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survivinglove June 19 2013, 05:32:43 UTC
adding guar or xanthan gum can help make a less crumbly texture.

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leatherfemme June 19 2013, 13:47:18 UTC
I'd suspect the GF flour more than anything. Those can be tricky to work with.

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survivinglove June 19 2013, 17:27:08 UTC
+1. GF baking is like nothing I've ever worked with before (I've been GF for abut 1.5 years) and it takes a little more science than conventional baking can give you. The gluten that GF baking lacks (obviously) is the very thing that makes baked goods baked good..chewy, soft, stretchy, elastic. Without that you need to resort to other things (like Xanthan or Guar gums) to create that texture or else your cake/bread/whatever will come out really crumbly, won't hold together, etc.

An additional thing I've found is to add additional eggs and take ground flax seed and soak in hot water and add that as well (look up the ratios you'll need online) as egg and flax seed can do double duty as an emulsifier.

The GF flour does not act like traditional flour so you may want to look at a few GF baking communities on the web to get more GF specific advice.

Good luck!

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marence June 20 2013, 15:59:28 UTC
...and every GF recipe or flour blend is always advertised as The BEST! but each is so very different.

GF baking is the biggest challenge I've ever faced in the kitchen. I'm averaging about 3 fails to every hit. The fails are generally edible, but it gets expensive trying out so many ingredients!

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marence June 20 2013, 15:56:18 UTC
A couple of things - first, did you do the usual cake-making with this (cream butter & sugar, add egg, mix in sifted dry ingredients & buttermilk alternately in batches) or did you just mix everything together? I've found in GF baking it's especially important to give each step enough time to do all its chemical magic. That helps with the crumbliness. Also, a tiny amount of guar gum (or arrowroot, or xanthan gum, everyone has a different favorite) helps replace gluten as a binder. If your GF flour mix doesn't have any, you might want to check into it ( ... )

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