Recipe: Gluten Free Coffee Cake
Upcoming market dates:
Saturday 11th Jan 4pm-8pm- Browns Bay Twilight Market
Sunday 12th Jan 8.30am-1pm- Orewa Artisan Market
Saturday 18th Jan- 8am-1pm- Matakana Village Market
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This week as well as baking our standard biscotti and working on my gluten free recipe (nearly there folks! More about that in a minute), I decided to have a go at making my very first gluten free sandwich cake.
Now if you know me, you will know I am pretty obsessed with cake. It’s without a doubt my favourite food. My personal instagram handle is @fitchicklovescake. When i worked in an office and it was someones birthday i used to get tense with excitement because there would be cake! I have (often actually) been known to skip a meal and just have cake rather than risk being too full for cake after the meal. So you get the picture, I kind of like cake, a lot. So having to go gluten free, I was a little worried that i wouldn’t be able to get the same quality of cake any more. I’ve had GF cakes from fancy bakeries like https://www.thecaker.co.nz/ where you totally couldn’t tell the difference. (They are amazing by the way!) But I’ve also had gluten free cakes from plenty of cafes which were dense and crumbly, OK if they are covered with enough frosting but not light and fluffy enough to rival their glutened counterparts.
So i was thinking that I might not be able to create something in the light and fluffy category and would have to forever settle for heavy and dense with a tonne of frosting.
Then Imagine my delight when the first cake recipe i tried turned out to be one of the nicest sponge cakes i have had for a long time. Light and soft with a beautiful sponge cake texture and slices beautifully. It was so good in fact that i had to share the recipe.
Based on a recipe in the river cottage gluten free cookbook, I chose it simply because i had all the basic sponge ingredients to hand. The original recipe is for a rose and pistachio cake but as I had no rose water but i had some coffee buttercream left over to use up, i made a few tweaks and the below recipe is for a coffee sponge with coffee buttercream.
I do hope you try it because it is one of the most delicious cakes i’ve had for a long time, it is beautifully light despite being made with potato flour (i fully expected it to turn out like a flat potato pancake) and if i had to be critical, just a touch too crumbly but i suspect this could be remedied by adding a pinch more zanthan gum.
A few tips:
1) Don’t feel you need to use expensive or good quality coffee here. There is so much sugar it really makes no difference. I used value instant coffee powder and it was delicious. Just make sure you use a powder rather than coffee granules to make sure it blends nicely.
2) 3 teaspoons baking powder sounded like a lot to me. I went with it and it worked well and i couldn’t taste the baking powder. Don’t be tempted to skimp here.
3) I use salted butter in almost everything i bake as a little salt really brings out the flavour. You could use unsalted if you prefer but the buttercream in particular would be missing a bit of umph. If you only have unsalted try adding quarter teaspoon of salt.
4) Make sure everything is at room temp before you start. Like a lot of sponge cakes the key to getting them light and fluffy is using room temperature ingredients. Don’t be tempted to use chilled butter or eggs, get them up to temp before you start. This will help the sugar, butter and eggs emulsify nicely giving you a light cake batter which is easy to fold the flours into gently and hold the air in the mixture. I recommend using a stand mixer but any electric whisk should do the trick.
Coffee Cake
250g salted butter
180g soft brown sugar
1 tablespoon instant espresso powder
4 large eggs
160g potato starch (potato flour)
3 teaspoons GF baking powder
160g ground almonds
Coffee buttercream
100g salted butter
200g GF icing sugar
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
For the cake:
Beat sugar and butter until very light and fluffy. Slowly add the eaten eggs bit by bit. Wait until the mixture has fully emulsified after adding a bit of egg before adding more. If the mixture starts to curdle add a table spoon of potato flour to bring it back together again but if everything is at room temp and you beat the eggs in hard enough you shouldn’t need to.
When the eggs are all incorporated, sift in the potato flour, almond meal, espresso powder and baking powder. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet very gently by hand.
Split the mixture between 2 greased and lined 20cm sandwich cake tins.
Bake at 180 degrees C (or 160 fan) for 25-30 mins until a cake skewer comes out clean.
Cool in the ins for 20 mins before turning out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
For the buttercream:
Beat all the ingredients together in a stand mixer or with an electric whisk until very light and fluffy.
To Assemble:
Spread or pipe the buttercream in 1 cake half and top with the other. To finish, dust with icing sugar.
For a more decadent cake, make 3 x the amount of buttercream and ice the top and sides as well.
So there you have it, I hope you love it as much as i did!
Back to our biscotti, I am happy I’ve come up with a great flour blend now that gives a deliciously crunchy biscuit which holds it’s shape and wont crumble when sliced. I’m currently in the process of testing all my flavour combinations and sourcing certified Gluten Free ingredients as I want other coeliac suffers to be completely confident they will be safe to eat these biscotti. Stay with us there is still a whole heap of sourcing and testing to do before we have a certified gluten free product to offer but i am making awesome progress so hopefully it wont be too much longer.
In the meantime if you want to grab some of our regular biscotti catch us at these markets or head to our shop and order online.
Saturday 11th Jan 4pm-8pm- Browns Bay Twilight Market
Sunday 12th Jan 8.30am-1pm- Orewa Artisan Market
Saturday 18th Jan- 8am-1pm- Matakana Village Market
Ciao for now xx