You Asked For It: No pie recipe, so let us eat cake

By ANNE LONG
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 24, 2002

No responses have arrived to Flora Jones' request for the recipe for French Vanilla Strawberry Pie, but Pat Doubleday shares her recipe for Strawberry Festival Cake, a winning recipe from Oswego, N.Y.

This is a delightful way to use fresh strawberries.

Thanks to resourceful folks who sample, try and test recipes, we have two that are purported to be popular Outback Steakhouse recipes.

Walkabout Soup is a creamy onion soup topped with shredded Cheddar cheese and Monterey Jack cheese.

Gold Coast Coconut Shrimp is prepared by dipping shrimp in beer batter, coating them with flaked coconut and frying them until they are golden brown.

Serve the shrimp with marmalade sauce and enjoy.

For: Flora Jones of Homosassa.

From: Pat Doubleday of Clearwater.

Recipe: Strawberry Festival Cake.

Strawberry Festival Cake

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 sticks butter or margarine, melted
• 1 cup chopped nuts
• 1 8-ounce bar cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1 cup frozen dessert topping, thawed
• 1 quart sliced strawberries
• 1/2 pint heavy cream
• 2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar Strawberries for garnish

Mix together the flour, butter and nuts. Press into a 9 by 13-inch baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Cool.

Mix together the cream cheese and one cup confectioners' sugar; fold in the dessert topping. Spread on cake and chill. Whip the heavy cream and gradually add 2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar for stability.

Spread over cake and decorate with strawberries. Refrigerate.

For: Carol Williams of Pinellas Park and Maureen Dean of St. Petersburg.

From: Marian Chase of Largo, Sandra Krause of St. Petersburg and Karen Lo Bianco of Tierra Verde.

Recipe: Outback Steakhouse Walkabout Soup from Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur, and Karen's find in the Denver Post by way of the Baltimore Sun's Recipe Finder column.

Outback Steakhouse Walkabout Soup

• 8 cups water
• 8 cubes dried beef bouillon
• 3 medium white onions
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1-1/4 cups shredded Cheddar cheese, divided
• 1/4 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese

Heat the water to boiling in a large pan. Add the bouillon cubes and dissolve.

Cut the onions into thin slices, then quarter the slices. Add to the broth. Add salt and pepper. Bring the mixture back to boiling, then turn heat down and simmer, uncovered, for one hour. While stirring, sift the flour into the soup. Continue to stir if any large lumps of flour develop. Be careful when you stir; aggressive agitation or using a whisk may tear the onions apart.

As the soup continues to cook, any lumps should dissolve. After 30 minutes of additional simmering, add the cream and one cup Cheddar cheese. Continue to simmer the soup for another 5 to 10 minutes. Serve the soup hot after sprinkling a tablespoon each of shredded Monterey Jack and Cheddar on top. Serves 4.

Marian's note: If you are worried about lumping, use Wondra Flour or make a slurry of flour and water.

From: Marian Chase of Large and Sandra Krause of St. Petersburg.

Recipe: Outback Steakhouse Gold Coast Coconut Shrimp, from Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Outback Steakhouse Gold Coast Coconut Shrimp

• 1 cup flat beer
• 1 cup self-rising flour
• 2 cups sweetened coconut flakes (one 7-ounce package), divided
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 12 jumbo shrimp
• Vegetable oil for frying
• Paprika
• Marmalade Sauce (for dipping) (Recipe follows)

For the batter: Use an electric mixer to combine the beer, flour, 1/2 cup coconut flakes, sugar and salt in medium bowl. Mix well, then cover and refrigerate for at least one hour.

Prepare the shrimp by deveining and peeling off the shell back to the tail. Leave the last segment of the shell plus the tail as a handle.

When the batter is ready, preheat oil in a deep pot or deep fryer to about 350 degrees. Use enough oil to cover the shrimp completely. Pour the remainder of the coconut into a shallow bowl.

Be sure the shrimp are dry before battering. Sprinkle each shrimp lightly with paprika before the next step. Dip one shrimp at a time into the batter, coating generously. Drop the battered shrimp into the coconut and roll it around so that it is well coated.Fry four shrimp at a time for 2 to 3 minutes or until the shrimp become golden brown. Flip the shrimp halfway through.

Drain on paper towels briefly before serving with marmalade sauce on the side.

Serves 4 as an appetizer.

Marmalade Dipping Sauce

• 1/2 cup orange marmalade
• 2 teaspoons stone-ground mustard (with whole-grain mustard seed)
• 1 teaspoon prepared horseradish
• 1 dash salt

Combine in a small bowl and refrigerate for at least one hour.

Recipe requests

Ruth Dunning of St. Petersburg would like to have a recipe for Portuguese sweet bread.

Jean Gilmore of Inverness writes that Pfeiffer's Creamy Sweet and Sour Salad Dressing was a staple in her house, especially on lettuce and vegetable salad with grilled chicken strips on top. Unfortunately, this dressing has been discontinued, and Jean would like to have a recipe for a similar salad dressing.

If there is a comparable product on the market, she would like to know about that also.

Do you have a recipe for rugelach? Please send it for Virginia Smith of Brooksville.

John Val of St. Petersburg is looking for a recipe to make veggie burgers from scratch. He would also like to know how to prepare fish cakes; any kind of fish will do.

- You Asked for It is a reader mail column. If you have a cooking question or the answer to someone else's question, write to: You Asked for It, the Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731. Be sure to include your full name, city and phone number with your letter. Letters without this information will be discarded. Requests cannot be answered by phone or mail.

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