Strawberry Pudding and Macerated Strawberries with Strawberry Sugar

"To enhance the fruity flavor of strawberries, strawberries are macerated with a strawberry sugar made from freeze-dried strawberries. [Photographs: Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot] Created as the strawberry component of a reinvented strawberry shortcake recipe, these macerated strawberries and rich strawberry pudding are made with the help of a flavor-packed freeze-dried strawberries. It's delicious as part of the larger strawberry shortcake recipe, but also works well as a standalone fruit-and-pudding dessert. The strawberry sugar can also be stirred into milk to make absolutely delicious strawberry milk. Why this recipe works: * Freeze-dried strawberries have intense, concentrated strawberry flavor, helping to enhance the flavor of the fresh berries regardless of how sweet and flavorful they are. * Blending the freeze-dried berries with sugar creates a quick-and-easy vehicle for dispersing the freeze-dried strawberry flavor. Note: Because dry ingredients like the freeze-dried stawberries, come in different sizes and can crumble in the packaging, we recommend using a scale for this recipe for best results, as volume measurements of dry ingredients are less accurate. When macerating the strawberries, the exact amount of strawberry sugar needed depends on the flavor and sweetness of the fresh fruit; this recipe makes extra strawberry sugar, so you will have some left over, which can be used to dust the final dish...."