WARNING: This recipe is “Grandma style”… e.g., a little bit of this, a little bit of that, because I didn’t actually bother measuring anything 😮
And one other warning: these are a bit messy to prepare (given the different powders) and also to eat (the powder gets all over your fingers), so toothpicks or forks are recommended 🙂
TIME TO PREPARE
About 15 minutes for 2 pounds of strawberries
INGREDIENTS, most of them optional
- Strawberries (duh!); should be fresh & not frozen
- Sweeteners (I used brown sugar and powdered allulose)
- Pinch of salt (important: must be fine-grained!)
- Vanilla extract
- Unsweetened cocoa powder
- Cinnamon
- Red pepper flakes (like the kind you put on pizza)
STEPS
1) Wash and cut the tops off strawberries
2) Let them dry on a wire rack for a few minutes (easier than wiping the water off with a paper towel)
3) After that, transfer them face-down to a parchment-paper-covered baking sheet or any other long-flat surface.
4) Squeeze 2-3 drops of vanilla extract on each strawberry
5) Separately in a bowl add brown sugar, cinnamon, red pepper flakes, unsweetened cocoa powder, finely-powdered allulose* and a small pinch of salt and mix well
6) Coat the strawberries with the mixture. It may be easier to do this by pinching the powder and dumping on each strawberry vs. dunking each strawberry in the mixture to avoid making the mixture wet & clumpy.
7) Enjoy!
And of course, as you probably guessed, you can be very flexible with those ingredients! The main important parts are to balance the sweetness with a bit of bitterness (cocoa) and spiciness (probably any kind of pepper!).
* Allulose is a naturally occurring sugar found at low levels in figs, raisins, wheat, maple syrup and molasses and has 90% fewer calories than regular sugar and potentially positive gut benefits. However, it’s not easy to find locally (I bought it on Amazon) and can be expensive, so you can absolutely substitute just more brown sugar or any kind of (ideally finely powdered) sugar.