My sil has celiac disease and cannot eat any kind of wheat. This is going to make baking for family events difficult.

Has anyone tried and had success with other types of flour? Spelt, soy, amaranth, etc? In breads, I can always taste the "this is not real wheat flour" taste...I don't want that in my cakes...

Thanks for any help.

I just got Roland Mesnier's new cake book and he has a recipe in there for a spelt flour cake, apparently Clinton was allergic to wheat. Mesnier was the White House pastry chef for 30 years. He's written three books, two of them cookbooks and I love them.

thanks, I'll check them out...

I have a wheat intolerance - horrible for a baker, I know - so I use a lot of recipes by Bette Hagman for my personal cooking. She's written The Gluten Free Gourmet series cook books. They're really great. There is also another great book 125 Best Gluten-Free Recipes by Donna Washburn and Heather Butt that has great tips for baking cakes gluten free.
No matter what, I can always taste something a little different and I've been eating wheat-free for years. But I will say, its better than nothing at all!

This website has helped me out a lot

http://www.celiacforums.com/

They have a huge recipe section.

In addition to checking out the links/books listed above - please don't use spelt. Spelt contains gluten. Spelt contains less gluten than 'regular' wheat flour and if she is highly intolerant - you don't want to use this.

This isn't entirely an answer for you since it's just about cake, but I did a little gluten-free cake taste test earlier in the month, the results are on p.2 of this thread http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-522883.html --I found three cakes (one supplied by another CCer, the other two from allrecipes) in which you can NOT tell they are GF. There are other threads here on CC where people have used a variety of cake mixes and liked them, just do a search on "gluten-free".

I've also read several posts where people use the Bob's Red Mill "baking mix" of gluten-free alternative-flours for other applications, with good success.

Thanks everyone, for your help. I'm going to start testing today!

My mom is also a celiac, and I made her the Ghiardelli chocolate cake which has just chocolate and eggs in it. I coverd it in a wonderful ganache and piped lettering in white chocolate. It was divine - a very intense, rich taste and everyone loved it. You could also go with cheesecake (no crust).

Let me know if you would like the choco recipe and I will post it.