My sisters and I kicked off the summer this year by heading home for a long weekend in North Carolina.

Of course, we each had an itinerary of must-eat hometown foods, including plenty of barbecue and country ham and biscuits. And while those foods were wonderful, nothing compared to the simple pound cake and strawberry dessert our mother whipped up.

My mother had gone to the nearby strawberry farm and bought a couple of gallon buckets of the reddest, ripest, most fragrant strawberries either of us could remember. To feature those luscious berries, she then baked up a so-called economy pound cake, a rich, flavorful cake so much better than the shortcakes you’ll find at the grocer.