With the bad weather this Spring, strawberries have been comparatively expensive. However, for the last several weeks I have been able to find them for $.99/lb and have been taking advantage of them. I use them with my morning cereal and on top of my l/c pancakes. I also tinkered with a Bisquick recipe to make a l/c shortcake. As I am all about easy cooking, and as fresh strawberries do not have a long "shelf life", I make a strawberry syrup and put the fresh berries in the syrup to macerate and then use the berries and syrup in my dishes. This way, I am able to use the berries for about 10 days. If I run low on the berries but still have enough syrup left I simply add more berries to the syrup so I come out "even". Here are the recipes for the shortcake and for my strawberry syrup. The recipe for the syrup is for a variation that I made this time that I really like.

Strawberry Vanilla Syrup
2 cups water
A/S equal to 3 cups sugar (I use liquid Splenda)
1/2 tsp strawberry flavor concentrate
1 cup Davinci French Vanilla Syrup
1 and 1/2 tsp Xanthan gum
red food color
In a sauce pan, combine water, artificial sweetener, and strawberry flavor concentrate and stir over medium heat. (Before I found the strawberry concentrate, I would take some strawberries and add them to the pot and after cooking, I would blend them into the syrup for added flavor.) Add the French vanilla syrup and red food color to the desired color. Add the xanthan gum and blend. (I use a stick blender on the stove. If you do not have one, you could transfer the mixture to a regular blender to incorporate the xanthan gum and then return to the pan on the stove.) Bring the syrup to a boil, remove from the heat and let cool for a few minutes before pouring them over the quartered strawberries. (I use an old 1/2 gallon plastic sherbert container with a snap on lid which I fill with 3 lbs of strawberries. The 3 cups of syrup fills that container nicely.) Refrigerate until ready to use.

Shortcake
1 and 1/2 cups Carbquick
1/2 cup almond flour
1/3 cup Resistant wheat starch
6 Tbls butter, melted
1/4 cup cream plus a little extra, if necessary
1/4 cup water
a/s equal to 4 Tbls sugar
Combine dry ingredients and then add melted butter, (a/s if using liquid), 1/4 cup cream and 1/4 cup water and stir with a fork to combine. If the dough does not come together, add a little more cream and mix until the dough forms a ball. Spray an 8" square pan with pam and add the dough. Flatten the dough until you end up with about a 7" square of dough with a flat top. Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for about 30 minutes until golden brown. Invert cake on a cooling rack (it should fall right out of the pan) and cool. When ready to serve, split a piece of cake in half, add berries and syrup, put top half on, add more berries and syrup and top with whipped cream. For nine servings, the net carb count is approximately 2.5 net carbs per piece. (You can reduce the carb count to 16 for the entire cake, if you replace the almond flour and resistant wheat starch with Carbquick.)

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Henry

Oh Henry, this recipe sounds fabulous! Thank you so much for sharing it with us. I will defintely try this.

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196/135-135

Sounds perfectly yummy! You've given me some ideas for "tweaking" my own approach to strawberry shortcake.

Thanks, Henry!

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This reminds me, I've been wanting to try this for sometime but never have the simple syrup with me when I have strawberries.

I don't really like the flavor of the Davnci strawberry syrup and was wondering about a work around for strawberry shortcake. Frankly, I don't give a hoot about the short cake it's the syrup I'm trying to recreate. The old way of making syrup was to dump about a cup of sugar on the strawberries and let it sit there, and voila, an hour or so later you have berries (much reduced in size and water) and juice. But I don't want to use sugar anymore so I was wondering about salt? Has anybody tried salting the berries (just a little)and then adding Davinci simple syrup?

When I first started making the syrup, all I was doing was making a simple syrup using liquid splenda, water, and food color, thickened with xanthan gum. I added the strawberries while cooking the syrup to give the syrup added strawberry flavor and then just poured it over the quartered berries and allowed the berries to macerate. I would not add salt to the berries because I think you could get the same result if you used the Davinci simple syrup. What I would do is heat the syrup with a little red food color and some berries, and then blend the mixture and pour it over the berries and let them macerate and you will have strawberries in syrup. I am not familiar with the Davinci simple syrup so I don't know if I would thicken it a little or not. I think that would be a matter of personal preference.

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Henry

Thanks Henry. Another GREAT recipe. And me? I'm all about the shortcake, LOL!

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BC
LC Since 1998
Highest Weight 172
Current 104-108