Gluten Free Devil's Food Cake

I have never been able to make a really good gluten free chocolate cake.  They always turn out dry or dense. I've tried Pamala's chocolate cake mix which is not bad in a pinch, it always tastes "gluten free" to me. Betty Crocker's gluten free chocolate cake mix is actually pretty good (a bit dry), but I love to pride myself in making things from scratch.

This weekend, for Easter, I adapted a Martha Stewart's recipe for a chocolate cake that turned out great! Now, hopefully everyone wasn't just being nice, but I thought it tasted yummy! I doubt my whole family would lie to me...some had second helpings which tells me it was a success! Finally, a chocolate cake recipe from scratch that I can use more than once!

Now, I will tell you, Martha's instructions were pretty annoying and high maintenance. Add this one at a time, stir twice, bla bla bla...everything turned out just fine even though I added the chocolate mixture in first instead of the flour... Come on Martha, can't you make things a little more simple? So, I've changed some of her instructions to make it easier.



Ingredients:
3/4 cup dutch process cocoa powder*
1/2 cup bowling water
1 cup milk
1 1/2 (3 sticks) unsalted butter plus more for pans
2 1/4 cups sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs, lightly beaten

3 cups gluten free flour*
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 tsp xanthum gum
1/2 tsp salt

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter two 8 or 9 inch round cake pans.
2. Sift cocoa into a medium bowl and wisk/stir in the boiling water until there are no clumps. Set aside and let cool.
3. In a large bowl or electric mixer, cream the butter until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the sugar until light and fluffy, 3 or 4 minutes, scraping down the sides. Beat in vanilla. Drizzle in eggs, a little at a time.
4. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, xanthum gum, and salt.
5. Whisk the milk into the reserved cocoa mixture until smooth with no clumps.
6. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour and cocoa mixtures to the batter, a little of each at a time, starting and ending with the flour mixture.
7. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared pans. Bake until tester comes out clean, about 35-45 minutes.
8. Let the cakes completely cool before attempting to remove them from the pans.
9. Frost with your favorite frosting!

*Want to make Cupcakes? Simple put batter into prepared cupcake tins and bake for the same amount of time. Makes about 24 cupcakes.

*I read up on this type of cocoa. It is different than your normal cocoa ( I usually just use Hershey's baking cocoa). Dutch cocoa is processed differently so that it tends to make cakes less dry! So, my guess is using this type of cocoa helped this turn out more moist than in would have with normal cocoa. I used Hershey's dark chocolate cocoa powder.

My 'go to' chocolate frosting recipe:

Ingredients:
1 cup whipping cream
6 oz semi sweet chocolate chips
1 tbs butter

Instructions:
Heat the whipping cream and butter, bring to a simmer. Pour over the chocolate chips. Stir until smooth, and let cool, stirring occasionally. Once the chocolate mixture is cool, which may take 30-60 minutes, whip with an electric mixture until you get a creamy, consistency. It should turn a little lighter in color. Spread on cake as desired.

*Chocolate Buttercream Frosting:
2 sticks of room temperature butter
2 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon vanilla
Milk to thin

Gluten Free Pizza Crust

It seems like I went years without eating pizza. Can you even imagine?... Luckily many restaurants have gluten free pizza now, Romio's, Boston's, and Garlic Jim's. Recently, I've learned how to make gluten free pizza at home. Let me tell you, it is a WHOLE lot cheaper, and tastes just as good!

Dry Ingredients:
1/2 cup corn starch
1 3/4 cup gluten free flour*
2 tsp xanthum gum
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbs sugar
2 1/2 tsp yeast
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp oregano

Wet Ingredients:
3/4 cup water (more if needed)
2 tbs cottage cheese*
2 eggs
2 1/2 tbs olive oil
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbs honey

Instructions:
1. Preheat the oven to 175
2.Combine the dry ingredients, except for the yeast, in a bowl.
3. Combine the wet ingredients.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet
5. Add the yeast on the top of the dry ingredients.
6. Beat on low with a mixer until well blended, add water if needed to get the right consistency. It should look like wet cookie dough.
7. Place on a pizza pan or stone. Oil a spatula or oil hands and spread the dough on the pizza pan until it forms a crust shape. It will be sticky, so it may be hard for it to get a good pizza shape. It should cover a large pizza pan.
8. Place in the preheated oven, and turn off the oven. Let the dough rise for 45 minutes
9. Reshape the dough if needed after it has risen.
10. Pre-bake the dough at 350 for 10 minutes.
11. Add your favorite toppings/ sauce etc.
12. Bake another 10-15 minutes, broil the top if desired.

*1 3/4 brown rice flour or 1 1/2 cup brown rice flour and 1/4 cup sorghum flour
*2 tbs sour cream will work as well if you don't have cottage cheese.



It is alot easier to make than it looks! Good luck!

3 Minute Gluten Free Chocolate Mug Cake

Last night my husband and I had a hankering for something sweet, but I did not feel like spending too much time in the kitchen.  I remembered having a recipe for a 3 minute chocolate mug cake recipe...I could not find it...and so I found it online and made it gluten free. It turned out pretty well, and took about 5 minutes total to make.


