Regas Restaurant in Knoxville Tennessee has a long and rich history. Founded in 1919 by brothers Frank and George Regas, it grew from a small restaurant with an 18 stool counter, six booths and six tables to a Knoxville icon. It is one of the most award winning restaurants in Knoxville and one of only 38 restaurants in America chosen to prepare and serve food at the 50th Presidential Inauguration.
The dining experience was based on delivering the finest ingredients, delicious recipes and excellent service. Over the years, many of the restaurant's guests created fond memories while celebrating birthdays, engagements and anniversaries at Regas. My husband and I know this for a fact because we celebrated our first anniversary there over 28 years ago. And for dessert we enjoyed the famous Regas Strawberry Shortcake.
Recently I had the pleasure of working with Paula Johnson, author of Lost Restaurants of Knoxville. We thought it would be fun to share some of the recipes from her book via a cooking class at the UT Culinary Community Cooking classes. So we did and it was a blast.
Steve Puleo and I practiced and perfected the recipes before class. Steve being the perfectionist that he is, wasn't satisfied until we ordered the finest ingredients for each recipe and made a few changes to turn out a delicious dish.
Strawberry Shortcake
Serves 18-24
Ingredients:
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter, softened
3 eggs
1/3 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 1/3 cups cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cup buttermilk
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Prepare baking dish of choice with oil and flour. This recipe will make 24 medium size muffins or one 9 x 13 baking pan.
Cream butter and sugar together in a mixer with wire whisk. This is an important step. The butter and sugar should be fluffy and creamy, not gritty. So make sure the butter is softened.
Slowly add eggs, one at a time. Allow each egg to be blended in before adding the next.
In a medium size bowl, stir baking powder, salt and flour together.
Add flour mixture and buttermilk to creamed sugar, alternately beginning and ending with the flour.
Mix an additional 2 minutes.
Pour into prepared pan.
Bake 12-15 minutes for muffins and 20 minutes for 9x13 or until cake tester inserted in center comes out clean.
Cool and turn out onto wire rack to cool. Slice 9x13 cake into 24 individual servings.
Serve with strawberries and whipped cream.
For serving:
1 pound strawberries, wash, hulled, capped and sliced lengthwise.
The tip of the strawberry is the sweetest part. So slicing lengthwise will give each slice some of the sweetest part of the strawberry.
Be sure to hull the strawberries, (not shown here) using only the best part of the strawberry.
Mix sliced strawberries with 1/4 cup sugar and set aside until juicy. The sugar will pull out the liquid from the strawberry making a syrup for the cake.
2 cups whipping cream, whipped with 1 teaspoon vanilla and 1/3 cup powdered sugar. Whip the cream until soft peaks form before adding the sugar.
Save a few strawberries for garnish.