White Chocolate Mud Cake (Guest Post)

My friend Selina is getting married soon, and is starting to think about flavours for a wedding cake. While not she is not gluten free, she is considering offering a gluten free option for the likes of me! That's seriously nice :)

I had the privilege of being used as a guinea pig for her experimentation with gluten-free baking. I gave her all the tips my inexperienced head held, and she gave me cake. First, about a quarter of a cake, iced and all, which I snacked on at work, and second, the remaining half cake, frozen and un-iced, to eat at my own leisure. Good deal, I must say!

I asked Selina to provide a few words around her experience baking the cake, and her being a bit of a novelist, I decided to give her a guest post spot! So, baking gluten free in her own words:

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White Chocolate Mud Cake

Introduction:
With a wedding approaching in 9 months I wanted to try out a few different flavours of cakes. I had thought of a white chocolate mudcake as a lighter alternative to full normal-chocolate mudcake as the groom to be is not a fan. After a quick google search I came across this recipe - http://www.exclusivelyfood.com.au/2006/07/white-chocolate-mud-cake-recipe.html and the instructions seemed relatively straightforward - and the picture looked yum. One major note is that I have at least one gluten-free friend [That's me!! - Sarah] who will be at said wedding and wanted to attempt both versions to compare. This recipe had been tried and altered for gluten free by an additional blog poster and I wanted to give it a go (not being a regular baker) I thought I may as well launch in and make my first cake in about two years and the first in my current oven.

Going Gluten Free:
After two trips to the supermarket and about half an hour contemplating gluten free flour/baking powder by myself and with Sarah, I had everything I needed. The original gluten-free conversion in the blog posted recipe above said that they replaced the flours with the same amount of bakers mix, I used Orgran Flour and Gluten Free Goodies Baking Powder. It also suggested mixing up macadamia nuts, but when I looked at the price I could not justify it. After discussing with Sarah about what the nuts do in recipe I went home with a couple of ideas. Another recipe which discussed converting a White Choc mudcake into gluten free used sour-cream to help in the mixture, but I wasn't quite sure how it would go in a different recipe (and I liked the look of the one I used more). In my kitchen I decided to put in an extra egg in order to provide a bit more stick.

Thoughts on baking/comparisons to standard mixture:
The GF mix was definitely a bit more eggy - and needed a bit more stirring to get to the right consistency (due to the extra egg), also not helped though because I forgot to put the milk into pot with everything at beginning and it took a bit to get in at end when mixture was warm :-). Taste wise the mixture pre-cooking (I'm a sucker for cake dough :-) and I always feel like if its nice when it goes it it's a good guess of how it will be at end) tasted pretty much the same as the standard mix. I should also note the gluten free mixture was overall a bit more runny and a small amount dripped out of bottom of my spring-form tin while in oven as my baking paper hadn't gone far enough up the sides.

I was warned that the finished product might look a bit more crumbly and brown than the standard cake, and this was correct. Once cooled half of the cake went straight into freezer and the other half was iced with ganache. My fiancé and I (both not gluten-free) had some of the gluten free version as it was first made and it tasted real good. I would say it tasted almost exactly like the standard one but not quite as 'muddy' - but my partner probably actually preferred it (seeing as he doesn't like the sticky-type mud cake feel).

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Thanks Selina, for the cake and the post!. Here are my own comments, emailed to Selina after tasting the first yummy bit of cake:

Dense and pleasantly chewy (not dry or overly crumbly) - possibly because of the extra egg to hold it all together. Delicious ganache, and none of it too sweet! Very very moreish...... Now I have to resist scarfing it all down!!
:)
Good stuff! (I was going to wait a little later before trying it, then I thought I'd better try a bit off the edge - as it was the outside bit that you said might be tough, I also had to try a little square from the middle!. The outside was a little chewier but definitely worth eating as well ;)

And here are my various photos of the cake:


This is the only piece of cake that made it home when Selina gave me the first quarter.



Look how yummy it looks - this is the (just under) half of the cake that had been frozen - I liberally iced it with white chocolate and sour cream icing.



I invited my mum over for tea and cake. The small pink bowl holds the leftover icing, which we later ate on pieces of 80% dark chocolate.

Cookbook Case Study - Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake - Vegetarian Cooking Without

The lemon and poppy seed cake is based upon the same recipe as the gingerbread cake; however, for this flavour I used almond flour and stevia instead of the dates. I'd never cooked with stevia before, and made a trip to a natural health store for supplies. After working out which form of stevia I should buy, I selected and took home pure stevia powder. Opening it up to see what it looked like, I found that the bottle was full to the brim, and some powder sprinkled out over me and the table. I dipped the tip of my finger in the spilt stevia and licked it, aware that it would be sweet. Still, the intensity came somewhat as a shock, with the sweetness so sweet it was almost bitter - like the so-cold-it-burns sensation you sometimes get with ice water. The recipe only calls for 1/4 of a teaspoon, so I suspect the small jar I bought will last some time.

To be honest, I thought this recipe would be easier than the gingerbread cake one. First of all, I wouldn't have to stew dates! I was quite wrong...

