Shirtless Chef Recipe – Strawberry Cream Cake Part Deux

Taking traditional unhealthy recipes and converting them to low carb or all natural is usually a trial and error process. Sometimes the first few results are ok, sometimes it just goes in the trash and I have to start all over again. My low carb cornbread recipe I featured when I started this article has a lot of blood, sweat, and the spitting out of terrible attempts before I finally hit the holy grail recipe.

The Strawberry Cream cake I wrote about a few weeks ago was not one of those recipes. I made it, I ate it, and it was… fine. That was it, just… fine. And if I hadn’t compared it to the Sam’s Club version with it’s double stacked tower of vanilla cake, cream cheese icing and syrupy sweet strawberry sauce, fine would have been good enough. However, I did compare it to that cake, and while my healthy version was fine, it was missing a certain je ne sais quoi, that famous French saying that means… je ne sais quoi.

My version just didn’t capture the spirit or appearance of that store-bought version. The whole point of this article is to give you healthy alternatives that don’t make you feel like you are making a compromise on taste or texture. So, as I was eating my cake and feeling extremely compromised, I thought about my cake missing that “I don’t know what” for all you non-French speaking folks, and it hit me.

This recipe below is the result, and I dare say, it tastes more like a full-octane-bad-for-you-cake than the store bought version, by which I mean it is freaking delicious. I have taught myself the dark art of portion control over the last five years, and boys and girls, I have to confess I struggled mightily with not eating this entire dessert in one sitting. I’ll spare you all the nutrition details on this one, they are all the same as the cake I wrote about a few weeks ago. There are a lot of moving parts to this one, so I’m going to jump right in with the how’s and what’s of it. If you made the last one, give this one a test drive and you will be amazed at the difference. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Strawberry Cream Cake Part Deux ?

INGREDIENTS:

Strawberry Sauce

One carton organic strawberries, washed and quartered
1 Tbsp Lakanto Powdered monkfruit

Low Carb Vanilla Cake

1½ cups fine almond flour
½ cup coconut flour
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
2 sticks grass fed butter at room temp
4 free range eggs at room temp
2 tsp vanilla extract
½ cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk or vanilla hemp milk
1 cup stevia in the raw granulated sweetener

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 ounces grass fed cream cheese at room temp
4 Tbsp butter at room temp
1 cup Lakanto powdered monkfruit
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp grass fed heavy cream

Stabilized Whipped Cream

1 teaspoon unflavored gelatin
4 teaspoons water
1 cup grass fed heavy cream
2 Tbsp Lakanto powdered monkfruit
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

INSTRUCTIONS:

First make the strawberry sauce by placing the cut strawberries in a pot over medium heat. Sprinkle the powdered monkfruit and stir with a wooden spoon until the sweetener dissolves and the strawberries become soft and give up their juice:

Once the strawberries are cooked, use a potato masher to smash up most of the berries, but leave it chunky for texture:

Pour the sauce into a glass bowl and place in the fridge to cool completely.

Next, make the cake rounds. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare two eight inch round pans by folding a piece of parchment paper in half, folding the edges down like you are making a paper airplane, and the cut the bottom radius using the pan edge as a guide. I will also spray some non-stick spray in the bottom of the pan first to help the parchment paper stick in place:

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and whisk until well blended.

In another large bowl, add your butter and granulated sweetener and use a hand mixer to cream until it becomes light and fluffy. Then add the eggs in one at a time, mixing each with the hand mixer until fully incorporated. Note the dark yellow color of a free range pasture egg. If your eggs have the light pale yellow yolk of a chicken house raised bird, that’s a sign it’s time to switch brands:

Once all the eggs are in, add the vanilla and almond milk and mix again, then add the dry ingredients and combine with spatula until it has all come together creamy and smooth:

Rub the sides of the cake pans with butter to grease, and fill each one evenly with the cake batter, smoothing out the tops. This batter will be thicker than normal box cake batter. Bake for 25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean, and then cool the cakes completely:

Make the cream cheese filling by combining all the ingredients and beating with a hand mixer until smooth:

To make the whipped cream, Place mixing bowl with beaters in the freezer to chill for 20 minutes. Place the water in a bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over it, let sit for 5 minutes. Then warm in the microwave for 10 seconds, stir. Combine the sweetener, vanilla, and heavy cream in the chilled bowl, beat with hand mixer until soft peaks form. Then slowly drizzle in gelatin while still beating until medium peaks form.

To assemble the cake, place one round on a plate and cover with all the cream cheese filling:

Take a few spoonsful of the strawberry sauce and spoon on top:

Place the other cake round on top of that layer:

Completely cover the cake with the stabilized whipped cream. Use the spatula to make a lip of whipped cream around the edge to hold the rest of the strawberry sauce, and gently pour onto the top of the cake: