Vegan + GF
Sugar Free Strawberry Biscotti
This strawberry biscotti is delicious and naturally sweetened with strawberries – no added sugars required, seriously. Brighten up your week with a batch of sweet and nutritious strawberry biscotti!
Flavor Profile
jammy | bright | macadamia nut
Pairing Suggestions
nut milk | cookie exchange | family time
This website uses affiliate links and I may earn a small commission off of purchases made using these links at no additional cost to you 🙂
Why you’ll love this strawberry biscotti recipe
- This biscotti is 100% vegan!
- They’re also gluten-free (or not if you don’t want) with Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 baking flour
- No butter. That’s right, and no, we’re not using margarine or coconut oil, either. Trust.
- No sugar! The inspiration for the recipe was making a holiday treat without any sugar. Instead, we’re cooking down a batch of strawberries and using their natural sugars to add sweetness and color to these cookies.
- Okay, okay, but what IS in these cookies? Wait for it … macadamia nut butter! Yes, you read that correctly. All you need are macadamia nuts and a blender and in minutes you’ll have a fresh batch of macadamia nut butter – the whole food source of fat needed to bring life to these sugar cookies.
- This recipe is naturally colored with fruit instead of using any crazy food dyes, which have become more and more closely researched and connected to DNA mutations, cancer, and inflammatory response pathways.1
Ingredients for sugar free strawberry biscotti
All purpose baking flour: to keep this recipe gluten free, I use Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 GF baking flour. Grab a bag with my Amazon link!
Frozen Strawberries: frozen strawberries are key! When plants freeze, the water in their cell walls expands so that we’re left with super soft berries once defrosted. This is ideal for this recipe, because we want to mash them up and have easy access to all their yummy juices.
Macadamia Nuts: not only is this recipe only sweetened with whole fruits, it’s also ONLY held together with macadamia nuts. These nuts easily blend into a smooth, single-ingredient butter that is thinner than most other nut butters. Macadamia nuts because of their high ratio of monounsaturated fatty acids to other fatty acids. Monounsaturated fats belong to the broader “unsaturated fat” umbrella that many will simply refer to as “good” or “healthy” fats.
Salt: it’s essential in almost all sweet recipes, despite how counterintuitive this may seem. Salt neutralizes acidity and combats any bitterness for a perfectly balanced bake.
Baking soda (powder?): the only leavening agent we need in this recipe. The acidity needed to activate the baking soda comes from the strawberry reduction.
Vanilla extract: the one thing that all sweet treats have in common – no classic sweet treat is complete without a dash of vanilla.
Almond Extract: if you know, you know! Feel free to leave it out if you don’t think it feels right, but I highly highly recommend adding it for a much more festive, grounded and warm flavor.
Garnishes and Toppings
Below are the ingredients I chose for garnish, but these biscotti are great on their own! If you want more inspiration, see the topping ideas section lower down in this post!
Aquafaba: the best baking hack you’ll ever discover! Traditional royal icing calls for RAW egg whites, which worries me from a food safety standpoint in the first place. Rest assured that you can lick the spoon because this vegan recipe swaps in whipped aquafaba (the excess water from a can of chickpeas) instead.
Lemon juice: just a quick squeeze to bring a bright, fresh flavor to complement the sugar cookies.
Freeze Dried Strawberries: for the final touch on this biscotti recipe, we’re grinding up freeze dried strawberries into a fine powder. I like to use a coffee grinder to accomplish this quickly and efficiently.
Other topping ideas
- White chocolate – the bright white and strawberry red hues will look great together!
- Dark chocolate – for my chocolate covered strawberry lovers – this one’s a no-brainer!
- Sprinkles – they make everything more fun, don’t they?
- Crushed macadamia nuts – to bring out that macadamia flavor in the biscotti dough!
- Powdered sugar – keep it simple and give them a quick dusting of powdered sugar on one end. Be sure to do this just before serving or the sugar will dissolve into the biscotti.
Step-by-step instructions
Start by making the macadamia nut butter and strawberry reduction. The nut butter is ready in minutes, just add the macadamia nuts to a blender and process on high until smooth and runny.
Start the strawberry reduction by adding frozen strawberries (frozen is essential!!) to a pot and cook over low to release the juices. Gradually increase the heat while you mash the berries into a thick pulp. Add a tablespoon of cornstarch, bring the pot to a boil, hold for 30 seconds, then cut off the heat. Viola!
Combine the strawberry reduction and macadamia nut butters along with the vanilla and almond extracts to form a smooth batter. Fold in the dry ingredients and chill the dough for an hour.
Take the chilled dough out of the fridge and knead the crushed strawberries into the dough, then form the dough into two logs. Bake the logs (first bake).
After the first bake, slice on a diagonal and bake the slices on their sides for another 10 minutes. They’ll crisp up some more as they cool.
FAQs
How is this recipe sugar free? Technically, all foods contain sugar, because sugar is a generic term for simple carbohydrates such as glucose, sucrose, fructose, galactose, and so on. When we say “sugar free” or “refined sugar free,” we just mean that there’s no processed sugars or syrups added. No honey, maple syrup, white sugar, brown sugar, coconut sugar, etc.
Is this recipe sweet enough without added sugars? Yes! The strawberry reduction we use is actually quite sweet on its own.
Why frozen strawberries? Freezing plant foods means that the expanded water will lyse the cell walls, making the fruit juices much more readily available to us upon reheating. You MUST use frozen strawberries for this recipe to work!
Is this recipe vegan? Certainly! No animals or animal products are required.
Is this recipe gluten free? Yep – just use a gluten free flour blend. I love Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 baking blend. Get it here on Amazon!
Recipe Card
Sugar Free Strawberry Biscotti
Equipment
- 1 Baking sheet
- 1 Parchment paper
Ingredients
- 2 ¼ c Bob's gluten free 1:1 baking flour
- 1 lb frozen strawberries
- 10 oz macadamia nuts
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp almond extract
- 1 TBSP corn starch
Garnish (optional)
- ½ cup freeze-dried strawberries, crushed
- 1 can chickpeas (just the liquids)
- 1 TBSP lemon juice
Instructions
- Strawberries (20 minutes): Start by heating the frozen strawberries in a small pot on the stove. Cook them whole over low heat for the first 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Once they are softened and releasing some juices, increase the heat to medium and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring more frequently now to prevent them from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Using a potato masher, start to break the strawberries down until no whole berries or large chunks remain. Now add 1 tablespoon of cornstarch, turn the heat to high, stirring constantly, until boiling. Hold the mixture at a boil for 30 seconds, then cut off the heat and let cool.
- Macadamia nuts (5-10 minutes): if your macadamias are not toasted, I recommend popping them in the oven to dry roast for 7-8 minutes at 350. Add the dry roasted macadamia nuts to a high speed blender and blend on high. They should liquify into a smooth, thin butter after just a few minutes. Pause to scrape down the sides of the blender as needed.
- Dry ingredients: whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder in a medium sized bowl. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, beat together the macadamia nut butter and slightly cooled strawberry sauce.
- Add the vanilla and almond extracts and continue blending.
- Add the flour mixture and blend until a tough dough forms.
- Chill the dough for at least 1 hour (max 36 hours).
- Preheat the oven to 350
- Shape the dough into two separate, wide logs, about 7 inches long and 2 inches tall. Place the logs on a parchment lined baking sheet.
- Slicing: Bake the biscotti for 20 minutes, then remove from the oven and immediately slice on a diagonal into 1 ½” pieces. Turn the pieces on their side and bake for another 10-15 minutes or until they start to lightly brown.
- Remove from oven and let cool before adding any garnishes. Enjoy!
References
- Zhang Q, Chumanevich AA, Nguyen I, et al. The synthetic food dye, Red 40, causes DNA damage, causes colonic inflammation, and impacts the microbiome in mice. Toxicol Rep. 2023;11:221-232. Published 2023 Sep 6. doi:10.1016/j.toxrep.2023.08.006