The summer before my senior year of high school, two of my friends from the junior class decided to learn how to play the oboe. They asked me for help, so I headed over to spend the afternoon teaching them the basics. Yet when I rang the doorbell with my instrument case in one hand and a stack of sheet music tucked underneath my arm, the two girls led me straight into the kitchen…
Where they begged me to help save their cookies instead!
They had bought a bag of sugar cookie mix at the grocery store, but when it failed to come together like the package’s instructions outlined, they had added milk… Lots and lots of milk. It looked like wet muffin batter, not pillowy soft and scoopable cookie dough!
I grinned, set down my purse, and immediately switched into baking mode. We searched the pantry for flour and sugar — flour to thicken, sugar to compensate for the flour and maintain the right sweetness level — and after a few minutes of sprinkling and stirring them in, the cookie dough finally looked right.
At the last second, they tossed in handfuls of chocolate chips before dropping mounds of dough into baking sheets and sliding them in the oven. When the timer buzzed, I watched as they carefully pulled out the trays, and after a few more moments of impatiently waiting, we each grabbed a hot cookie, broke it in half, and took a bite.
The girls’ eyes widened in shock…
The cookies actually tasted delicious! Sweet, buttery, soft, chewy, everything a cookie should be… Despite the near disaster of “muffin batter” cookie dough!
Yet after that adventure, the two girls asked me for something else in addition to oboe lessons that summer…
Baking lessons! And as their first made-from-scratch recipe, they requested strawberry shortcakes, a classic summer dessert staple.
So when they showed up at my house the following week, I printed a recipe off of the internet and guided them through each step: proper measuring techniques, different methods of mixing ingredients together, and patience. Because even when dough doesn’t look quite right in the mixing bowl… It often comes together in the end, if you don’t panic and just keep following the instructions! 
When I spotted strawberries at the grocery store last week alongside packages of premade shortcake dessert shells, memories from our first official baking lessons floated through my mind. Since the recipe I had picked to make back then wasn’t exactly healthy, I decided to purchase a few pints of berries and try creating my own version…
Which eventually resulted in these Ultimate Healthy Strawberry Shortcakes! They taste just as buttery as the ones we baked in high school, with the same lovely moist texture inside, and they’re filled with juicy fruit and dollops of luscious whipped cream.
However… These contain no eggs, refined flour or sugar — and there’s a dairy-free option too! You also need just one bowl to make them, and they’re only 121 calories!
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