The first issues I had were with the lemons. The recipe calls for two lemons. One is zested, and then they are both juiced. From this, you are told to conserve 1/4c of the juice. Well, I was lucky I had another lemon on hand, because I needed three to get 1/4c juice. While my lemons are smaller than store bought lemons, they are very juicy, so I was surprised that two lemons were expected to yield 1/4c. The recipe then instructs you to "remove the pith from the second lemons skin and cut the skin into fine dice". Apart from that last bit sounding like questionable English to my kiwi ears (dice as a noun being unusual in a recipe), I wondered if there was a way of removing the pith from the skin, rather than the skin from the pith.


Lemon juice, and lemon zest in two forms


Finally conquering the lemon, I read the next step several times, trying to find something between blending the different elements of lemon in the food processor, and pouring the mixture into a loaf tin. Nope - nothing. I guessed that all the ingredients were to go in the food processor at the same time.

Right - time to grind the almonds. Where are the almonds? I remember buying them, almost $10 worth. Where are they. Not in here, here, here.... here?... ummmm. I can't find the chestnuts I bought that day, either. I look in the lounge where all my bags are stowed, I look in the bedroom, I look in the spare room, I look in the bathroom (you never know!), I look in the garage... I try to picture the bag of rubbish we put out last night. I consider riding into work to see if I've left a bag of groceries there.

I despair - then I remember thinking about how nuts should be stored, and I looked in the fridge. Oh, that's right - I put them in the fridge. Lost almonds conquered - I pour out some to grind. Well, I think next time I will buy almonds already ground. By the time there are no more large pieces of almond, I have something resembling almond butter. It was okay, I snacked on that while I prepared the rest of the ingredients.


Ground almond...


Finally, all the ingredients in the food processor, I processed. This batter had a really weird texture - really seriously weird. Very thick (perhaps it was my almond-butter consistency almonds?).


Food Processing



Before cooking


When I removed the baked cake from the tin, a piece fell off, which I used as a tester. Unfortunately, I discovered that it was the kind of cake that disintegrated into crumbs as soon as (or before) it's in your mouth. Leaving it to cool for a little while, I hoped it would firm up, but no such luck. I cut the heel off for us to share for dessert, but we both found it a little too dry, much too crumbly, and not flavourful enough. Beeing sugarless and using only a small amount of stevia, it didn't have enough sweetness to complement the lemon flavour, and as a result, I could hardly taste the lemon.


Cake out of the oven



Crumbly cake bits



Sliced cake


I had planned to take the cake to work for a shared morning tea, but since even I didn't like it, I thought that wasn't such a good idea. Also, it would surely fall apart in transit. (Instead, I cut up some celery to take, to go with dip - at least I'll have something savoury.)

Whenever some food doesn't work, I try to come up with a way to rescue it. The gingerbread cake was best with some butter/spread, but that will not be enough for this cake. In fact, I wouldn't like to try to spread anything on it. At least it tasted okay with a generous drizzle of golden syrup; but the texture was still impossible.


Cake no longer sugar-free


So, in the final evaluation: FAIL! I would not make this recipe again.

Gingerbread Cake - Cookbook Case Study - Vegetarian Cooking Without

Thinking that making something sweet would give me a broader experience of this cookbook, I picked out a gingerbread cake recipe. I love gingerbread - yet I don't often eat it, and I've never made it. In fact, I'm not much of a baker at all - when Neil came home and I told him I'd made cake, he looked mildly shocked, reminding me that I hadn't made cake the entire time we'd been together (a bit over two years). He's right, I can only remember baking twice in that time (excluding pizza or savoury baked dishes) - a gluten free chocolate brownie (soooo good), and some gluten free chocolate chip cookies (not so good - just tasted like sugar).

Back to gingerbread. The recipe calls for rice flour, millet flour, and almond flour, and is sweetened with stevia. Alternatively, dates stewed in a bit of water could be substituted for the stevia and almond flour, which is what I did - I thought dates would complement the ginger and molasses.


Stewing Dates


It was super-easy. Basically all you have to do is process the hell outta all the ingredients, then bake. I had some reservations about the millet. What I have is called “ground millet”, and is fairly coarse, though it says on the box you can simply replace for wheat flour. I don't know if 'millet flour' is ground finer than that or not - it is hard to find many gluten free ingredients in NZ, so I don't know if what I have is the same as what's called for in American recipes. Next time, perhaps I will try grinding the millet a little finer for use.


Ingredients in the Food Processor


I was quite pleased with the gingerbread, once we tasted it warm from the oven. It certainly had some of the texture of the millet, but not unpleasantly so. The case was much more dense than I expected - by which I mean it was very filling, despite being quite soft and fluffy. When I ate the first few crumbs to fall off the loaf as I cut it, I remembered that the dates were the only sweetener in it, and hoped that it wouldn't be awful - it was nice, definitely not sweet, but the molasses added a bit of extra richness and the spices were prominent, unlike some weak gingerbread I've had.


Fresh from the Oven



The First Slice


Neil's evaluation was - “it was all right - a bit dry though”. I'd agree with that.

The real test will be - what is it like cold, after being stored a night or two? Will it still be edible?

*Cut a day* Still very similar! Needs olivani (or your choice of oil/butter spread) to counter the dryness. The gingerbread flavour is not as prominent, and takes a bit longer to reach your taste buds.


Slice of gingerbread with Olivani


Would I make it again? Yes! Though I would also experiment to see if I can get it a bit more moist.