I had a plan. Replace all-purpose flour with a mix of tapioca flour and brown rice flour with a little baking soda and a few tablespoons of flax meal. The tapioca and flax keep it together, the rice flour keeps it apart. The baking soda helps keep it from turning into a dense brick of “not cake.” Foo-proof plan? Far from it. But a good hypothesis. Yes.
The problems:
Archaic flax meal. This stuff needs to be kept in the fridge. My bag I inherited from someone who didn’t know this rule. Thus, probably somewhat rancid flax meal.
1 old egg, and no egg whites: Fresher eggs seem to rise better. This isn’t a big deal with, say, pancakes, or even with regular gluten-y flours, but with gluten-free it’s crucial. And I ran out of eggs, so one whole egg had to suffice. It didn’t.
Old Candied Ginger: This was probably fine, but maybe my home-preserved ginger in ginger syrup had seen better days.
My addiction to molasses and fudge-textured things: This wasn’t so much of a recipe problem as an eating problem. The cake collapsed in the middle, making it undercooked and gooey and completely amazing in the middle, and spongier and a little denser around the edge. So it actually worked out well, meaning I ate too much of it. Oops. Honestly, though, the sponge texture was really great.
So make this for friends, and whether it collapses in the middle or not, it’ll still be super. You can find candied ginger in specialty stores, or make your own. I have a recipe. Use the search function above to find it. It takes a few days and a lot of peeling. I recommend buying it unless you’re a real DIY-type. For goodness sake, I spent the last 30 minutes of a small dinner party last night simmering my 4-day fermented sriracha sauce because one more day ansd it would have started to mold. Priorities.
Adapted from “Chocolate and the Art of Low Fat Desserts”
Dry ingredients:
/2 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup brown rice flour
2 tbsp flax meal (or ground flaxseeds. It’s the same thing)
1/2 tsp ground cloves
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground mustard
1/8 tsp ground salt
1/2 cup coconut sugar (or light brown sugar, or almost 1/2 cup white sugar mixed with 1 tsp molasses)
1 1/4 tsp tsp baking soda
Wet ingredients:
6 tbsp molasses
1 egg
1 egg white
1 1/2 tbsp melted earth balance (or butter)
2 1/2 tbsp finely minced candied ginger. If there’s syrup involved, replacement the equivalent amount of sugar with the syrup, leaving enough syrup to cover the remaining ginger in the jar or container. It’s a preservative. It needs to be there or you’ll end up with moldy candied ginger, which is never delicious.
1/2 apple, cored and diced
1/4 cup boiling water
Grease an eight inch round baking pan or line it with parchment paper and then grease it. Oil or butter or earth balance.
Use a sieve to combine all the wet ingredients except the baking soda (adding the 1 tsp molasses if you used white sugar and the 1 tsp is fine). The sieving adds air and lightness, which is key when baking gluten-free.
In a medium bowl combine brown sugar, molasses, egg and egg white, butter, ginger, and apple. Whisk to combine and then whisk in the dry ingredients.
Dissolve the baking soda in the boiling water and stir into batter until just combined.
Pour into greased baking dish and bake 25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out dry. Because of the gluten-free flours and denseness, I had to leave the cake in about 35 minutes! I thought it would burn but it didn’t. So don’t be scared to leave it in longer as long as you don’t smell burning.
Let cool on a rack for about 10 minutes and then remove from pan. Don’t eat directly with a spoon or tear the sponge-y cake apart with your hands as I did. Well, actually, it worked well. So I shouldn’t be such a hypocrite.
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