Almost no bake red, white and blue, strawberry and blueberry 4th July Flag Cake. gluten free or with
Everyone must have tasted a version of this dessert before now, but not everyone has the recipe. It tastes great, for adults and kids alike, and feeds a horde, which suits Mom. The taste is very similar to dirt pie. The base and cream filling can be made a day in advance, and get the kids to ‘assemble’ the flag, just prior to serving. Don’t blame me when they complain they can’t fit enough stars on out of blueberries, or sufficient stripes from the strawberries. You take the rough with the smooth when the children help out in the kitchen. The only change one has to really make for gluten free is to use gluten free cookies in the base. Everything else should be gluten free. I am realistic, while I might make this with from scratch shortbread base, we all used to buy regular flour graham crackers or Oreos and making them into a cookie crumb base, so do the same for gluten free. I think this base with nuts tastes so much yummier than a plain graham cracker crust. Crew at ABC’s WMUR when I demo’d it on Friday 24 June, years ago, obviously agreed, because they devoured it.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=atF7R5MOHQg from 2011. See how young Sean looks
BTW, if you are new to gluten free, replace your old electric hand mixer since flour can be stuck in vents ready to fall into food. Also be aware that far too many electric hand mixers available now, DO NOT have stainless steel beaters/ They don’t label the box saying this; don’t state it on web sites and are reluctant to give an answer on the phone. So in other words the beaters will rust if you wash them in dishwasher.
Base:
2 cups (buy 8 oz or near enough) of gluten free cookies. I have made this with homemade gluten free graham crackers. (Free From golden crunch gf cookies, Josef gf vanilla cookies. (BTW the Josef vanilla cookies didn’t taste fresh when I opened the foil packet dated through November 2011, but once baked they tasted better than the crust with the golden crunch cookies. I do like both Josef gf Chocolate ‘O’s’ (oreo lookalike) and Cinnamon ‘O’s’. The chocolate O’s are the best gluten free oreo lookalike I have tasted so far). (update July 2014 – Trader Joe's joe joes or Pamela's extreme chocolate mini cookies or Schar gf shortbread cookies)
1/4 c light brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
2 c (8oz) pecans, almonds, hazelnuts or walnuts. I have made this with all the nuts except for walnuts which I don’t really like.
1/2 c (4oz) soft butter or Earth Balance or coconut oil
Filling:
2 x 8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature (lite or neufchatel is fine, stores own brand is fine)
Either 2/3 c powdered sugar plus ¼ c honey for flavor, or 1 cup powdered sugar
2 tsp gluten free vanilla extract - 2019 vanilla extract has become ridiculously expensive
1 sachet of Knox gelatin sprinkled over 2 tbsps cold water in a small microwave safe bowl like a ramekin and stirred in. Gelatin looks like fine sand and when mixed with cold water becomes like a piece of rubber until heated.
1 pint, 2 cups heavy or whipping cream (or 2 x 8 oz cool whip– lite is fine, thawed in fridge - I know cool whip gets a bad rap now, but it does taste delicious, your choice)
1 basket of blueberries
2 baskets of strawberries (normally 2 lbs in total). Yes, you could use raspberries as long as they are sweet, but they will be far more expensive
1 extra cup of heavy cream, 2 tbsp sugar, 1 tsp gf vanilla extract, whipped until stiff for decorating.
Base:
Preheat oven to 350*
Roughly break up cookies in your fingers and process in food processor to crumbs. Add brown sugar, cinnamon and nuts and process until fairly finely chopped but not ground. Add butter and run to mix. The mix looks quite moist but not a dough. Spread into greased 9 x 13 pan and press with hand or spoon to form a firm base.
Bake in 350* oven for 20 minutes, remove from oven and cool completely. It will crisp up on cooling.
Filling:
Combine cream cheese, confectioners sugar, vanilla and honey in a 6-8 cup bowl. Beat until smooth.
Heat gelatin and water mix in microwave for about 10 seconds until totally dissolved and looking like a pale yellow brown liquid. You must make sure all gelatin is dissolved otherwise it sets into little rubbery lumps. Whisk into cream cheese mix.
Whip the 2 cups of cream until stiff in a separate bowl and gently whisk into cream cheese mix. I find if you let the electric hand mixer gently mix cream in, you don’t need to gently fold cream in by hand. Add thawed cool whip now instead of cream if that’s what you decided to use instead of real cream. Taste and see if it is sweet enough for you. If not add some powdered sugar 1 tablespoon at a time and gently beat in. Spread over cooled crust.
Place blueberries touching in a square about 4 x 4” for the stars. Place halves or whole strawberries (depending on size) touching to make the red stripes on the ‘Stars and Stripes’. I try and squish in as many strawberries as possible in rows. I don’t leave a space between the rows.
Using a star food tube, pipe stars of cream in the blueberry square. Pipe lines of stars between the rows of strawberries to give you the white stripes. I also like to pipe cream around the outside edge of pan and around the inside edge of blueberries to make everything look prettier. Refrigerate for about two hours before serving. Once you cut into this along the cream rows, it stops looking pretty. It can’t be helped but the taste makes up for this.
ENJOY!
Note: I use gelatin to stop the cream cheese mix from flopping in the heat. Gelatin doesn’t make mix hard, just holds it together better. So vegetarians don’t have to use gelatin or use a vegetarian gelatin..
If you are looking at this recipe for a 9 x 13 dish and thinking I really don’t need that much. You can easily make just half in an 8x8 brownie pan. Use half in a 9 or 10” pie plate and put strawberries and blueberries or any fresh fruit in circles. If even 8 x 8 is too much (and I totally understand. When I experiment I try and make as small a quantity as possible - both for calories and cost), then see what other dishes, even cereal bowls, custard cups or ramekins you have. To double check what pan will fit. Pour water into an 8x8 pan or 9 x 13 pan and count how many cups of water it holds. Choose the pan you would like to use, measure that with water and then do the math on paper to see how much to decrease recipe by. If you watch the clip from WMUR you will see I have a small 6” glass pie plate and a 4 “ mini spring form pan - I think from Wilton cake supplies at Michaels or other craft or baking supply stores. Just make sure that whatever dish you use, it is oven safe since you will be baking crust.
