Easy and delicious vegan strawberry shortcake topped with whipped cream made from Silk’s new heavy cream.
This recipe is great because it can be made in about 30 minutes. These lightly sweet biscuits make a perfect base to soak up the sweet syrup from the strawberries topping. Bring your shortcake up a level by topping with our whipped cream made from Silk’s new heavy whipping cream, or make one of the other whipped creams we have listed below in the substitution section.
Learn how to make this Vegan Strawberry Shortcake brought to you by us here at Vegan The Way. This recipe is free of most major allergens: dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free, and soy-free. This recipe currently doesn’t have a gluten-free option.
What ingredients go into Vegan Strawberry Shortcake?
The great thing about Strawberry Shortcake is its simple list of ingredients. No fancy ingredients or techniques needed to make this simple and delicious dessert.
Vegan Shortcake Ingredients:
- All-Purpose Flour
- Sugar
- Salt
- Baking Powder
- Vegan Butter
- Non-Dairy Milk
- Apple Cider Vinegar
Vegan Strawberry Topping Ingredients:
- Strawberries
- Sugar
Vegan Whipped Cream Ingredients:
- Silk’s Heavy Whipping Cream
- Vanilla Extract
- Powdered Sugar
How to make Vegan Strawberry Shortcake?
Making vegan strawberry shortcake homemade was surprisingly easy and I don’t think I’ll be buying those store-bought shortcake cups anytime soon.
How to make Vegan Strawberry Topping?
Making Vegan Strawberry Topping is easy and fun topping on shortcakes, pancakes, waffles, or other baked goods.
Start by cutting your strawberries. Some people slice thinly, others quarter them. Cut up your strawberries as you desire. Once the strawberries are cut place them in a bowl or Tupperware and toss with at least 2 tbsp of sugar, but you can add more as you desire. Adding sugar to the strawberries extracts and absorbs some of the water in the strawberry which creates the sweet strawberry syrup. Learn the science of this process works here.
Let the strawberries rest while you make your shortcake and whip cream. Allowing time for the syrup to be extracted.
How to make Vegan Shortcake?
I’ll be making the shortcake all in a food processor to minimize the number of dishes and make the process faster, but you can use your hands or a fork to cut the butter into the dough.
Cutting butter is a technique to incorporate cold butter into dry ingredients so that the butter stays in tiny clumps throughout the mixture which will melt during the baking process.
Measure out all your dry ingredients into a food processor or bowl. Next, cut your cold vegan butter into small cubes and add to your dry ingredients. Then you’ll want to cut the butter into the dry ingredients. You can do this by pulsing the mixture in the food processor a few times until your left with a crumbly textured mixture, or you can press the mixture in your hands or with a fork until all the butter has been mixed into the dry ingredients.
Next, you’ll want to add the non-dairy milk and apple cider vinegar into the mixture. Process the mixture more until a shaggy dough forms, or mix with a fork if you’re making in a bowl.
Once the ingredients are evenly incorporated roll it out onto a floured surface and cut the shortcakes out with a cookie cutter or a glass. Repeat until no dough remains. When you cut out the shortcake pieces don’t rotate the cookie cutter or glass. Rotating it seals the sides of the biscuits which restricts them from rising as much when baking.
How to make Vegan Whipped Cream with Silk’s Heavy Whipping Cream?
If you can’t find access to Silk’s Heavy Whipping Cream I’ll have vegan whip cream recipes from other food bloggers linked below. I found this product at Walmart.
To make this vegan whipped cream I recommend chilling your bowl in the fridge or freezer before you make this, but if you didn’t have the time or the opportunity to do that you can still make the whipped cream. It just might not reach as hard of peaks when whipped.
The great thing I love about this Silk Heavy Cream is I didn’t need any gums or stabilizers to make this whip cream work. The flavor of this heavy whipping cream is neutral and bland like traditional dairy base heavy cream would be.
Pour your heavy cream and vanilla extract in the chilled bowl and whip with an electric mixer for approximately 2 minutes, you’ll want to stop whisking right as soft peaks start forming. Next, add the powdered sugar and continue whipping the mixture for another minute or two until the peaks become harder. Store the vegan whipped cream in the fridge or freezer for up to 3 days.
*I used powdered sugar versus granulated sugar because it doesn’t leave a grainy texture in the whipped cream.
