Everyone loves cake. Even the so-called Shirtless Chef loves cake. Any time I am in a Sam’s Club, I have to avert my eyes when passing the bakery to avoid looking directly at the strawberry cream cake. It’s for the safety of both myself and my fellow shoppers.
Fortunately, I know too much about the ingredients used for constructing that lovely looking creamy… wait, give me a second. And I’m back. It just takes one glance at the ingredients list and I no longer want a piece. That cake is like a kit car with a Ferrari shell sitting on top of a 70’s VW Beetle. Looks great, but nothing good is going on inside there.
I don’t even want to dive into that list. I can see all the big scary words that look less like food and something more like you’d use to soak an engine block with in order to degrease before painting. There are 14 servings listed on that cake, and no one is measuring out just one serving per plate. The 300 calories and 40 grams of sugars per piece is bad by itself, but considering that a real serving would probably be twice that size, we are talking some serious nutritional damage.
I refuse to accept this reality. There’s no reason we can’t take healthy ingredients like fresh organic strawberries, grass fed cream and butter, coconut flour, and some monk fruit sweetener to make a treat for ourselves. Strawberries are loaded with fiber and vitamins, antioxidants and plant compounds. There are even studies that suggest that eating strawberries can counteract high carb meals eaten during the same day. One major note, if you don’t usually buy organic produce, soft skin fruits like berries are the ones where you really should start considering it. Berries soak up chemicals through their skin, so washing them doesn’t do much good. Whatever is sprayed on them is inside as well, so it’s like eating a sponge dropped in a bucket of Round-Up. Thick skinned produce like bananas and avocados are fine non-organic, but for me, it’s organic strawberries or none at all.
The whipped cream also needs to be grass fed to maximize the health benefits and taste of this dessert. Grass fed cream like Organic Valley brand have an average of 53 mg of omega-3 and 37 mg of CLA per serving. Regular heavy cream gets a bad rap in a lot of diets because of its high calories and saturated fat, but grass fed heavy cream is a very regular staple of my weekly diet, and let me check… yep, abs are still there. Even if you don’t care about health, the taste of fresh whipped cream made with grass fed heavy cream is so far beyond what comes frozen in a tub from the mega-mart. Have you noticed the word “cream” doesn’t even appear on a tub of Cool Whip? That’s because it’s just whipped hydrogenated vegetable oil, high fructose corn syrup, and a bit of skim milk. It also contains sodium polyphosphate. Here’s the fun part about that lovely emulsifier. The main ingredient, phosphate, is linked with chronic kidney disease and weak bones when high levels are detected in the blood. Now think of all the store bought foods with preservatives using phosphate derived emulsifiers and preservatives. Does this list even look remotely like anything you’d associate with whipped cream?
We will also be using coconut flour instead of bleached flour, because bleach should only be for socks and disinfecting hospital trauma rooms. It has no business being in our cake. As a rule, bleach should always stay on the outside of our bodies. Coconut flour is high in fiber and MCTS, helps to promote stable blood sugar, and might boost weight loss. It also has no bleach, so it’s not as good as washing your underwear as white flour, but hey, no one is good at everything.
So we are taking a delicious and light summer dessert, and by using natural, whole ingredients, we are also making it help with maintaining weight and getting fiber, vitamins, and omega-3 nutrition. So go ahead and have that second helping, your abs will be just fine.
Strawberry Cream Cake
- 1 stick grass fed unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
- 1 stick grass fed unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
- 1/2 cup grass fed heavy cream
- 4 large pasture raised eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup coconut flour
- 1/4 cup low carb sweetener (Stevia in the raw or Lakanto monkfruit)
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- Fresh organic strawberries, washed and sliced
Whipped Cream
Cut a stick of butter into cubes. Melt the stick of butter in a saucepan over low heat, and then set aside to cool:
In a large bowl, combine the eggs with the sweetener, whisking until thoroughly incorporated. Once the sweetener is dissolved, add the heavy cream and vanilla and whisk again. Then slowly drizzle the melted butter in the mixture while whisking continuously:
In a separate bowl, mix the coconut flour, salt, and baking soda:
Dump the dry team onto the wet team and mix with a spatula until completely combined. This will be much thicker than a normal cake batter will look:
Grease an 8×8 baking pan with butter and then spread the batter out evenly.
Bake at 350 degrees for 20 – 25 minutes until the top is springy and a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely before adding the whipped cream.
Stabilized Whipped Cream:
- 1 teaspoon unflavored gelatin
- 4 teaspoons water
- 1 cup grass fed heavy cream
- 2 tbsp Lakanta monkfruit powdered sweetener
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Place a 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.
Combine the sweetener, vanilla, and heavy cream in the chilled bowl, beat with hand mixer until soft peaks form. Warm the gelatin in a microwave for 10 seconds and stir. Then slowly drizzle in gelatin while still beating until medium peaks form.
Spread the whipped cream over the cooled cake and chill for 6 – 8 hours for optimal taste and texture. When serving, wash and cut strawberries to top the cake:
See the list of all the Shirtless Chef recipes at www.mysaline.com/shirtless.