Traditional strawberry shortcake is light, sweet, and delicious, but it can also send your blood sugar on a rollercoaster. This healthy strawberry shortcake keeps all the flavor you love, but swaps in balanced ingredients like almond flour, healthy fats, and lower sugar sweeteners so you can enjoy dessert without the crash.
After multiple test batches dialing in the technique, this is the one worth making all summer long.
Key Tips for Baking a Balanced Plate Dessert
Use melted butter, not softened. Adding cold milk directly to melted butter causes it to pearl up into small pieces throughout the dough. This is intentional! Those butter pockets create a more tender, biscuit-like crumb.
Bake low and slow. Alternative sweeteners typically brown faster than regular sugar, so 300°F keeps things from burning. Plan for about 25 minutes and pull them when the internal temperature hits 190°F.
Don't flatten the dough. Scoop and leave them as rounds. They'll spread just enough on their own.
Cool completely before splitting. Almond flour biscuits firm up as they cool. If you split them warm they'll crumble.
Important Ingredient Notes
Almond flour — use blanched, finely ground almond flour, not almond meal. The texture difference is significant. Coarser meal will give you a gritty, dense biscuit.
Coconut flour — just one tablespoon, but it's key. It absorbs moisture and keeps the biscuit from being too dense or greasy. And it's a small enough amount that these don't taste coconut-y.
Zero sugar honey — I use an allulose-based honey substitute that behaves like real honey in the dough without spiking blood sugar. Regular honey will work but might have an impact on blood glucose response.
Step by Step Instructions
- Whisk the Dry Ingredients: Combine the almond flour, coconut flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl and whisk until evenly mixed. Sift if needed. No lumps, no pockets of baking soda.
- Pearl the butter: Melt the butter, then add the cold milk directly to it. The temperature contrast will cause the butter to break into small pieces. This is exactly what you want.
- Mix the wet ingredients: Add the eggs, zero sugar honey, and vanilla to the butter and milk mixture and whisk until fully combined. The mixture will be loose and golden.
- Combine the wet and dry: Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and fold together until a thick, cohesive dough forms. It will be scoopable but not sticky.
- Scoop: Using a food disher, scoop 4 - 6 rounds onto a parchment lined baking sheet depending how big you want the biscuits. Leave about two inches between each.
- Bake: Bake at 300°F for 25 minutes until deep golden and the internal temperature reaches 190°F with an internal thermometer. Cool completely on the pan before splitting. Assemble and serve!
- Assemble: Split each biscuit, layer with macerated strawberries and whipped cream, and serve immediately.
How to Make Sugar-Free Whipped Cream
Whipped cream is one of the easiest things to make at home and it's already naturally low in sugar. To keep it completely sugar-free, skip the powdered sugar and use a zero sugar sweetener instead, or leave it plain. Heavy cream on its own is delicious.
For 4-6 servings, start with 1 cup of cold heavy cream, 1 to 2 tablespoons of powdered allulose or monk fruit sweetener, and ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract.
Three ways to make it:
- Whipped Cream Dispenser — Pour cold heavy cream into the canister, add sweetener and vanilla, charge with a CO2 cartridge, and shake. Perfect whipped cream in seconds. We used these when I worked at Starbucks back in the day and it's one of my favorite kitchen gadgets that I use often.
- Stand mixer — Add cold heavy cream, sweetener, and vanilla to the bowl with the whisk attachment. Whip on medium high until soft peaks form, about 2 to 3 minutes.
- By hand — Pour cold heavy cream, sweetener, and vanilla into a large bowl and whisk vigorously until soft peaks form. Takes about 5 minutes and a little elbow grease, but it works.
How to Avoid a Sugar Spike with Fruit
I wore a Dexcom Stelo continuous glucose monitor (CGM) while eating this dessert to track my real-time metabolic response. The result was a perfect "stable" score of 10, with a peak of only 98 mg/dL and zero minutes above my target range. The glucose line was essentially flat. How is that possible?
The combination of almond flour, zero-sugar honey, butter, and heavy whipped cream brings fat, protein, and fiber together to create a "metabolic buffer" that slows glucose absorption of the minimal amount of natural sugar present in the fruit.
You can dive deeper into how to balance your glucose levels with the "Fiber First" method here ➡️Read about macronutrients
Browse more ➡️ Glucose-Steady Recipes
Blood Sugar Friendly Strawberry Shortcake (No-Sugar-Added)
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 6 servings
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Gluten-Free, Low-Carb, Vegetarian
Description
Healthy strawberry shortcake made with almond flour biscuits, fresh strawberries, and real whipped cream for a balanced desert that keeps glucose steady.
Ingredients
Biscuits
- 1¾ cups plus 1 tablespoon (176g) blanched almond flour
- 1 tbsp (8g) coconut flour
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ cup (57g) butter, melted
- 3 tbsp (42g) zero sugar honey
- 3 tbsp (45g) whole milk, cold
- 2 eggs
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
Strawberries
- 1 lb fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
- 2 tbsp powdered allulose or zero sugar honey
Whipped Cream
- 1 cup cold heavy cream
- 1 to 2 tablespoon powdered allulose or monk fruit sweetener
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 300°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Whisk almond flour, coconut flour, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl.
- Melt butter, then add cold milk directly to the melted butter and whisk. The butter will break into small pieces.
- Add eggs, zero sugar honey, and vanilla to the butter mixture and whisk until combined.
- Pour wet ingredients into dry and fold until a thick, cohesive dough forms.
- Scoop rounds of dough onto the prepared baking sheet using a food disher, spacing about 2 inches apart. Do not flatten.
- Bake 25 minutes until deep golden and internal temperature reaches 190°F. Cool completely on the pan.
- While biscuits bake, toss sliced strawberries with allulose or honey and let sit at room temperature until juicy, at least 30 minutes.
- Make whipped cream using your preferred method.
- Split cooled biscuits, layer with strawberries and whipped cream, and serve immediately.
Notes
Biscuits can be made up to 2 days ahead and stored at room temperature in an airtight container. Macerated strawberries keep in the fridge for up to 3 days. Assemble just before serving.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1
- Calories: 311
- Sugar: 8.2 g
- Sodium: 230.6 mg
- Fat: 15.2 g
- Carbohydrates: 13.4 g
- Fiber: 1.6 g
- Protein: 7.3 g
- Cholesterol: 82.5 mg
Did you make this recipe? Let me know!