You can create your own shortcode, just a clone of the default one, but with that change, so paste this in your functions.php:
function custom_recent_products_FX($atts) {
global $woocommerce_loop, $woocommerce;
extract(shortcode_atts(array(
'per_page' => '12',
'columns' => '4',
'orderby' => 'date',
'order' => 'desc'
), $atts));
$meta_query = $woocommerce->query->get_meta_query();
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'product',
'post_status' => 'publish',
'ignore_sticky_posts' => 1,
'posts_per_page' => $per_page,
'orderby' => $orderby,
'order' => $order,
'meta_query' => $meta_query
);
ob_start();
$products = new WP_Query( $args );
$woocommerce_loop['columns'] = $columns;
if ( $products->have_posts() ) : ?>
<?php woocommerce_product_loop_start(); ?>
<?php while ( $products->have_posts() ) : $products->the_post(); ?>
<?php woocommerce_get_template_part( 'content', 'product' ); ?>
<?php endwhile; // end of the loop. ?>
<?php woocommerce_product_loop_end(); ?>
<?php endif;
wp_reset_postdata();
return '<div class="MY_CUSTOM_CLASS">' . ob_get_clean() . '</div>';
}
add_shortcode('custom_recent_products','custom_recent_products_FX');
Notice at the end of that function the "MY_CUSTOM_CLASS", change that for your needs.
This will create a new shortcode, almost same than the "recent_products" one but with that only change.
So to output this, just use on template:
echo do_shortcode('[custom_recent_products per_page="3"]');
Or in your posts:
[custom_recent_products per_page="3"]
I don´t know if this is the best approach, but for what i can see, the class "woocommerce" is returned directly on the recent_products shortcode function as html, so i can´t imagine how to filter or hook this by anotherway.
Hope that helps and sorry my bad english :)