Gluten Free Cake Attempt #1

We're sure we aren't the only ones to notice that more and more folks and friends are requiring a gluten free diet recently. It's not something that we've be advised to take on or that we have any interest in trying but as we tend to bake for friends and family, this dietary restriction has been hindering our ability to bring joy and treats to a wider group of taste testers. We've augmented simple recipes to cut out gluten. Cheesecakes are an easy one because you just have to use gluten free graham crackers and we tell you, it tastes the same. It's no big deal, there is no compromise there. But, when it comes to more traditionally gluten based recipes, we've been chickens and shied away.

Now, we have a good friend Jamira who is getting married. She is a super sweet girl and we can't be more excited for her. She has been working out the details for her big day and has hit a snag when it comes to the major tradition of cutting and sharing the cake with her groom: she can't eat gluten. It has been decided that the venue will provide the guests with a "normal" cake while she and her groom will share a gluten free version that she will have to acquire. That's where we come in. 

Jamira has known us long enough to know that we care about what we bake and how it tastes. She has also tasted some of the treats that skipped the gluten necessity. She asked if we might be willing to attempt something like this and Sara showed her the picture below of a cake that we made for a dear friend's milestone birthday.  

  

We are willing to take on the challenge and pressure of baking for such an important event when the person is so important to us and we feel that we can fulfill a need. This is one of those cases. We don't bake for money, we bake because we love it. This time, it took a lot of research too.

There are a lot of different mixes and flour combinations out there to mimic the flavor and texture of traditional wheat flour. The reviews and comments around the web led us to believe that it all comes down to personal preference. Some people like bean flour substitutes, some people hate them...with a passion. There are myriad combinations of rice flours and others that you can buy and mix. That seemed a bit overwhelming for our first attempt. We decided to try out the King Arthur Gluten Free Flour mix and chocolate cake recipe on their website. It got a lot of good reviews and seemed appropriate for what we were attempting.

We found most of what we needed at Whole Foods. They have a big Gluten Free section and that's where we bought the King Arthur mix. It was about $11 for this much flour. Not so impressive but let's see what it can do.

Another major ingredient is Xanthan Gum. It's not major in that a lot is used. It's just major in that it's what is needed for the gluten texture. It's a very very fine powder but it packs an important punch. The only thing that we didn't find at Whole Foods that we were hoping to, was the King Arthur "Cake Enhancer" product. We don't know if it would do much good, but it was suggested and we'd like to try it.

We split the batter into two pans to make a layer cake. It looks and feels a little dense when done.

You can see by how the crumbs came off, there is some "cakieness" to it but it is not at all fluffy.

Then we went with our go-to frosting. It's a white chocolate french buttercream and it's our favorite!

 

When it all came together it looked like a cake, it smelled like a cake, it tasted like a cake...errr ding dong. We think that it must be a cake. Jamira was really happy with the taste test. She had not one, but two giant pieces. We'd be happier if it had a fluffier texture. It may be the inexperience and naiveté about gluten free goods talking but we're gonna try it again and see what we get. Next time, we might try the cake enhancer. We've also heard really great things about Pamela's Pancake and Baking Mix. 

Till next time...

12/19 Cranberry Cake

The weather this week has been pretty awful. It could have been our fault because we’ve been baking up a storm. We decided to finish off the year with a bang. In addition to our last quarterly challenge, we threw a party to celebrate the completion of our first year of baking and to celebrate the holidays.

We made fudge and pumpkin cheesecakes, hello dolly bars and spiced wine. This post though will be about the treat we were most excited about; the cranberry obsession cake.

Sara found this recipe online from Sunset magazine and was drooling and sharing it with me immediately. I must admit that I thought it could taste better if it were a raspberry cake but I agreed with Sara that cranberries were more Christmas-y.

The cake part came first and it was a perfect end to the year using our polished skills at separating egg whites. The recipe calls for 7 of them!

The cranberry filling was made next and it was truly delicious. I was really getting excited about this cake then.

