July 4th Celebration Desserts

It was a nice July 4th long weekend in USA. The weather was wonderful, sunny, hot but with breeze. Did lots of yard works, watched fireworks and parade. In addition, we had some friends and family coming to visit for several good meals. I made 2 desserts to celebrate the Independence Day weekend. The first one was a strawberry cranberry pie since it is the season for fresh strawberry. In order to make it gluten free, I had to make the pie crust from scratch. It is actually a shortbread kind of crust, which holds all the liquid from cooked strawberry and cranberry very well. I used the frozen cranberry to add some tangy to the sweetness of the strawberry. The topping was made of oatmeal, rice flour, butter and sugar. It turned out to be a great pie!

The 2nd dessert was a gluten free version of pineapple upside down cake. The base was the stored bought yellow cake mix. The topping was the caramelized pineapple with cherry. It was just OK since the cake was a little bit dry. I used to add instant pudding mix or sour cream to improve the taste and texture but decided not to this time. And what a mistake I made! Will not repeat that mistake again! Overall, it was a great weekend! And there were so many fireflies outside in the garden at night time to make it look like small fireworks in the yard! Hope that all my US friends had a great 4th of July weekend too!