Killer gluten-free cake
Gluten-free cakes don’t usually have a gourmet reputation. And yet, these lovely pastries can be as scrumptious as regular wheat-based ones. You just need to know how to use gluten-free flour. Baking is basically chemistry, which explains the fair amount of failures, with or without gluten. These cakes tend to be dryer than the others. To avoid this major catastrophe, add a little oil or butter or some other fat or apple stew and demerara sugar instead of white sugar.
And take them out of the oven a bit before then end, when the knife blade you savagely push into it still comes out moist.
Rice flour is blander than chestnut flour, for example. Remember to double or treble the amount of spices, such as cinnamon, vanilla or nutmeg, required for a wheat-based recipe.
Gluten-free baking adventures tend to brown more rapidly on the outside. To bake to perfection on the inside too, slightly lower oven temperature.
Allow for a longer baking time too. So, if the wheat-based recipe calls for half an hour, give 45 minutes or 1 hour to its gluten-free cousin.
Melt-in-the-mouth chocolate cake
Break 200 g dark chocolate into bits and melt them in a double-boiler or a microwave for 30 seconds, mix and put back for another 30 seconds, and repeat until the chocolate is completely melted and smooth. Add 100 g soft butter and beat thoroughly. Preheat oven to 180 °C (gas mark 6). Transfer chocolate into a mixing-bowl and progressively add 150 g sugar while whisking. Add in, little by little, 60 g rice flour and 3 eggs, one by one. Pour into a ravishing round baking pan and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Allow to cool before letting Raymond voraciously dig into it.
