National Strawberry Shortcake Day

Happy National Strawberry Shortcake Day everybody! Driscoll's is supposed to be announcing the winners to their contests today, and to further commemorate the occasion, they sent out some coupons so I could make the Strawberry Shortcake recipe they emailed me. Except I opted to make a gluten and dairy free version. I adapted this recipe from the one posted on the Without Adornment blog.

 

I had a slight panic when I initially didn't see any Driscoll's strawberries in the produce department of our local grocery store, until I made my way over to the organic section, and there they were. I was actually pleased that the only Driscoll's strawberries there were organic, because strawberries are on the "dirty dozen" list, so it's a good idea to opt for organic whenever possible. Especially when you have a coupon to get them for free!

For the shortcakes:

1 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup tapioca starch
1/4 cup potato starch

1 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 Tablespoon + 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4-5 Tablespoons coconut oil
3/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons coconut milk (cream removed)
1 teaspoon maple syrup
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar (which I THOUGHT I had, but I didn't so I subbed regular vinegar)

Important: Refrigerate a can of coconut milk overnight so the cream rises to the top. Scoop off the cream and keep, as it whips up like heavy cream and is a great dairy-free alternative to whipped cream. Also, a few hours before you're ready to whip the coconut cream, chill your mixer bowl and whisk in the freezer.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Whisk the together the flour, starches, xanthan gum, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl until well combined. Mix in the coconut oil until there aren't any big chunks. 

  

Add liquid ingredients, and stir with a fork until dough is mixed and starts to come together. It will be like biscuit dough. Pat or roll out dough to around an inch thick on a well floured surface, and cut using a 3-inch round cutter. I actually don't have a round cutter that size, so I used a tumbler, which was a good half an inch larger in diameter. As a result, I didn't get as many shortcakes from the dough, but they were bigger.

 

Place the shortcakes on a cookie sheet. The recipe didn't say if they should be touching or spread out, but most biscuits bake slightly touching each other, so I tried it both ways. It didn't seem to make any difference whatsoever.

  

Allow the shortcakes to cool completely. While they're doing that, you can make the filling. Wash, hull, and slice the strawberries and set aside.

 

Remember the coconut cream reserved from the can of coconut milk? Well, place it into the chilled mixer bowl and beat until it's the consistency of whipped cream. You can gradually add some powdered sugar, or I used a little of my leftover Xylitol. I also put about a small dollop of maple syrup in there, mostly to see how the coconut cream would whip up with maple syrup added, but also to try and give it a deeper flavor.

  

To assemble the shortcakes, slice them in half horizontally, spread coconut cream on top (I also put some strawberry jam on two of the shortcakes first, just to see how that would taste). Then pile slices strawberries on the top and serve.

  

Since these were bigger than they were supposed to be, we enjoyed them as open-face strawberry shortcakes. If you use a smaller cutter, then you can make them the more traditional way, with the filling sandwiched in between the two slices of shortcake. You could even put more cream and strawberries on the top and layer it like a trifle.

  

Overall, I'm very pleased with how these came out. The shortcake is really best eaten the day it's made, though. I kept mine in the refrigerator, and they seem to get denser and heavier (and hard like a hockey puck) the longer they hang around. As far as texture, it comes close. Taste-wise, they're pretty adequate, but I don't think they taste good enough to eat one their own. Some sort of filling or spread really helps them. I personally liked the strawberry shortcakes I made with a thin layer of strawberry jam better than the ones without. But I have a serious sweet tooth, and really both ways these were yummy.

So, who else is celebrating National Strawberry Shortcake Day? If you have a favorite shortcake recipe, gluten-free or otherwise, please feel free to share!

Raw Chocolate Bomb

This is actually an Italian Chocalate Almond Zucotto, but I'm calling it Raw Chocolate Bomb instead. I was trolling around different websites looking for a recipe that was gluten-free, preferably raw because I had dates in my pantry that needed to be used, and it HAD to involve chocolate. I decided to make this because of the enticing picture, knowing that mine most likely wouldn't turn out that pretty, and it didn't.

I use my iPhone to take photos for this blog. There's no flash, so lighting can be a challenge. I always try to do my baking and picture taking during the daytime, but on the day I made my chocolate bomb it was really dark and rainy outside. The lights in my kitchen can make weird glares and orangish hues, so please forgive the poor quality of the photography. I took the above photo this morning because there was some decent sunlight coming into the kitchen, so it's a little better than the rest.

Another reason my chocolate bomb didn't turn out looking like the original zucotto is because I didn't bother dusting it with carob powder and garnishing with almonds. I don't have any carob powder (I used all cocoa powder instead), and I didn't have any whole almonds left.

This recipe has three components: the cake, almond cream, and chocolate cream. They're layered inside a bowl or pudding basin and then chilled in the refrigerator or freezer to set. Once firmed up, you then place the bowl upside-down on a plate, and remove the bowl to unmold the the chocolate bomb. That's simple enough. Everything is made using either a food processor or a blender, so measuring out the ingredients and washing up the utensils takes longer than actually assembling the dessert.

I have to confess that my version isn't truly raw, as the chopped almonds I used were toasted. Also, the recipe calls for melted coconut oil. I'm not sure how else to melt coconut oil besides heating it, which is cooking, right? That part kind of confuses me, but since coconut oil has a pretty low melting point, maybe it's not heated enough to be considered cooked.

