Vegan Coconut Shortcake

Hey Shortstack, have some shortcake.

1 cup warm coconut oil
1 cup honey or other liquidy sweetner
1 2/3 cup coconut milk
3 heaping cups flour
1 pinch baking soda
2 pinch baking powder

Plus
seasonal fruit
whipping cream or soy milk

Preheat 350.

It is obnoxious and ultimately endearing when grandmas tell you that you need "you know, just the right amount" of an ingredient and that the correct amount of snuggling and scent-based nostalgia capital is required to make that advice work, but this might be an opportune moment to discuss that baking is an intuitive process that occasionally flops in a way that allows baking "it's all chemistry" snobs to chortle about how you failed freshman chemistry and handed in the final exam with only your name on it. But they don't have as much fun baking as you and I do, so just learn from the flops and enjoy the process anyway. We are superior and can read the stars through flour. Ha.

Coconut oil needs to be warm in order for you to mix it with the other ingredients. It is solid at room temperature, except in warm places without AC. Measure it out, melt it a little and then see if you can stir it with a spatula. I'd use a glass mixing bowl for this recipe, so that you can nuke it again if you have to.

Add all of the wet ingredients first. If there are coconut oil lumps, warm it a little bit more in the microwave. They do not radiate in a health-concerning way, hippy. I like your patchouli stink though.

Regarding the honey, if you don't like uber sweet stuff, use more like 3/4 cup rather than a whole one, Pontius. As for the coconut milk, if when you measured out the correct amount, there was only a tiny bit of the can left over, slosh it right into the recipe instead of throwing it away or saving it until it molds. The recipe can take it just fine. Shortcake isn't easy to ruin, due to its hearty, supposed-to-be-crumbly-and-dense nature. It is really all about the seasonal fruit anyway.

4 full cups of flour would make this recipe too dry, so just slightly over-measure 3 cups. Let the white flour dome over the top of the cup a little. Coconut oil is hard to stir, so is shortcake batter - use a light flour, so as to not make shortcake any heavier than it already is. Mix the soda and powder in with the flour too.

You can't pour this mo-fo dough into a mold, you have to spread it. Pick any shape. I made mine in a mold of every body's favorite Ninja Turtle, Michelangelo. Donatello is cool too, but Raphael and Leonardo are like plain shortcake. Mini-bundts might be nice too. Or some standard cake pan shape, if you like Leonardo. Throw it across the room out of pent up anger if you are a Raphael fan.

Bake for 30 min. Pull the heavy, tasty, brick out of the oven and serve with your twig, berries and whipped cream. I suggest lime juice and powdered sugar in the whipped cream and ripe blackberries on top of that.

If you want standard shortcake, make this recipe with the same amounts of oil (but canola) and coconut milk (but use vanilla or plain yogurt [or soygurt]). If I was you, I would totally use flavored yogurts matching with whichever seasonal fruit you are going to eat on top of the shortcake. Strawberry? Devine.