Strawberry Cake
Servings: 16 slices, Preparation Time 60 minutes
It's somebody's birthday, and they love Strawberry Cake! When eating your desert like Strawberry Cake is done on a rare occasion like your birthday, it doesn't significantly affect your health. It will affect your health when the occasional becomes habitual. For example, consider being a three times a year cigarette smoker to a three times a day smoker. Smoking cigarettes three times a day doesn't seem extreme until you realize that three times a day or more puts you into the highest risk group for smoking diseases. Smoking is one of the highest causes of death worldwide. So like try to keep our bad habits out of the often category to the seldom category.
To make our Strawberry Cake healthier we avoided eggs and diary. It's a good start, but if we were to eat Strawberry Cake more often we may play with the ingredients to make it better, that is healthier.
- 1 pint (0.57 litres) fresh strawberries
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- 1 cup unsweetened non-dairy based milk, like oat, soy, rice, or almond milk
- 1 cup, self-rising cake flour
- 1 cup almond flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 cup of raw sugar, or alternative sweeter
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup olive oil, coconut oil, or some other vegetable fat
- 2 teaspoons strawberry extract
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Make the strawberry purée by adding two to three large fresh strawberries to a blender and blend to make a smooth pulp.
- Make the buttermilk alternative. Pour 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar into a 1 cup measuring cup and fill the remaining cup with the plant-based milk.
- Grease and lightly flour baking pans or line the pans with parchment paper.
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
- In a large bowl, add the flour, cake flour, sweeter, salt, baking soda, and baking powder, and whisk together.
- Add in melted coconut oil or other plant-based oil, strawberry extract, vanilla extract and your buttermilk alternative. Beat the ingredients with a mixer until all is completely combined. Add the strawberry purée and continue to blend until a smooth batter or dough is created.
- Pour half the batter into your baking pan.
- Bake for 30 to 35 minutes. Using a thin smooth knife, inserted it into the centre of the cake. Your cake is ready if the knife comes out clean.
- Remove your cake from oven and let cool before handling.
- Once cool clean, cut and add the remaining strawberries as a garnish, and you are ready to serve.
Healthier is not necessarily better. By replacing some processed food ingredients with whole food plant based ingredients your Strawberry Cake can be healthier. For example, we substitute free flowing oils and solid fats like coconut butter with complete nut butters like almond butter, or fruits like avocados, or apple sauce. We can replace highly processed white flour with whole grain flours. We can replace raw sugars with ground whole fruits like date flour. These healthier options will make your Strawberry Cake denser and you make not enjoy the change. As long as Strawberry Cake is the occasional treat and not a weekly or daily staple of our pantry, we don't think we need to entertain these options.
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Thank you everyone for your good wishes on my Birthday. Especially, thank you, Lucia & Claire, for making me a birthday Strawberry Cake!