Hi everyone,

I always make glutenfree cakes for my sister and although they taste really good they rarely ever rise!
I tried to make a cube-stacked cake for her which sort of worked out but I had to use the thin slices to build my own blocks.

Does anyone have a tip how I can make the cakes rise better? This way I can make much nicer cakes for her!

Some info I just found on the net...


http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09376.html

Leavening
Starch flours need more leavening than wheat flours.
Rule-of-thumb: start with 2 teaspoons baking powder per cup of gluten-free flour and adjust downward as need for altitude.
If baking soda and buttermilk are used to leaven, add 1 1/8 tsp. cream of tartar for each 1/2 teaspoon baking soda used to neutralize acid.
For better rise, dissolve leavening in liquid before adding to other ingredients or add a little extra baking powder.


http://glutenfreecooking.about.com/od/glutenfreecookingbasics/a/xanthanguargums.htm

This is good advice, but I am confused.
Cream of Tartar is an acid, baking soda is not. BS is what is neutralizing the acid in buttermilk. So why do you add the acid when bs is in the recipe. The BS neutralizes the acid, not the cream of tartar. Wouldn't it be better to just eliminate the bs and let the buttermilk do its thing? Or is it you need the cream of tartar because you need more acid.

And more acid will cause a cake to fall, not leaven. I learned this the very hard way this weekend.

I find when I bake with a premium gluten free flour my baked goods are not dense and rise nicely. The flours I have good luck with are Better Batter and Tom Sawyer. I use those in traditional recipes and substitute 1:1. When I use other gluten free flour blends in gluten free recipes I get mixed results. I haven't been able to figure out how exactly to modify gluten free recipes to get good results every time, but now that I've discovered those 2 flours I just use them instead.

I bake gluten free exclusively because I have celiac. I've only been diagnosed for 1 1/2 years, but so far this is how I get the best results by far.

the problem for me is that I live in Holland (europe) and we don't have that much variety in glutenfree stuff, especially in good baking mixes. Usually I do everything from scratch because the mixes aren't good and the only good flour that there is is a mix from Schär :s