from the sweet strawberry panna cotta – a classic but beautiful flavour pairing.
What would summer be without the combination of strawberries and cream, the balance of flavour explodes like a strawberry milkshake – so we could not resist putting this pairing into bread. This shell-shaped sweet roll uses a combination of Clotted Cream 085/22243 and Strawberry 085/22487 in balance of each other to recreate that sweet creamy flavour – perfect to eat on its own or taken to new heights toasted with melted butter.