The frosting was next and I’m again surprised at how good homemade frosting can taste. This is a new process that we hadn’t tried before. We used the rest of the egg whites in the carton (5 for those who weren’t paying attention) and cook them up with some sugar and a pinch of salt. This then gets beaten into a sort of meringue. 

Then a whole pound of butter and 12 oz of white chocolate get mixed in. We love this frosting.

We even made this cake again for Christmas dinner. The tartness of the cranberries is a great combination for the sweetness of the cake and frosting. It was really fantastic.

Lessons learned: In making this cake twice, we learned that some cherry preserves are better than others. We prefer… Also, we did not use the liqueur on the cake and felt it came out just fine. It wasn’t lacking anything.

Birthday Baking: Us! 9/18

It's birthday time in our family. Erin's(and her twin sister Ellen's) birthday is the 20th and Sara's is the 15th. Since our birthdays are so close together and we all get along so well, we usually celebrate together. This year we celebrated on the Saturday that fell between our birthdays by hosting a movie in the back yard. We rented a screen and projector, borrowed some patio furniture, had all sorts of movie treats like candies, hot dogs, pretzels and watched "Singing in the Rain." A little over 20 friends and neighbors were there. It wouldn't be a birthday party without a cake so we made one, and 24 cupcakes, and 24 mini cupcakes. Maybe we got a little carried away.  But it is our birthday and really who doesn't want to take home a tasty treat from a party.

The best part...  You take your favorite vanilla cake recipe, our is this one, and add a row of Oreo cookies that you have run through the food processor to the desired consistency and viola Cookies and Cream Cake!

For the frosting, we used our favorite cream cheese frosting recipe.  Super easy and super yum.  One 8oz room temp cream cheese, one stick of room temp unsalted butter, 3 - 4 cups of confectioners sugar.  Again we added a row of food processed oreos for the cookies & cream taste.  This amount of frosting covered all 24 standard cupcakes and 24 minis.  We made a second batch to frost the cake.

Can't really beat Cookie and Cream Cupcakes and Cake.  Happy Birthday to us!

Lessons learned: Cookies and cream equals vanilla cake recipe and oreos.   Also, we're getting better at frosting cakes and cupcakes. Sorry there are no pics of the cupcakes but they were pretty too.

Lemon Tequila Tres Leches Cake 7/10

Our friends Jerome and Becky invited us to a Tequila Tasting Party. We've been to one before and it's a lot like a BBQ centered around the vast quality Tequila collection of these connoisseurs of the cactus concoction. They're the biggest foodies we know and we are honored to have their support of this blog.
So what do you bake for a tequila party? Well, upon googling tequila and baking, we were excited to find a recipe for Lemon Tequila Tres Leches Cake. We've been thinking about making Tres Leches Cake and this would be a great opportunity for it to be enjoyed by several people. It's perfect!

First a little history: Tres Leches Cake is very popular in Cental and South America. Many different countries claim its origin and have their own versions. It doesn't seem to be known exactly where it came from or when.  It is believed that the cake is of European influence and is a result of their similar soaked cakes, translated and transported, then fixed up with local ingredients. Canned milks are a product of the 19th century so it can't be older than that. Nestle has claimed popularization by printing the recipe on their cans of condensed milk around the time of WWII. This is a familiar concept, just think about your Nestle Toll House morsels. A lot of information to be found on this dessert is conjecture but one thing is for sure, its delicious. Here's where you can find out more.

This was going to be the perfect cake. We decided on the recipe because of the ingredients. There are no words to express how perfect they are for this party. Here's the list:

1 3/4 Cup All Purpose Flour

1/2 tspn Baking Soda

1/2 tspn Salt

1 cup Granulated Sugar

1/2 cup Tequila 

3 lg Eggs

1 Vanilla bean scrapings

1 tspn Lemon Zest

3 tblspn Lemon Juice

1/2 cup Powdered Sugar

1 tspn Cream of Tartar

And that's just the cake. The ingredients are so exciting because 1)They have Tequila and that's perfect for this party, 2) Fresh lemon juice and zest are always a good thing, and 3) We've never used Vanilla bean scrapings before and its a perfect time to use them since Jerome was the one who gave us the ones we have in our stash of baking supplies.

