I thought back to an appetizer I had made several years ago at the urging of my mother – the biggest strawberry lover I know – which was so successful that it found its way into my first cookbook, Nearly Normal Cooking for Gluten-Free Eating. I turned to page 25, and reviewed the simple ingredient list peeking out from under the well-aged strawberry juice stains. When I first published this book, I was not dairy free; I now know that I, and many others with celiac disease, must avoid dairy, so I have made some simple modifications to the original published recipe to render it dairy free. (If you may still enjoy dairy, I have left those original ingredient alternatives in the recipe for you.)

Once I made this soup, I recalled having wished for some crunchy counter-balance like a sweet cracker or light cookie. Something crispy, with subtle chocolate and nut flavors to complement but not overpower the strawberry focal point. I thought instantly of tuiles, or “tiles” in French, which are very thin, crispy cookies that are cooled straight out of the oven by draping them gently over a rounded handle, so that once fully cool and stiff, they take on a shape much like curved roof tiles. They may be cut into flower shapes, hearts or simple circles, and even shaped into cornucopias to hold cream or frozen delicacies.

So, I set to work to create the perfect tuile for my soup. What began as tuiles though, wound up as fun broken crisps easy to munch or to dip into my delicious strawberry concoction. Thinking that I wanted to serve the strawberry soup with cracker-like tuiles, I made my life easier by simply spreading the batter onto parchment paper, baking and breaking the crisps off in random shapes and sizes for dipping. As such, I did not need to spread the batter as paper-thin as necessary for traditional rolled tuiles.

These slightly thicker crisps hold up nicely with both my strawberry soup and my sorbet variation as well, but feel free to spread this batter super thin (so you can almost see through it) and use templates or cookie cutters if you intend to shape your tuiles into cups, cornucopias or other rounded shapes while cooling.

So, appetizer or dessert, strawberry soup or sorbet, shaped tuiles or broken crisps, there is something here for everyone to enjoy before even all the mushy strawberries have been picked!

• 2 pints (4 cups) fresh, very ripe strawberries
• 1/2 cup granulated cane sugar (Wholesome Sweeteners®)
• 3/4 cup sour cream, dairy or non-dairy (Tofutti® Better Than Sour Cream®)
• 1/2 cup half and half OR liquid soy or coconut creamer (Silk® Soy Creamer)
• 1 1/2 cups dry white wine or fruit juice (Château Morrisette Viogner)
• strawberries and/or whipped cream for garnish (Soya Too!® Soy Whip)

Wash and cap all the strawberries, then purée them with the sugar in a large blender or food processor. Pour the purée into a large bowl and whisk in the sour cream, half and half or creamer and wine or juice.

Soup Preparation:

Cover and refrigerate until well-chilled. Serve with cut strawberries and/or whipped cream for garnish.

Freeze your strawberry soup to make a yummy sorbet!

Sorbet Preparation:

Pour into individual cups or glasses, or into a large flat-bottomed bowl, cover and freeze until hard. To serve individual glasses, simply remove the covering and garnish with strawberries and/or whipped cream. To serve as cubes of sorbet, cut sorbet squares from the flat-bottomed bowl and serve in glass bowls. Serve sorbet immediately.