Fragole Con Panna (strawberries with whipped cream)

A little sweetness for you. Fragole con la panna has always been one of my favorite ways of eating fruit. Tangy-tart and sweet at the same time. Plenty of fresh lemon juice goes into this recipe, it might even seem eccessive, but I promise you that it isn't :) Oh... and there is nothing more delicious than home made whipped cream too!

Enough for an intimate dessert for two :)

• 1 pint of fresh, beautiful, sweet strawberries 
• Organic heavy whipping cream (1 cup)
• 2 fresh lemons
• 5 tablespoons (abundant) of unbleached sugar (regular grain, not large nor fine)

Wash your strawberries in cold water.

Use a sharp pairing knife to cut out the greens and step and any hard, yellow parts near the stem.

Quarter each strawberry and set into medium mixing bowl.

Squeeze fresh lemons into the bowl.

Add the sugar.

Grab a wooden spoon to mix the ingredients until each piece of strawberry is coated. The lemon juice should be red in color by the time you're done mixing. Dense and syrupy. Sweet and tangy. There should be plenty of this juice at the bottom of the bowl.

Set aside while you prepare the homemade whipped cream. A mixer works super well or course, otherwise, you can always mix by hand. It takes longer, but the results will be the same. A trick for this is to put the mixing bowl (where the heavy cream will be) in the freezer for 10 minutes or so. The colder the bowl, the faster the whipped cream will form.

Add the whipping cream to the mixer's bowl (or a separate mixing bowl if you are going to do it by hand). Add less than a teaspoon of liquid vanilla, and use a whisk to whip the whole thing into a nice firm consistency. Keep at it! You will get tired, if doing it by hand, but keep going! Keep whisking in the same direction and don't whip it too much once the consistency is reached. It will separate and get ruined.

Spoon 2 or 3 spoonfuls of the strawberries in a small cup with some of the juice. Spoon a dollop of the whipped cream on top of the strawberries. Spoon some of the juice over the whipped cream so it looks even prettier :)