The recipe comes from Cooks.com. We are not linking to it here because there are several flaws with it. We will explain here how we got ours to work and what went wrong with theirs. Here's how to make it and achieve success:

In a small-medium bowl, sift together salt, baking soda and flour. Set aside.

Separate your eggs yolks from your egg whites. We will use both but separately.

Combine the granulated sugar and the tequila.

Add the egg yolks to the tequila mixture and mix until the sugar is as dissolved as you can get it.

Add 1/3 of the flour mixture and mix till thoroughly combined. Add the next 1/3 and combine again, then finish it off.

Add the vanilla bean scrapings, lemon zest and juice and stir until combined.

The vanilla beans are new to us but we were up for the adventure. To do this, we cut he bean open length wise (we found it easier to do it in segments but it isn't necessary) and then run the knife along the inside of the bean. We ended up with a paste on the knife that when mixed in to the batter looked exactly like the black flecks in Vanilla Bean ice cream. 

The batter isn't done yet and now it's time for the hard part... Egg whites!

We've run the gamut with Egg Whites on this blog. First there was the Angel Food Cake for Dad's Birthday where the eggs didn't quite puff up probably having to do with some rogue yolk that found its way in. Then there was the Souffle for Mother's Day when we over beat the egg whites. This time we were going to do it right. So, instead of using the mixer, we went with a whisk and some patience.  

The egg whites were roughed up a little, then the powdered sugar and the cream of tartar were mixed in. We whipped it and whisked it for a good long while. We watched this to pass the time. This third time was indeed a charm.

This was then folded into the rest of the batter until it's all combined.

(Its a big pic so you can see the vanilla mmmmm)

Then it went into a 9x13 pan and into an oven at 375 for 20-25 minutes. 

This was our biggest contention with the cooks.com recipe. Aside from stating that the tequila, sugar and egg yolks should be beaten until fluffy (these things do not get fluffy), they recommend that the cake should be in the oven for 50-60 minutes. We found this to be way too long and didn't want to bring a browned cake to the party. We started all over again and found that 20 minutes was plenty of time. Here's the difference:

The darker cake looks acceptable on top but the bottom was not pretty. This happened after only 47 minutes. We wondered if maybe the cake should be cooked longer to become drier and soak up more of the milks but our 20 minute cake had no problem.  It tasted great and there were no complaints. If anyone knows better, please email us.

The milk mixture is easy:

1 cup Whole Milk

1 cup Condensed Milk

1 cup Evaporated Milk

We were nervous about the absorption so we poked holes in the cake. Not sure it was necessary but it didn't do any harm. The milk mixture was poured over top and it soaked in over a few hours. We left it refrigerated till serving and it was as we had hoped: perfect.

Lessons learned: Don't trust cooks.com or at least pick a recipe that had reviews. Also, if you're using a new recipe check on your cake frequently, not just near the end.

Anniversary Cake 5/31

Sorry, this is late. Haven't had much time to write up the post but here it is now. Enjoy!

Ellen is our sister and Monday was her 2 year Wedding Anniversary. Their wedding was a great event and all of the planning and preparations went smoothly except for one thing... the cake. Ellen and Brandon decided that their favorite cake is Yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Simple. Classic. Tasty. Erin insists that this is birthday cake but what you want on your wedding day is what you should get. You would think that this is a very easy thing to find at a bakery but you would be wrong just like we were. We went to over a half dozen bakeries around the Los Angeles area and they all felt that Yellow Cake and White Cake or Vanilla cake was the same thing. After hearing this a lot, we decided that maybe we didn't know something that they did so we scheduled a few tastings or should we say disappointments. Listen up bakeries; the customer is always right. First off a yellow cake should at least be yellow. Its just sad knowing that what you're about to taste and waste calories on is just not what you're looking for. Second, what makes the cake yellow is not food coloring, its egg yolk.

