Gluten Free Cake Turned Out Rock Hard

Decorating By sunshine4U Updated 14 May 2012 , 10:33pm by Relznik

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sunshine4U Posted 13 May 2012 , 8:23pm
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Hey everyone, I am just a mom baking a cake for my daughters birthday, she was diagnosed with Celiac a few months ago so I need a GF B-day cake. Well, I made one yesterday and the taste is fine its just that the texture is dry and its rock hard. Anyone here do GF? Any ideas how this happened? I used a brown rice flour blend and used 1 tsp xanthan gum, 2 eggs, vanilla, milk (plus some other ingredient...) I alternated dry and wet when mixing. Thought I was doing everything right!

11 replies
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MsGF Posted 13 May 2012 , 9:21pm
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When it comes to Gluten-Free you often have to experiment a lot. If you followed the recipe, it is probably not you at all. Gluten-Free baking is different and can be complicated. I can't say exactly why it is dry and hard, but a lot of GF cakes are like that. Try one using a lighter flour blend. More starch and less rice. You either have to experiment or try different recipes until you find what you like. Good luck, I know from experience it can be a frustrating, baking things that turn out like that.

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MsGF Posted 13 May 2012 , 9:30pm
post #3 of 12

Check out this website. It is a collection of GF Cakes & Cupcakes. Worth trying:

http://strawberriesareglutenfree.com/2009/05/gluten-free-cake-round-up/

Good Luck! Hey I just realized you are in Canada too. icon_smile.gif
Gluten-Free & Canadian awesome eh! LOL icon_smile.gif

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Panel7124 Posted 13 May 2012 , 9:40pm
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Just this morning I was looking for some GF recipes to try for the possible future use, as I'm getting lately more and more requests. Narrowed the choice to two sites:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Gluten-Free-Coconut-Layer-Cake-241926 (looked the best)
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chocolate-Cake-367670#ixzz1uji371de

http://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/2007/01/cooking-baking-gluten-free-tips-for.html - great tips for GF baking - recipes for dark chocolate brownies, banana chocolate chip bread

Also these cupcakes seemed interesting:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Vanilla-Cupcakes-353909

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sunshine4U Posted 13 May 2012 , 11:11pm
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Thanks for the comments and links! I will certainly experiment with different flours and blends. Thanks! And I am bookmarking all the links for future reference!

Yeah, so far baking GF hasn't been too bad but it certainly is different! This cake has been the biggest challenge so far. I thought bread would be the hardest but it was nothing compared to this... at least even the first try for bread was edible, not so much for this cake!

MsGF yup Canadian and GF is awesome! icon_biggrin.gif

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Chellescakes Posted 13 May 2012 , 11:20pm
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When I am doing gluten free cakes , I buy the gluten free self raising flour . The recipe I use has a mix of Plain and self raising flour in it. I omit the plain and just use the self raising instead. I find this gives me a better and lighter cake.

This is for a mud cake by the way.

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Osgirl Posted 13 May 2012 , 11:23pm
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This flour is great:

http://shop.betterbatter.org/

It is a cup for cup substitute for regular flour. I just made 4 different kinds of GF cupcakes today and used this flour. I used my regular recipes and substituted flours. They came out the same!

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FromScratchSF Posted 14 May 2012 , 3:22am
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Osgirl

This flour is great:

http://shop.betterbatter.org/

It is a cup for cup substitute for regular flour. I just made 4 different kinds of GF cupcakes today and used this flour. I used my regular recipes and substituted flours. They came out the same!




OK, I'm intrigued - what flavors of cake did you make? What are your recipes? I make GF but I blend my own flours, and although my chocolate is awesome, my other flavors are only decent and not as good as I know they could be. At least not as good as I feel comfortable putting my logo on!

Or send me a PM if you don't want to describe your recipes publicly. Thanks!

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sunshine4U Posted 14 May 2012 , 3:45am
post #9 of 12
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chellescakes

When I am doing gluten free cakes , I buy the gluten free self raising flour .



Thanks! I'll look for this!

Osgirl, thanks for that link. I'll look into that as well, sounds like great stuff!

With all these great suggestions and comments I am pretty hopeful that the next cake will be at least edible! Thanks everyone!

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scp1127 Posted 14 May 2012 , 7:15am
post #10 of 12

I just did my first one. You have to go through quite a few duds before you find a good one. And then you have to do a lot of adjusting.

What irritates me about any allergy or alternative baking is that those who need the recipes are usually presented with a bad cake. Even the highly rated recipes are downright nasty. When you talk to the clients, they will tell you that they are used to bad taste as the norm.

With work, the alternate recipes start coming together, but they are definitely my biggest challenge.

I have a GF German Chocolate cake I'll share on a pm. It can be changed to regular chocolate.

FromScratch, do you market your cakes as being for only the slightly intolerant? I tell everyone that a cloud of flour floats above my tables.

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sunny2 Posted 14 May 2012 , 10:29pm
post #11 of 12

Do NOT overmix your gluten-free cakes. You want to just mix them until they come together. Mixing them like you do for a regular cake makes them turn out hard.

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Relznik Posted 14 May 2012 , 10:33pm
post #12 of 12

I was asking about this on another cake site I often use (UK site) and a few people said to sieve the flour 4 times to make it REALLY light and airy. Apparently, this helps.

Suzanne x

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