The recipe description mentions a "hint of orange" in the cake. Rather than actually measure out 1/2 teaspoon of orange zest, I just took the zest off of an orange. I think that was too much. My cake has way more than just a hint of orange in it.

Also, I made the almond cream in the blender, and I think next time I'll use my food processor, at least a first. My blender had difficulty mixing the ingredients as the mixture was pretty thick, so I found myself adding more almond milk than I should have, and it came out too runny. I fixed this by putting it in the freezer to chill, and as it thickened I was able to spread the almond cream up along the sides of the bowl more. But I'm going to quit rambling now and get on with the recipe and pictures.

The first thing you want to do is line a 1 quart bowl with cling film (aka plastic wrap). This makes it easy later.

For the cake:
1 cup walnuts
2/3 cup almonds
1 cup pitted dates, packed
1/2 teaspoon orange zest
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

In a food processor, grind the almonds to a fine powder and set aside in a separate bowl. Then process the walnuts into small, crumb-like pieces and add them to the almonds.

  

Next, process dates, orange zest, and pure vanilla extract until smooth.

  

Add in the nuts and mix until it's dough-like. Press the mixture into and up the sides of the lined bowl and chill in refrigerator while you make the almond cream.

 

For the Almond Cream:
1 cup cashews
1/3 cup almond milk
1/3 cup coconut oil, melted
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 1/2 teaspoons pure almond extract
2 tablespoons chopped almonds

The maple syrup is missing from the photo, but don't worry, I remembered to add it!

Blend all but the chopped almonds until smooth, then fold in the chopped almonds and spread the mixture evenly on top of the cake layer.

  

Mine was way too thin to do this at first because I added extra almond milk, so I just poured it into the center and as it chilled and firmed up I was able to spread it up and along the sides.

 

Once the almond cream layer has chilled and is set, then it's ready for the final component.

For the chocolate cream:
3/4 cup almond milk
1/2 cup cashews
1/2 cup walnuts
3-4 tablespoons cocoa powder (original recipe uses "cacao" and carob powder)
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (original recipe calls for 1/2 of a vanilla bean)
pinch of sea salt
2 tablespoons coconut oil, melted (original recipe also uses cacao butter)

In blender, combine all ingredients except the coconut oil and mix until smooth and creamy. Add coconut oil and blend until thoroughly combined. It will be similar in consistency to chocolate pudding. Pour mixture over almond cream to fill in the center of the bowl.

 

Allow to chill in the freezer for a few hours or the refrigerator overnight. When ready to eat, just turn the bowl upside down on a plate and remove.

  

Then peel off the plastic wrap, slice, and serve. I've been keeping mine in the refrigerator, but I think it would do equally well in the freezer if you prefer a frozen, ice cream cake type dessert.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

There are times when I really, really, want chocolate. Occasionally these times occur when I don't have any chocolate in the house apart from some Ghirardelli baking chips. Rather than just eating the chocolate chips, although they are nice enough to enjoy that way, I decided to make some gluten free chocolate chip cookies. I love the Elana's Pantry website, and I've tried making the chocolate chip cookie recipe in her Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook twice before, but with less than optimal results.


The first time I neglected to read the caveat of not using Bob's Red Mill almond flour in any of her recipes. Since it's the only brand almond flour that's readily available to me and what I had sitting on my pantry shelf, I used it, and she's right, it does not work in her recipes. By the time I got round to my second attempt I had some almond flour that I ordered from Honeyville. But I forgot to let the dough chill before baking, and the cookies spread out all over the baking sheet into one huge mess. It was a tasty mess, but still a mess, nonetheless.

This time I wanted to get it right. Except, I didn't have 2 of the necessary ingredients: grapeseed oil and agave nectar. So I used coconut oil and maple syrup instead. I also only had the Ghirardelli 60% chocolate chips, not the 73% cacao used in her recipe.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups blanched almond flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract (gluten free)
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Combine the almond flour, salt, baking soda in a bowl and whisk together.

  

In another bowl whisk the coconut oil, vanilla, and maple syrup until well combined. Now, because coconut oil is solid at room temperature, I put mine in a glass bowl and placed it on the oven while it was preheating, which melted it. BUT, when I added the cool maple syrup to it, that made the mixture go all clumpy and curdled as the maple syrup caused the coconut oil to go solid again. So, I placed that bowl on the oven until everything was the same temperature and I could whisk the ingredients into a smooth mixture.

  

Combine the wet and dry ingredients, and then fold in the chocolate chips.

  

Allow the dough to chill in the refrigerator for at least 20 minutes before scooping out onto the baking sheets, leaving a couple of inches in between each cookie. I used a 1 tablespoon sized disher for this.

I ran out of parchment paper, so I improvised by using Wilton parchment triangles to line my cookie sheets. I don't recommend doing this. Those things are designed to be formed into parchment piping bags, not used for baking, and some of my cookies stuck.

Bake for 7-10 minutes, and then cool on a wire rack. These came out much better than my previous attempts. I think I could have baked them another minute or so longer, because they're pretty chewy, but they're still delicious.

Now my only problem is that I can't stop eating them. So, while they don't last very long, at least they're easy to make.