Show Stopping Gluten Free Strawberry Mascarpone Almond Cake, that's a mouthful

Gluten Free Strawberry Almond Cake with Mascarpone Cream

I make a lot of gluten free desserts, but for the most part, I'm not a fan of the whole GF flours, rice is grainy, bean based ones that taste like beans, corn is something I avoid more than wheat. I'm just not happy with a lot of them, so looking back on the good old paleo diet days, I like the nut based ones, and although I have used hazelnut and cashew, I like almond the most. I can buy the meal from TJs, and it doesn't need lesser known additives to work. (Having said that I do use arrowroot for savory applications.)

I know some people insist on almond flour instead of meal, but the truth is really difference is moisture, meal is larger and therefore more moist, instead of light and fluffy. I'm cool with more moist, I prefer my cakes on the coffee cake side over the spongy and in my opinion less flavorful.

I like my interior strawberries chopped, it makes for easier slicing, just separate the berries into pretty and eh, and chop the eh.

Ingredients

2 pints strawberries

2 cups almond meal
1 cup sugar
pinch of salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
6 egg whites

16 oz. mascarpone
3 cups cream
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Sliced almonds for decoration

Draw three different eight inch circles on parchment paper. Turn paper upside down. Cut to fit onto trays. Spray top with a little oil spray.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Beat egg whites until soft peaks form, slowly add in vanilla and 3 tbsp sugar. Continue whipping until stiff but not dry peaks form.

Mix together remaining sugar and almond extract.

Carefully fold in almond mixture. Try and keep as much body as possible.

Place 1/3 of the mixture on each circle. Spread towards the edges.

Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until mostly firm and slightly browned. My slow oven took close to 40 minutes.

Cool cakes.

Make cream.

Combine cream, mascarpone, cream, vanilla, and sugar. Whip a little and taste to see if you need more cream, I tend to like my creams less sweet.

Whip until stiff, this cream needs to hold up a lot of cake.

Separate strawberries by half into pretty and less pretty. I like to save the smaller ones. Chop up the less pretty and slice most of the pretty.

Start layering cake with cake,