The basic idea is to use 3 ingredients: a rich cake, fresh-tasting strawberry, and fresh cream.
The big problem is finding a rich cake flavoring without diacetyl or the substitutes. They ALL have it. So if you want strawberry shortcake anyway, at least choose the very tastiest rich cake - and hope it's one you can use in very small percentages.
I try to avoid discussing flavorings and recipes with "those" ingredients, but I'll post this one with the disclaimer that I'm not trying to promote
vaping anything you don't want to
vape. FA Pandoro is a very rich, lemony pound cake flavor that makes awesome shortcake: (FA = FlavourArt)
5% FA Strawberry
2% FA Fresh Cream
1% FA Pandoro
Shake and
vape. By my calculation, this recipe contains 0.02% "custard notes" from Pandoro. It's a very concentrated flavoring, so at least it doesn't require much. This is very tasty strawberry shortcake!
(I should mention - this is a pretty strongly flavored recipe. If you like lighter flavor, make a small batch and add some additional nic base. A half-strength version is still tasty, but light flavor.)