I hope that you are ready to dive into the world of cake baking. I’ve had a lot of fun researching and experimenting for this class, and I’ve also enjoyed eating the delicious cakes. This first article in the lesson will cover the basic ingredients that are common to all cakes, as well as potential issues for those of you with multiple intolerances/allergies.
Cake ingredients fall into three categories which I will call “Basic”, “Tweaks” and “Fancifications”.
A cake in it’s simplest form is a combination of four Basic ingredients: flour, eggs, sugar, and fat. The flour and eggs give the cake structure; the fat and sugar make it taste good (and also weaken the structure). A balance of ingredients is required.
Tweaks are non-essential cake ingredients, though in this case non-essential means that it’s possible to make cake without them, though not necessarily recommended. The tweaks include additional liquids such as milk and cream, flavorings like vanilla or lemon extract, and leavening agents like baking powder and baking soda.
Fancifications would be ingredients such as nuts, grated fruits, and chocolate chips. These ingredients add variety to cakes, but if you’re allergic to Fancifications you can generally leave them out of the recipes without any serious consequences.
The Basics:
The flours used in this lesson’s recipes include brown rice flour, tapioca starch, and sorghum flour. I get very few requests for ingredient substitutions for tapioca and sorghum, so I’m hoping that most of you will be able to use those flours. For those of you with rice allergies, try substituting a mild white bean flour (check with Bob’s Red Mill).
Eggs are essential to most cakes. If you have to avoid eggs, I would go straight to egg replacement powders like Orgran and EnerG.
Sugar makes cakes sweet, but the physical and chemical properties of sugar are also part of what makes the cake recipe work. In these recipes I’ve used granulated white sugar and light brown sugar. I haven’t found many good non-sugar sweeteners that will work in cake recipes. If you can use Splenda, then the Splenda Sugar Blend does work reasonably well for baking. If you can’t use sugar at all, then it may be time to gently admit to yourself that cake is not going to be an option for you and start that grieving process. (I’m not being sarcastic! There really is a grief process that you go through when you lose a favorite food).
Fat. It’s really such an unpleasant word. I’d much rather say butter, but you can also use shortening and oil in cakes, so fat is good word to cover the entire group of options. If you’re measuring your ingredients by weight, you can substitute equal weights of the different fats in recipes. Choose the fat that works for your dietary needs. If you cannot do dairy, then perhaps shortening, oil, or Vegan Buttery Sticks will work for you. If you cannot do soy, then butter and the Soy-Free Vegan Buttery Sticks may be suitable. If corn is an issue, then you may need to be careful of cross-contact issues with oils, so butter may be your best choice.
Tweaks:
If you are dairy-free, then some of the tweak ingredients may be a problem for you. All of the cake recipes that I’ve included with this lesson are dairy free, but you’re bound to come across recipes that include milk or whipped cream. When you do, either use a dairy alternative that’s suitable for your diet, or substitute an equal amount of water.
Baking powder and baking soda are the most common tweak ingredients in cakes. Theoretically, you can get enough rise from whipping air into the cake during the mixing process, but most cooks help the cake out with chemical leaveners. I have to give Shirley Corriher credit because everything I’ve learned about baking powder and baking soda, I learned from her book, Bakewise.
The most important thing to know about baking powder and baking soda is the correct amount to use in a cake recipe. I’ll mention this elsewhere, but for each cup of flour you should have either 1 tsp of baking powder or 1/4 tsp. baking soda. Anymore than that and you run the risk of a dense and heavy cake. (If you add too much leavening, the cake rises too quickly and all of the air bubbles pop before the cake sets and the cake sinks).
If you’re trying a new gluten free cake recipe and see that it’s overleavened, feel free to adjust the amounts of baking powder and baking soda. Baking powder is the leavening of choice; baking soda should be avoided or used as little as possible. Some cake recipe writers include a good bit of baking soda when the recipe also includes acidic ingredients like buttermilk. A little bit of baking soda is okay in this case, but be sure to decrease the baking powder so that the total amount of leavening is correct.
Also, make sure that your baking powder is gluten free. Baking powder contains cornstarch and cornstarch may contain gluten if it was produced in a facility that also processes wheat. I only use baking powder that has a gluten free label.
Now that we’ve discussed the ingredients in cake, it’s time to go on to the next article and learn how to mix up the ingredients into a cake batter.
Back to Cooking Class: A Beginning Class in Gluten Free Cakes.