Substitutions:
Vegan Whipped Cream:
You can completely skip the whipped cream if you’d like, but if you want to make some and can’t find Silk’s Heavy Whipping Cream here are some whipped cream recipes recommend by you guys:
Coconut Whipped Cream from Minimalist Baker
AquaFaba Whipped Cream from Nora Cooks
Another topping you can use for these vegan strawberry shortcakes is vegan ice cream. Top this dessert with your favorite vegan vanilla ice cream.
Sugar-free:
You can make this recipe sugar-free by replacing the sugar with your favorite sugar-free sweetener, ours is stevia. Refer to the package of your sweetener if you need to adjust the measurements some, but this recipe will cook fine with a sugar-free sweetener. While I like to cook the shortbread with real sugar, I love using stevia instead of real sugar in the Strawberry topping. The stevia will extract the water from the strawberries and create a sweet syrup just like real sugar would.
Vegan Butter:
If you can’t find a Vegan Butter at your local supermarket you can use coconut oil or shortening. Crisco sells a butter-flavored shortening that we enjoy using for baking since it’s cheaper. You want a vegan oil/fat that is solid to achieve that crumbly melt in your mouth texture that shortcake has.
If you make this recipe we’d love to hear from you down below in the comment sections. You can also tag us on one of our social media or use our hashtag #vegantheway. You can also stay up to date with our new recipes and post by subscribing to our email notifications.
Thank you for checking out our Vegan Coconut Bread Recipe and make sure to check out our other vegan recipes like our Vegan Mushroom Stroganoff, or this fresh and healthy Tabbouleh Salad.
Vegan Strawberry Shortcake Recipe
Equipment
- Food Processor or Mixing Bowl and Fork
- Baking Sheet
- Electric Mixer
- Mixing Bowl Chilled
Ingredients
Vegan Strawberry Topping
- 3 cups strawberries sliced
- 2 tbsp sugar
Vegan Shortcake
- 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 6 tbsp cold vegan butter
- 1/2 cup non-dairy milk
- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
Vegan Whipped Cream
- 1 cup Silk's Heavy Whipping Cream
- 2 tbsp powdered sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 400° F.
Make the Vegan Strawberry Topping:
- Start by making your Strawberry topping to allow time for the syrup to develop.
- Cut the strawberries into your desired sized pieces and place in a bowl or Tupperware. Sprinkle the strawberries with the sugar. Lightly toss the strawberry and sugar. Cover the bowl and let the mixture rest in the fridge until you are ready to top the shortcakes. When you come back to it you’ll have a reserve of sweet strawberry syrup.
Make the Vegan Shortcake:
- Next, add your dry shortcake ingredients into a bowl or food processor.
- Using a food processor, fork, or your hands you’ll want to cut the cold vegan butter into the dry ingredients. If you use your hands for this I recommend washing them with cold water to reduce the chances of your body heat melting the butter too much.
- If you are using a food processor pulse the ingredients a few times until the mixture is combined yet crumbly. Refer to the blog for an explanation of what the technique of cutting butter is.
- Once you have a crumbly mixture, mix in the non-dairy milk and apple cider vinegar with the food processor or a fork. You want to mix the ingredients just enough so the dough forms together. It will be a shaggy dough, a little crumbly, but still wet.
- Once you have the formed dough mixture roll it out on a lightly floured surface until its 1 inch thick. With a cookie cutter or cup cut the dough into 2-inch circles. (Don’t twist the cookie cutter when cutting the dough, cut straight down as best as possible. Rotating the cookie-cutter as you cut the dough might seal the edges causing the shortcake to not rise properly.) Keep rolling out the leftover dough and cutting circles until no dough remains.
- Place the shortcake dough pieces on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Bake the shortcake for around 12-15 minutes, or until they start becoming a golden brown color.
- Once the shortcakes are finished cooking remove them from the oven and let them cool while you make the vegan whip cream.
Make the Vegan Whipped Cream:
- We used Silk’s Heavy Whipping Cream when we made this recipe. If you can’t find that product we have linked some other great whip cream recipes in the blog post above in the substitution section.
- With an electric mixer whisk the vegan heavy whipping cream and vanilla extract together until soft peaks begin to form. This will take around 2 minutes depending on the power of your mixer.
- Once soft peaks start forming add the powdered sugar and continue to whip the cream until you reach harder peaks. Careful not to whip past 4-5 minutes otherwise the cream will start separating like traditional heavy cream.
Build your Vegan Strawberry Shortcake
- Cut a shortbread in half, top with strawberries and whipped cream then enjoy. Store the strawberries and whipped cream in the fridge for up to 3 days. Store the shortbread in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days as well.