Preheat oven to 450° F. Butter or spray a 9-inch round cake pan.
Prepping
Remove 6-8 nice looking berries and set aside for garnish.
Wash and hull the remaining berries. Cut into fourths and sprinkle with 1/3 cup sugar to macerate, mash slightly.
Beat the heavy cream and powdered sugar until medium-soft peaks form. It should be firm but not stiff. Set aside.
To Make the Shortcake
In a medium bowl, measure 1/4 cup sugar, flour, shortening, milk, egg, baking powder, lemon zest, and salt.
With mixer at medium speed, beat mixture until well combined and a soft dough forms. Spread the dough evenly into the prepared cake pan. Bake 15 minutes or until golden on top.
Remove cake from the oven and invert onto a plate. Using a bread knife, carefully split hot shortcake horizontally. You can also use plain (no flavorings) dental floss!
Spread both halves of the cake evenly with softened butter.
Topping and Filling the Shortcake
Spoon half of macerated strawberry mixture onto the bottom half of the cake. Spread half of the whipped cream on top of the berry layer.
Place other cake half on top and spoon remaining macerated strawberry mixture over the top.
Spread the remaining whipped cream over the macerated strawberries.
To decorate, garnish with the reserved strawberries.
Video
Notes
Shortening - Regular or butter flavored should be fine. You can substitute butter if you prefer but the cake texture may be a little different. We are going for biscuit texture, not sponge cake texture.
Milk - For the best cake we recommend whole milk, but you can use 2% instead. We have not tested this recipe with dairy free milks.
Lemon zest - Zest lemons before juicing and slicing and store zest in the freezer. You can do it the other way too! Zest your lemon, then juice it and freeze the juice in ice cube trays.
Strawberries - Being that these are the star of the show, be sure to find gorgeous, plump, ripe berries! For a pretty presentation, do not hull the garnish berries. The leaves add a nice pop of green. Leave some berries whole and cut others in half. Pile randomly on top. You might not use all of the garnish berries.
Heavy whipping cream - If you prefer, you can use a tub of Cool Whip. We prefer to make our own when we can!