Hi Pa is back with a trial run on baking and icing a gluten-free vegetarian celebration cake.
Several errors glorified this attempt, some were successfully covered up, others are all too obvious for your amusement. Despite this the cake was successful in as much as it tasted great and was devoured with glee.
So here we go.
A small edit here, to go with the photo. The very first attempt with the oranges went completely silly due to following quantities in a recipe that turned out to be more suitable for pancakes when put in the tin. The revised recipe uses lemon zest rather than orange but I forgot to take a new picture. So use your imagination please.
Ingredients
for the cake
300g Doves gluten free plain flour
300g caster sugar
300g sunflower spread
50g modified maize starch
6 tsp baking powder
4 free range eggs
zest 5 lemons
for the sandwich
apricot jam
buttercream
for the icing
Renshaws ready to roll sunflower coloured icing
+
butter icing
200g unsalted butter
350g icing sugar
1 tsp lemon extract
Method
- Heat oven to 190oC
- Cream the sunflower spread and sugar until light and fluffy
- Beat in the eggs 1 at a time
- Beat in the flour, maize starch, baking powder and zest taking care not to overbeat and scraping down from the sides of the bowl
- Divide between 2 well oiled 8 inch sandwich tins
- Bake in the pre-heated oven for 20 minutes
- Turn out onto a wire rack to cool
Heavy beating |
Make the buttercream
- Put the butter in a bowl and beat until light and fluffy
- Stir in the icing sugar and lemon extract until evenly mixed
- Beat until light and smooth
Decorating the cake
- Slice off the tops of the two sponges to give you a flat topped cake
- Spread the jam on the cut top of one sponge and buttercream on the cut top of the other
- Turn one onto the other giving you a filled flat topped sandwich
- Clean off any excess filling with a knife
- Spread the icing across the top of the cake and around the sides
- Smooth off with a palette knife and allow to dry off
- Roll out the ready to roll icing between 2 sheets of baking paper
- Cut out your chosen decorative shapes, I used simple heart shape cookie cutters
- Apply to the cake in your chosen motif
The Final Product more tasty than beautiful |
Now to my mistakes! Well the sponge tops collapsed a little in the final few minutes of cooking, I was fortunately able to cover this because the tops were sliced off anyway to make the sandwich. I think this was caused because the cake mix was too moist, a problem we have previously encountered using gluten-free flour, so do assess your mix and add a little more flour if necessary to get a stiff batter. Also avoid over-beating as I mention in the Method, this was my first time with an electric mixer rather than my little food ninja whisking by hand and I may have got a little overenthusiastic, which I am reliably informed can cause sponge collapse. Always best to use your ninja I think. With the icing; three points.
- Butter icing and ready to roll icing are not a good combination
- If using a wet palette knife to smooth the butter icing make sure you give plenty of drying time before adding your decorations.
- Roll the icing between baking parchment, do not oil your rolling pin to prevent sticking.
Very very tasty: moist, quite dense and super lemony. The buttercream was a delicious accompaniment!
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