1 Large Coffee Mug
4 Tablespoons gluten free flour*
1/4 Teaspoon xanthum gum*
4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons baking cocoa
1 Egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil
3 Tablespoons Chocolate chips (optional)
Small splash of vanilla

Instructions:
Mix all the dry ingredients in the mug, add the wet ingredients. Mix well ( Be sure it is mixed thoroughly, the flour tends to get stuck on the bottom of the mug). Cook in the microwave for 3 minutes. It will rise over the top of the mug, but don't worry, it will not spill. It will sink back down once it is done.

*I used mainly sorghum flour, only because that is what was in my flour canister. I'm sure brown rice would work great too.

 

*If you don't have any xanthum gum on hand, my guess is that it would work fine without any. Usually if a recipe has alot of eggs you do not need much xanthum gum. 

 

Good luck!

Pancakes!

Another go to recipe I use often. Great for breakfast, dinner, or a snack, and easy to make! My mom taught me when I was young how to make a peanut butter and jelly pancake sandwich, so sometimes I make that for lunches in substitute for bread.

Ingredients:

1 cup gluten free flour*
1 cup milk
1 egg
2 tbs oil
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbs sugar
1/4 tsp xanthum gum

Buttermilk variation: add lemon juice to milk about 2 tsp

Instructions: Combine all ingredients with a whisk. Mix until all lumps are gone. Cook on stove top or griddle like you would any other pancake!

 Flour variations:

*1 cup brown rice flour (my preference because it is so easy!)
*3/4 cup brown frice flour and 1/4 cup tapioca flour

Sandwich Bread

After years of eating the cardboard rice bread from the store, I've discovered how to make gluten free bread at home! The bread from the store is fine, I'm used to it, but nothing is better than warm, fresh, gluten free bread.  Bread that actually has some sponginess to it and can be used for a sandwich without having to toast it first... 

Some facts about GF bread I have learned so far...

Do not try and adapt normal recipes and try to make it gluten free....it DOES NOT work. I tried this once and got a door stop...Adapting recipes can work for other things, but NOT bread...

Your batter should look like "cake batter", so I have read, but I usually have this recipe look more like cookie dough batter. In other words, GF bread dough is thinner than normal gluten doughs, it will not make a dough ball.

The reason GF breads call for things like eggs and milk powder is because GF flour lacks proteins that wheat flour has, therefore you need to add them some other way.

I am fairly new at making gluten free bread. This is the only one I have found worth making more than once. I adapted this recipe from one I found online. It is pretty flexible as far as what kind of flour you use. See below for flour variations.

Ingredients:

Wet:
3 eggs
1tsp cider vinegar
1/4 cup butter or oil
1 1/2 cup water (room temp)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbs honey (will work without if you do not have honey on hand)

Dry:
 3 cups gluten free flour*
1/3 cup cornstarch
1 tbs xanthum gum
3 tbs sugar
2/3 cup milk powder
2 1/4 tsp yeast

Instructions:
(For a bread maker)
Combine the wet ingredients in a bowl, all room temperature. ( If the ingredients are not room temperature, I use warm water instead of room temp warm water which makes the rest of the wet ingredients pretty much room temp)
Combine all of the dry ingredients, minus the yeast in a separate bowl.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet (in the bread maker pan), and pour the yeast on the top (make sure it does not touch the wet ingredients)
Use a gluten free setting, if your breadmaker has one, otherwise just choose the whole wheat option.

I have not baked this bread without a breadmaker yet, but it should work fine. Try blending it with a hand mixer, let it rise in a warm place, and bake until golden brown. My guess would be about an 1- 1.5 hours. The saying I use often is, "cook it until it is done!". So, try it out and let me know how it goes! 

 Flour combinations:
*2 cups brown rice flour, 1/2 tapioca flour, and 1/2 sorghum flour (my preference)
or
*3 cups brown rice flour (if you want to make it easier, should work)
 * 1 cup brown rice flour, 1 cup white rice flour, 1 cup sorghum flour ( if you like white rice..)
Really any combination should work. Or if you want to make it even easier, a all purpose GF mix from the store would probably work too.

The next time a bake bread I will post a picture of what it should look like!

Waffles!

Waffles, great for breakfast, dinner, a snack...tasty basically anytime...Since making waffles is  faster than making bread, I have mine like toast most of the time with jam, nutella, or cinnamon and sugar. Here is the recipe I use.

Heat up your waffle maker while you prepare:

2 cups brown rice flour*
1/2 tsp xanthum gum
1 tbs baking powder
1 tbs sugar
1/2 tsp salt
3 eggs
1 1/2 milk
4 tbs butter/margarine*

Directions:
Combine all of the dry ingredients: flour, xanthum gum, baking powder, sugar, salt.
Add the eggs, milk, and butter.
Mix with a wisk until combined without lumps.
Add to your favorite waffle maker and cook per maker's instructions.

* I use brown rice flour, but you can also use 3/4 cup brown rice flour and 1/4 cup tapioca flour.
*Oil or 4tbs applesauce also will work for a butter substitute.

Enjoy!