Yolk that adds the richness of flavor and that density that when combined with the sweet vanilla flavor brings you back to your childhood. Is that too much to ask?
We eventually did find a great bakery: Ms. Ruby's Bakery in Inglewood. She apparently specializes in Red Velvet Cake and Fried Chicken but her Yellow Cake is also amazing and the prices were VERY reasonable.
Flash forward 2 years and we're on a Yellow Cake mission again, this time to make it ourselves. We found a great recipe at Smitten Kitchen. Erin would like it noted that Deb at Smitten Kitchen thinks this is birthday cake too but here we turn it into... Anniversary Cake, ta da!
We really liked the use of parchment paper and greasing the pans with Baking Pam. That stuff smells soo good!

Voila! Beautiful!

And then there's the frosting.

We are big fans of this frosting because it's so easy. You put all the ingredients in the food processor and you're done. It's very cool.

These recipes can be found at the link above for Smitten Kitchen. The frosting is the Instant Fudge Frosting. The cake and the frosting taste great with a glass of milk.

Lessons learned: There's no harm is trying to do something better than a box mix. There was no disappointment with this cake. We might try for a more custardy flavor next time though. Maybe we'll add an extra egg yolk...

Flourless Chocolate Cake 4/8

This recipe came about for a couple of reasons.  1) Erin has a couple of co-workers that are on gluten free diets and have been wanting to try our creations.  2) I was on a strict diet a few years ago where I couldn't eat wheat and I didn't find wheat free food that tasted that good.  At lot of gluten free recipes use lots of specialized flours and sweeteners so we thought we would eliminate the extra ingredients (that we probably won't use again) and go with Flourless Chocolate Cake.

I have to admit to my addiction to Baking/Food Blogs.  I love looking at the pictures, reading the recipes, and witty commentary.  It is helpful to plan what we are going to make next.  I have come across a few recipes for Flourless Chocolate Cake and they looked so good.  The recipe from Gluten Free Goddess looked both simple and yummy.

The consistency of the batter was like a thick soup.  Being that this cake has no flour, this is more like Chocolate Souffle than Cake with all the eggs (8 in all).

The whole cake raised up pretty high as you can see but it did settle down nicely.

Because the recipe called for Strong Hot Coffee, the cake came out tasting kinda like a mocha.  The gluten free people at Erin's work liked it and because it is so rich the pieces went a long way.

Lessons learned: Hot coffee and food processor equal melted chocolate in a jiffy.  Although this has a long bake and chill time it is a pretty easy recipe over all.


On an unrelated side note....  Erin and I baked this weekend for a close friend's birthday.  Usually we are a good team when it comes to tag teaming a recipe however we kinda goofed on our first attempt at making dark chocolate cupcakes.  When mixing the recipe, we thought the other had measured and included the sugar. Neither of us did.  Instead of yummy cupcakes we had lumpy tasteless rocks.  Those of course, went straight into the trash and a new batch was made.  A definite lesson learned:  Forgetting the sugar doesn't mean sugar free and still good.  Baking is about chemistry. Both in the baking and in the teamwork.

Dad's Birthday 3/11

We were planning on making a Coca-Cola cake for Dad's birthday. Everyone that knows our Dad knows he loves Coke. He drinks it everyday instead of coffee. Coke was big in our house growing up. But last week when we were eating our Meatloaf, he suggested Angel Food Cake. He talked about how his Mom used to make it and how hard it was, but he loved it and how she switched to box mixes after she discovered them. All we heard was "Challenge!"
We went with Alton Brown's recipe which can be found here. The recipe calls for "orange extract or extract of your choice," we chose Almond and it went downhill from there. Ok, not really but it didn't go perfectly either.
The recipe calls for 12 egg whites. To get 12 egg whites, one must separate 12 eggs. 12 eggs is a lot. We aren't that experienced. You would think that we could at least crack an egg sufficiently but to make a long story short, using all 14 eggs in the fridge, our angel food cake had approximately 11 egg whites.

