I have been making a version of this cake for the past 20 years. However, I’ve always made it in a 9 x 13 pan. I finally decided to streamline the recipe and serve it in individual portions. Since this cake was always something I would normally make for a party, it just made more sense to put it together this way. It’s so much easier to serve. And cuter too.
Nothing falls apart, it tastes great and believe it or not, it’s not overly sweet. The oven also never goes on!
This cake gets a walnut crust just because it tastes so much better…more complex. The crust does not need baking, chilling it in the refrigerator keeps it all intact. If you have a nut allergy you could make a graham cracker crust using the same method. It works too.
I bought a wooden tamper originally to make mojitos. However, I rarely make mojitos but find I use this tool for so many baking and cooking projects. It worked especially well flattening the crusts in the bottom of the glasses.
Many years ago, when I was younger and even more foolish than today, I took it upon myself to perfect the shortcake. I spent a week going through a dozen or so recipes from my favorite writers, cooking them, plotting the ingredients on a spreadsheet and then testing different combinations until I came up with the shortcake of my dreams.
Not too long ago I was a bittersweet chocolate snob. I would only eat
chocolate bars with a very high percentage of cacao, the higher the
better. But I've discovered some milk chocolate recently that I really
love. If you only eat high percentage cacao, I urge you to try some of
the more exquisite milk chocolates on the market. They may surprise
you. They certainly surprised me. 
I have a weakness for flatbread, all kinds of flatbread. If flatbread is on a menu, it's pretty much a given that I will order it. Years ago I made those Chinese spring onion pancakes, but other than that, I really haven't bothered. Why? Well, making flatbread seemed like it would be a bother, what with the yeast and the kneading, and rising and resting and all I figured it was easier to just order it in restaurants. Until last week. 
As I have been known to confess on these very pages, when it comes to sweets, I am an unabashed purveyor of the pedestrian. Most people who have been to a Ralph’s Supermarket have probably noticed the bakery section with its apple turnovers, banana muffins, red-velvet cupcakes, entire cakes and even half cakes—presumably to add variety for the discriminating tastes waiting at home. Whatever glutenous confection you have a hankering for you can pretty much find in this section of the store, right in front of you, the minute you walk in. Since I am stuck with the kind of willpower that needs constant reviving and have been unable to resist many of these offerings in the past, I try to enter the store at the other end, where the fruit is colorfully, bountifully ensconced. But to no avail.