June Focus : Strawberries

June means British strawberries are on the scene. There’s lots more to them aside from eating them drenched in cream whilst watching a game of tennis at the Wimbledon championships. So, for our June monthly learning newsletter we show you how one ingredient can make an appearance across our learning activities at the Garden Museum; in art, science as well as in the kitchen.

We’ve dug into our collection for some images, researched all the strawberry science, written up our DNA extraction experiment and shared our favourite strawberry recipe from our family feasts classes.

Enjoy taking part in one of our hands on activities below. If you make anything, we’d love to see the results – you can share photographs with us via twitter @GardenMusLearn or email us ceri@gardenmuseum.org.uk

This is a classroom friendly experiment enabling you to extract DNA from strawberries. If you are trying this experiment at home you can try using clear nail varnish remover as it is similar to ethanol/propanone, and use a j-cloth instead of gauze!

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Strawberry DNA Experiment

Strawberry and tomatoes may be a surprising combination, but because they share some flavour compounds, they go together really well.  This doesn’t mean to say we should start adding tomatoes to our Eton Mess, nor strawberries to a spaghetti sauce, but there are examples such as gazpacho or salads where the combination or switch works perfectly.

We first cooked this recipe in one of our strawberry themed family cooking classes held alongside our Flower Fairies exhibition in summer 2019. There is a strawberry flower fairy that was featured as part of the exhibition.

Strawberries are soft, so easy for children to help chop with a cutlery knife if they are not yet ready for a chefs knife. Keep any strawberry stalks to infuse a jug of water for drinking.

Follow this step by step photo-recipe to create your strawberry and cherry tomato bruschetta.

Strawberry & Cherry Tomato Bruschetta Recipe