Readers of this blog might have guessed that I don’t normally hold with gluten free. Its kind of a religious position, and for me it is indefensible because of the happy fact that I don’t have to. I posses cells which will synthesise the blessed enzymes which process that most useful (from a baking perspective) of proteins with few ill effects (accepting for the moment that getting fat is not an ill effect).
Not everybody is so blessed. I have come to know and love people who range from the coeliac to the general common or garden anti-glutenite, and I have come to look upon their lives with awe (how can you really not eat cake?) and pity (how can you really not eat cake?).
Sadly the answer appears to be “I can’t eat it because if I do, a number of seriously unpleasant things happen in my body”. I can only sympathise. Life is spectacularly unfair. But I am here to help.
I still refuse to enter into that area of molecular gastronomy which requires weird mixes of GF flours which all taste like paper, or worse, the addition of vegetable (read: tree) gums as gluten impostors. But I am quite prepared to go nuts while I tackle the problem of gluten free cake.
And here’s one:
Gluten free Hazelnut Nutella cupcakes
Cupcakes
ingredients
200g of caster sugar
4 eggs
1tsp vanilla
200g hazelnut meal
100g rice flour
2tsp baking powder.
Nutella (a jar. you won’t need a jar but you might want to eat it by the spoon while baking and that’s OK with me).
mixing
Line a 12 hole muffin pan with cupcake cases, spray with non-stick spray.
Beat the eggs and sugar with the vanilla until light and creamy – all the sugar should be dissolved and the mixture should have tripled in volume. Fold in the hazelnut meal, rice flour and baking powder.
Spoon into the prepared pan, top with a blob of Nutella.
Bake at 180 for about 20-25 minutes, ice with whipped ganache or flavoured buttercream when cool.
Ganache
100g dark chocolate (about 60% cocoa solids has a nice sweetness for ganache)
100ml pouring cream (45% milkfat or thereabouts)
Heat cream over double boiler or in microwave until nearly boiling. Remove from heat, add chopped chocolate. Stir gently until chocolate is all dissolved and the mixture is smooth and glossy. Let cool.
When room temperature, beat with electric mixer until the ganache starts to lighten in colour. Don’t beat too much – this will cause the mixture to seize – still delicious but not so pretty.
Big cake
You can also make a single cake out of this – divide the mixture between two 20 cm cake pans lined with baking paper (bottom AND sides), and bake at 160 degrees Celsius for the 35 minutes. You want to bake the big cakes slower and a little longer to assist the proteins in the eggs to congeal – a faster baking time results in the centers falling. A very sad state of affairs.
Sandwich these together with ganache.
I have plans for this cake. I am seeing it layered with ganache and then coated with ruffles of strawberry powder-infused Italian buttercream. I’ll let you know how that goes.
K
xxx
By the way, Ive just been told by one of my GF friends that this is the best cake she has had all year. Pretty good!