Adventures in gluten free baking
This weekend, I was invited to a themed birthday potluck, where two of the three birthday celebrants were gluten sensitive. Having never had to avoid glutens in my baking, this was new territory.
I decided to try two new things-Scottish shortbread, and a wacky cake that looks like the severed arm of a Wampa. The shortbread turned out great. The Wampa arm was kind of a mess, but tasted pretty good. The only changes I’d make in the future would be to the cake, and I would have added more jam (for the fake blood), and more frosting.
I mostly followed one recipe for the shortbread, but chose to roll the dough to make fingers instead of cookies. I have never made shortbread before, and the dough was really crumbly. I was sure I made an error in measuring my ingredients. I didn’t know how it would turn out until I finally got it out of the oven. Here is the recipe I used:
Gluten Free Shortbread Cookies-5 Ways - Gluten Free on a Shoestring
I used Red Hill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour for both recipes.
You can see here how they turned out!
Now, onto the Wampa arm cake. I followed Just Jenn’s Severed Wampa Arm Cake recipe, and made only two changes by using the gluten free flour, and a jar of Strawberry jam instead of the Guava jelly. I only just now saw that Red Mill makes a gluten free vanilla cake mix. That mix might work well here. The cake turned out quite moist, which I’m told isn’t always the case with gluten free baking. I also made the delicious cream cheese/whipped cream frosting on Jenn’s site, which I plan to make again.
As you can see, the Wampa arm is just a big white blob without claws. This is what happens when your travel/serving pan is just a bit too short. It did have 5 fingers, not that you can see them. But it turned out to be quite tasty after all. Who knew Wampas were so sweet and yummy?
I’m sure you’ve noticed the cake isn’t red! I used one tube of the Betty Crocker red gel coloring, but it wasn’t enough to make the cake red, just pink! I’m not sure if the tube I bought was too small, the wrong type of gel coloring, or if it is the gluten free flour that is the reason it’s pink and not red. That will be an experiment for another day, I think.
Originally published at lomara.org. You can comment here or there.