Paleo Sweet (ch)Eats: Strawberry Shortcake Cakepops

My friend Emily is obsessed with Cakepops so I decided to make her a little treat for her birthday last night. I wanted to do something different from a traditional cake, so I found this great brown butter strawberry shortcake recipe from Roost (they have a pretty great looking meringue too).

I'll list the recipe below, if you don't feel like clicking on the original link, but first I'll explain the basics of making a cakepop.

There are tons of amazing blogs with ridiculously adorable and cray designs, but I went for a simple dark chocolate and coconut combo. Peruse the interwebz if you'd like to be a bit more adventurous.

Cakepop assembly consists of four steps:
1. Bake a cake
2. Form balls of cake once the cake has cooled to a manageable temperature
3. Stick skewers or lollipop sticks in the balls and freeze for 15-30 minutes
4. Dip, decorate, cool and nom!

Okay, so step 4 could easily be 5-10 steps in itself, but you get the gist.

Brown Butter Strawberry Shortcake
1 3/4 cup almond flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp maple syrup/honey
3 eggs
4 tbsp grass-fed butter or coconut oil
1/2 cup strawberries (chopped)

Pre-heat your oven to 350F. Grease a 8" cake pan with coconut oil and line the bottom with parchment paper.

In a small sauce pan, heat the butter over medium-low heat until fragrant. If you are substituting with coconut oil, skip this step. In a separate bowl, blend the rest of the ingredients together, except for the strawberries. Then add the melted butter or coconut oil to the mixture until well blended. Fold in the strawberries and then pour the batter into the cake pan.

Bake for 25 minutes.

I melted some Enjoy Life chocolate chunks to dip my cake balls and then coated with unsweetened coconut.

Sweet and Tangy Tuna Steak

I reached an all time record on money spent at Fairway today, but I'm not upset because its going to be a full week (or more) of delicious quality noms!

Lucky me, one of my roommates bought an extra tuna steak and asked me to come up with a little something. I decided to go for a sweeter, crisp marinade to reflect the warm weather today.

4 tuna steaks
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup coconut aminos
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 clove garlic - minced
1/2 tspn chopped oregano
1/2 tspn ground black pepper

Mix the ingredients and marinade the tuna steaks for at least 40 minutes. Heat your FOC over medium heat in a pan, or grill the steaks for 5 minutes on each side.

Quick and easy! Happy nomming!

Hawaiian Short Ribs

This recipe is partly courtesy of Martha Stewart (original recipe here). The slow cooker has become a great friend of mine... Only problem is that when I'm actually home, I'm very inpatient and want to check the cooker every hour. #culinarytorture

3.5-4lbs grass-fed short ribs (trim fat)
2 red onions - thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves - smashed
3" piece of ginger - peeled and thinly sliced
1 cup coconut aminos
5 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp sriracha
3 cups pineapple - peeled and cubed
Chopped scallion

Line the bottom of a slow cooker with the onions, garlic and ginger. Line the short ribs tightly over the onions. In a bowl, whisk together the aminos, vinegar and sriracha, and pour over the ribs. Cook on high for 4 hours, then add the pineapple and cook for an additional hour.

Serve with caulirice and some roasted seaweed strips and enjoy!