Dropped, rolled, beaten or stamped, there must be a hundred ways to make a biscuit. We thought we had seen them all until we came across something entirely new to us: whipped cream biscuits.

We first heard of the formula from a central Pennsylvanian cook and found similar recipes in a few Southern cookbooks, as well. We’re inclined to believe they're related to whipped cream cake, which gets some of its lift from the cream.

Similarly, instead of relying exclusively on baking powder or baking soda for leavening, these biscuits benefit from the air trapped in softly beaten cream. The result is a particularly fluffy texture that doesn’t have the heavy-handed richness of an all-­butter biscuit. And that makes it an ideal candidate for use in desserts, especially strawberry shortcake.

For our version, we wanted a bolder filling than that of the average shortcake. Sour cream (which we used to flavor the biscuits) added tang to plain whipped cream, and we flavored it further with vanilla extract and brown sugar, arguably strawberry’s greatest companion.

Perfect strawberries are few and far between, so we ensured their flavor was bright by macerating them with a little sugar and lime zest. Mashing a portion of the berries sped up the time they needed to soften: A bowl was ready just as the biscuits were cool enough to split and stuff with strawberries and cream.