Strawberry Shortcake My Way

I went to the North Arm Farm in Pemberton on the weekend and got a flat of their incredible strawberries. I don't know what their trick is, besides growing organic, but I do know that they are really tasty berries. I would have to say they are second best to wild strawberries. I don't think you can beat those teeny and incredibly flavour filled berries. I got a hand full here.

They hide in fields and on the sides of trails. So subtle, tiny and unsuspectingly bursting with flavour. It does take a whole lot of wild berries to make strawberry shortcake so I stuck with the big ones for this recipe. As a kid we picked buckets of wild strawberries in the family field. I'm not sure how many actually got in the bucket but I recall having wild strawberries on vanilla ice cream. So good.

I was inspired to create this recipe after a client in my group program had felt the after affects of eating too much strawberry shortcake, traditional style. This one is healthy, guilt free and good enough for guests, kids and breakfast. Ryan and I had it for breakfast on Sunday.

Here is the recipe. It is wheat free but not gluten free. I think that brown rice flour could be substituted for the barley flour. Or maybe just use all coconut flour. Let me know how it works if you experiment with this one. If you can't find coconut flour you can use all barley flour, ground almonds or light spelt flour. I got my coconut flour at crystalcoco.com

Strawberry Shortcake, My Way 1 1/4 cup barley flour

1 cup coconut flour

2 tsp baking powder

6 tbsp butter or extra virgin coconut oil, cold

3/4 cup hemp, rice or almond milk

1 tbsp honey

4 cups strawberries

1 can of coconut milk (NOT lite), cooled in the fridge for 30 minutes at least

Preheat oven to 450. Mix the dry ingredients together. Mix in butter or coconut oil with a pastry knife, 2 butter knives or in a food processor. Mix it until the butter is in granular chunks but not blended completely. Add wet ingredients and stir very lightly. Knead the dough a bit until it is fully mixed. Pull off 1/2 cup chunks, round them a bit and flatten them onto an oiled baking sheet. Bake for 14 minutes until they are just browning.

While the biscuits are baking clean, de-stem and cut up strawberries. Open the can of coconut milk and scoop of the top white part leaving the clear liquid behind. Whisk the coconut cream. You can add a bit of vanilla and honey if you would like it to be sweeter.

When the biscuits are done place them on cute individual plates, pile on strawberries and spoon on coconut cream.

Enjoy and indulge in this goodness!