From there, there's a lot of whipping to do. We whipped till we couldn't whip anymore (about 2 minutes) and then we mixed. We mixed the sugar in as directed but did not "achieve medium peaks" as directed. As you can see from the picture, there were no real peaks to be had. Maybe this was due to our missing egg white but we don't know for sure.

We sifted in the remaining ingredients and hoped for the best.

 

There was a good cake mixture texture to it so we just went with it. Into the tube pan and into the oven.

Surprisingly and thankfully, it all came out alright. It rose as it was supposed to and smelled wonderful. We hung it upside down as suggested and went to bed. We both had nightmares about waking up to cake on the counter but it the morning, all was well.

The next day was Dad's birthday. We went to work and then went over to our parent's house to celebrate. We were excited to show him what we made, but we also had a confession. It wasn't about the cake being short one egg white because that didn't seem to matter too much. We had to admit that we are cowards. We were afraid of getting the cake out of the pan. It's shameful, we know but the pressure had mounted and we didn't want it to all fall apart now. If we broke the cake, it would have been ruined as a birthday cake and we couldn't have that. So, as tacky as it was we gave our dad his cake...in the pan. We're not proud of it but he's the one with the homemade Angel Food Cake experience. At first, he couldn't get it out either. He cut a piece out, loosening it all and then shook the rest of it out. He happily ate that piece. It tasted great. The texture was perfect. We were happy.

Dad said "You're sillier than you look" when he found out that we made the cake from scratch but we wouldn't have had it any other way.

Lessons learned: 1)Get better at cracking and separating eggs. 2)Food made with love can withstand some small mistakes. 

Birthday Baking: Rick 1/12

Rick works with Erin. He likes the Eagles. We went a little creativity crazy on this one but didn't get a good close-up pic. Sorry. Will do better in future.

These are cake pops like the reindeer meant to look like the helmets for the Philadelphia eagles. They are stood up on florist foam designed to look like their field. It was pretty fun to do.

We used chocolate coating from NY Cakes West. They come in all colors. These did not come out so well this time. The reindeer were very smooth, these ones not so much. The wings were outlined in food coloring pen, also from NY Cakes West and then filled in with Wilton's cookie frosting so it would harden.

Very strict criteria existed to see which would make the team. Not all of them were up to snuff. Pictured are the ones who made it. Rick knew what they were right away so it was a success. He bit into one and the rest immediately fell to the floor. Then we discussed if the pop was on the injured list or was that considered a fumble.

Lessons learned: Always have extra in order to field a full team.

Questions: Is Mom's stove better at melting the chocolate so that it's smooth?

Birthday Baking: Mom 1/9

Mom loves The Wizard of Oz, so we decided to use a theme from the movie for her birthday cake. We decided on blue birds flying over a rainbow cause "Somewhere over the rainbow, blue birds fly. Birds fly over the rainbow, why then oh why can't I?" (Strangely enough, some people didn't get it.)

The first cake was a disaster. Prime candidate for http://www.cakewrecks.com/ The reason was that we used canned frosting. Crumbs from the cake kept breaking off and getting stuck in the frosting. Twas a mess.

Take 2: Make our own frosting. Ah yes, that's the ticket. Tastier too. We also used a metal sandwich spreader and heated it in hot water to make sure the frosting would slide off. Worked like a charm.

Cue the birds: There's a great website called www.bakerella.com that has great instructions on cake pops. Their recipe makes over 40 cake pops but we only wanted a few birds so we chose their oreo cookie truffle recipe instead thinking we would waste less. The truffles came out alright but we wanted to put them on a stick so that they would "fly." Well, a lot of these baby birds were not ready for it. Only one got off the ground but the effect is worth it.

Lessons learned: Make frosting, don't buy. Truffles are not cake pops. Have Sara do the writing on the cake.