Searching for gluten free strawberry shortcake? I am ready to share my epic failure of strawberry shortcake with you today! Good with the bad... take it in stride!
I decided to make strawberry shortcake for dessert one evening this week. I had strawberries and I really needed to get them out of the fridge. You know the line where they are still ok, but if they make it another day, who knows really? Well, that was the state of the strawberries in our fridge.
I decided ok, I have never made shortcake, but how hard can it be? I have recently learned it is ok to use lemon juice in desserts and I decided why not shortbread? Nope, that is not even where the failure comes into play. I will get to the fail here in a minute.
I knew I needed help eating all of those glorious yummy strawberries, and what do you do when you have a husband who will not help eat the fruit? You make a dessert, one he absolutely cannot refuse! You see, I know he loves strawberry shortcake and do you know I cannot even think of a time we have had it since we were married that I made it?
Poor husband... never gets anything he likes around here. My mother would tell you he is a saint since he eats all of my gluten free cooking and baking. She is still stuck on some of the older gluten free options of long ago, you know where it tasted like nothing, or even that it was just down right awful.
Well, no longer here in this household... I decided to take the reins and make my own food here. Trust me, when I went gluten free due to allergies, I was like where do I start? What am I going to eat? How will I have dinner guests over?
Pfff... just jump in is where I began and now I do not even hesitate trying new things and who cares if I fail, you just do it and learn! So, the failure part? Well..... I decided my pan had a little rust on it and I really need to throw it out and pick up a new one, but I decided I did not want to heat up the large oven, so I used our small side oven... and so I decided it was a good idea to line my pan with foil.
Only guess what? When you make shortbread, you really should not put it on foil. It stuck, and the other fail? I used coconut flour. For some reason sometimes when I bake with coconut flour it just falls apart. So, not only did the shortcakes stick to the foil, but then they were a crumbling mess too!
Darn it Cara! You should know better! I thought my dough was wet enough, I did not want to keep adding more milk to my dough and make a mess. I thought I had a pretty good consistency, but for some reason, we had shortbread crumble!
The upside to the mess? It still tasted pretty darn good if I do say so myself! So, take it as a win or a loss. I am going to go ahead and share my recipe with y'all. If you decide to make it, let me know if you like this one.
I woke in the middle of the night and knew right away my mistake! You see, how I just cannot let things go? Yep, I couldn't let it go as to why it crumbled on me. I should have used half of the coconut flour! I completely forgot my mistake years ago baking with coconut flour, you half it! Ok, now I feel more comfortable sharing this one with y'all now!
Gluten free strawberry shortcake
What you will need:
- 1 c almond flour
- 1/2 c tapioca flour
1/2 c coconut flour1/4 c coconut flour- 2 T cornstarch
- 3 T sugar
- 1/2 t sea salt
- 2 t baking powder
- 3 T vegetable oil
- 4 T almond milk (I added one in at a time, I was not sure how much I was going to need)
- 1 T lemon juice
- 1/2 t vanilla extract
For strawberry topping
- 1 pound of strawberries
- 2 T sugar
What you will need to do:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Mix together dry ingredients
- Add lemon juice and vanilla extract
- Add in almond milk one tablespoon at a time, until you feel the mix is wet enough to create shortcakes
- Once your ingredients are well mixed, I used my large cookie scoop to scoop my dough out of the bowl, then I formed each scoop into shortcakes by hand
- Once all of the shortcakes were formed and on my small Wilton pan (my recipe made 6) you can choose to sprinkle sugar on top of the shortcakes, I skipped this step though to keep the sugar content lower
- Bake for 15 minutes or until beginning to turn golden brown
For strawberry topping:
- Wash and cut strawberries and place in pot on stovetop, mix in sugar with strawberries
- Continue to stir until your strawberries cook down to a lumpy glaze like consistency
- They will be amazing and so sweet to top your shortcake!
I served my own shortcake with almond milk on top, but Mr. VS wanted his plain. They tasted pretty good, minus the crumbling. I will have to make this recipe again since I know my mistake now.
See, the successes and failures, you just have to make mistakes in order to learn new things in life. I am all about learning, I think of my myself as a student of life. I try to learn something new everyday, I want to keep the ole' brain in working order! So not all of my recipes are a success, but at least these were not too horrible.
Just remember, if you decide to bake with coconut flour, half the amount to put in your recipe. You will laugh when I share the story of a recipe a coworker shared with me! I was so excited when she shared her recipe with me and I was like, this is going to be the best pumpkin tart anyone has ever made! I was that excited to try something new for Thanksgiving dinner! It was of course, my first time hosting our Thanksgiving dinner, and I wanted everything to be perfect.
I followed that recipe to a T, only I decided since I was making the tarts gluten free I would use coconut flour. Now, at this point, I did not have much experience baking with coconut flour, and pretty much only followed recipes already designated gluten free. I was not that adventurous just yet with my baking!
When those tarts came out of the oven a crumbled dried up mess, I wanted to cry. Like I said, this was my first time hosting a holiday dinner and I wanted it ALL to be PERFECT! Only, my dessert was not so perfect. I had no idea what I did wrong, and I was like now what am I going to do?
Luckily, everyone consumed the yummy filling, and overlooked my EPIC failure in spirit of the holiday. Some time later, I learned the trick for baking with coconut flour and often wonder if they would have turned out had I not used cup for cup of coconut flour. I will need to search that recipe out and try it again some day.
You win some, and you lose some in life, as long as you do not give up, who cares? I can laugh at my mistakes now, just not that Thanksgiving Day when I was wanting the perfect dessert for my guests. I tend to do that a lot in life, laugh at myself, never take life too seriously... I used to, and you know what? Life wasn't as much fun when I did. Have a wonderful week, and do not forget to laugh, laughter can be the best medicine of life.
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