Let them Eat Gluten Free Cake!

Taking a short break from the serious Joo Food, I took another stab at the Gluten Free goodness. My wife and daughters took a class in cake decoration last week so I figured we'd make a treat for Shabbos. This is a classic yellow cake, but totally gluten free. It came out spectacularly. I also added a little twist along the way. Something I've been meaning to try for a while is a substitute for whipped cream. I need to make a lot of recipes without dairy ingredients so we can eat them with meat meals, that's just kosher. Most of the time we use non-dairy whipping cream, but it's a bit fake tasting at times. So a while back I found a recipe for making natural vegan whipped cream using coconut milk and wow did it come out well. My eldest daughter then made butter cream icing and fondant to decorate the cake. This will go down as a classic success around here. I'm not going to go into the icing and decorations this time, just improvise.

Stuff you'll need:
 The Cake
1 cup tapioca flour
3/4 cup white rice flour
3/4 cup potato flour (or rice flour, I was just out of it)
1 teaspoon salt
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp Guar Gum (or 1 tsp Xanthan Gum)
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
2/3 cup mayonaisse
1 cup soy milk (regular milk or almond milk also work)
2 tsp vanilla extract

Set the oven to 350F (175C) and get out your mixing bowls.
Sift together the flours.

 

Then the baking powder, soda and salt.

And finally the Guar Gum.

Mix it all together and then on to the wet stuff. It's the eggs first.

Followed by the mayo. Which I thought was wacky, but it makes the whole thing pretty creamy. I'm assuming it replaces the butter/margarine.

And that goes together with the sugar.

Apply the hand mixer to the three of 'em until it's all nice and fluffy.

Incorporate into the dry mixture and add the milk.

Then drop in the vanilla.

Mix it until smooooooth.

Now, to prep the cake tin. Smear it with a thin layer of shortening, margarine or butter, or even oil will work and then add a handful of rice flour to coat, so the cake doesn't stick.

Into the oven. Now, here's the tricky bit. It took about an hour to bake all the way through here. But check it with a toothpick after about 30 minutes and again at 45.

When the toothpick comes away clean and the cake is springy to the touch you can remove it from the oven to cool.

Meanwhile...
On to the cream filling. As I said, I've been wanting to try this for a while.
You'll need:
1 Can of Coconut liquid, left on a shelf for at least a week so it separates.
1/4 cup of sugar

When you're ready for this move the can around slowly and gently as you don't want the liquid and the butter to mix. Slowly turn the can over and open it up, drain out the clear liquid, but save it, since you'll need a couple tablespoons.
What's left is a thick white semi solid goop, for lack of a better term.

Start beating this with your mixer and add in a couple spoons of the clear liquid just to help give it some body. Beat until stiff, slowly adding in the sugar as you go. It should form soft peaks when it's ready, having the consistency of, well, whipped cream. 

Let's get these bad boys together. For that you'll need to cut the cake in half. If you have kids and you're able to co-opt some blocks they're excellent, otherwise you'll need to find something to rest your knife on to make sure the cut is straight. A long serrated knife is best for this kind of work as well, turning the cake around slowly, cut it through the middle.

Then apply the cream to the bottom half.

Then put the top back on. Apply icing as desired.

Thanks to my eldest daughter, who made the icing and decorated the cake.

And thanks to the family for eating it.

That's all that remained after lunch. And everyone in the family was able to partake!