-
The first batch of berries makes its way through the conveyor belt.
-
After three washes, the berries are dumped into buckets to be mixed with sugar.
-
Sugar is poured into the buckets of berries to sweeten up the mix.
-
Sugar and berries are blended together by several volunteers wielding paint mixers.
-
Every bucket is wiped down before a lid is put on and it’s placed into a truck for delivery to the festival.
-
Topper berries are kept separate from the shortcake mix berries. These are generally the best-looking berries of the bunch.
-
Volunteers at the church pre-stack shortcakes and biscuits in rows of four high, three high, two high and one high, stadium seating style, so the volunteers at the festival can get them into bowls quicker. They often wear pins for each year they’ve volunteered with the church, which produces a new festival pin annually.
-
Suzanne Joaquin and Jim Lauraine are two of more than 120 regular volunteers with the church.
-
Volunteers will be hard at work at the church every day of the festival.
In Plant City, you’ll know it’s about time for the Florida Strawberry Festival when St. Clement Catholic Church fires up the conveyor belts.
The church turns into a de facto factory for 12 days and has done so for the last 46 years, recruiting more than 120 volunteers a day to help prepare its legendary strawberry shortcake mix, stack its cakes (and biscuits) early for efficiency and make sure every strawberry that makes it into a shortcake — especially the signature “topper berries” are perfect.
Volunteers started cutting berries for the mix and separating the topper-quality berries bright and early Wednesday morning, and the first batch of shortcake mix made its way through the assembly line shortly after 9 a.m.
This year’s proceeds from shortcake sales will benefit the Good Samaritan Water Project, a mission for youths and young adults to build wells providing sustainable water and sanitation projects in developing countries.
BY THE NUMBERS
92,897: strawberry shortcakes served at the 2018 Florida Strawberry Festival. The church has now served more than 4 million.
6,000: amount of flats typically processed over 11 days. The berries are brought to the church from a parishioner family’s farm and this yields around 1,400 five-gallon buckets.
18,000: total pounds of whipped topping prepared at the festival. The whipped topping is generally the only part of the St. Clement strawberry shortcake that is not put together at the church.
8,000: total pounds of sugar used in the shortcake mix each year.
3/1: The ratio of shortcakes to biscuits available at the St. Clement booth on any given day at the festival. The church uses a rough estimate of 80,000 cakes to 24,000 biscuits. St. Clement used to only offer biscuits at the festival but later added the cakes due to popular demand.
120: volunteers putting the shortcake mix together per day at the church. They come in after morning mass and are fed lunch.
50: youth volunteers who wash the berry buckets after each festival day, preparing them for the next day’s use.
3: amount of times berries are washed on the conveyor belt before going into the mix.
35: average amount of volunteers working in St. Clement’s festival booth on any given day. Volunteers come and go in a series of two shifts per day.
