As I sipped coffee and gossiped with my neighbor this morning, my sister, who lives in Berlin, called with an urgent baking question. She was concerned, very concerned, because a cake she was baking, a treasured bourbon cake recipe passed on to her from her high school friend Katie Janeway, was behaving somewhat strangely. The batter had become a hard lump, and egg whites she was mixing in didn't seem to help.
She carefully recounted the steps she had taken: she creamed one pound of butter, added two cups of sugar, then eight egg yolks, 1/3 cup of bourbon, three cups of flour...and it became a hard lump. Now she was supposed to fold in the egg whites, and it wasn't incorporating easily. My guess was that the flour was overmixed, and some gluten had been formed. "It isn't looking right!" she repeated. I told her to finishing mixing it and give me a call when it came out of the oven. I wasn't entirely sure if it was the recipe or if it was a question of overmixing, so I decided to try it myself. Gluten-free, of course, which I knew would change the dynamics of the cake but would, at least, be a fitting test of its procedure.
I adjusted the ingredients and reduced the butter. I changed the sugars a bit. And I added salt to the recipe (I presume the recipe was originally made with salted butter). Since I didn't have bourbon I used some rum. And I used buckwheat flour, oat flour (since I don't seem to have an issues with it - use brown rice flour if you do), and an extra quarter cup of tapioca flour (I've found that I usually need to increase the amount of flour I use in gluten-free recipes).
Here's the recipe I used. I'd like to try this again, further reducing the butter. We'll see. It is always a challenge for me to give away the goodies I bake. Both gluten-free colleagues at work have given up dairy and sugar so they don't partake. Sometimes I try to give them to unsuspecting gluten eaters and spring the surprise on them after they've eaten the cake.
Gluten-Free Rum Cake
- 12 oz butter (3 sticks)
- 1/2 C apple sauce, unsweetened
- 1 C light brown sugar
- 1 C granulated white sugar
- 1/2 t coarse salt
- 2 t vanilla extract
- 9 egg yolks
- 1/3 C rum, dark
- 2 C ground oats (substitute BROWN rice flour)
- 1 C buckwheat flour
- 1/4 C tapioca flour
- 9 egg whites
- 1 C granulated white sugar
PROCEDURE:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
Line 2 8" round pans with parchment paper, bottom and sides
(you can also use a single bundt pan)
Cream room-temp butter in bowl of food processor. Scrape and add both sugars. mixing until light and fluffy. Scrape down bowl. Add in apple sauce. Mix. The batter WILL look lumpy. Add in salt, egg yolks, and mix until combined. Scrape. Add in vanilla and rum. Mix again, scrape down bowl and make sure mixture is homogeneous. All at once, add the flours. Mix until combined (given that it is gluten free, you really can't over mix it too much, but I still to conventional wisdom). Place batter in another large bowl, scraping down all contents. Wash mixing bowl completely.
Place clean bowl back on mixer. Place egg whites in bowl and begin mixing on medium speed. Increase speed. When whites are foamy, begin slowly adding in last cup of granulated sugar. Increase speed. Continue mixing until whites form semi-stiff peaks.
One cup at a time, fold in the egg whites. At first whites will break down completely. Don't be discouraged. Continue folding, incorporating the whites almost completely, until all the egg whites are in the batter. The batter will now be fluffy and light.
At this point you have the option do to the following: add in 2 cups of chopped walnuts (if you like a very nutty/walnutty batter); add in the various and sundry fruits that go into fruitcake; add in 2 cups of chocolate chips; do nothing.
Pour batter into prepared pan(s) and place in center rack of oven. If using a bundt pan, set timer for 1 hour and 30 minutes (that's 90 minutes total - not a typo). If using smaller pans, set timer for 1 hour and 15 minutes. You should check the cake every half hour or so, then more regularly after the 1 hour and 10 minute mark. This cake will rise a ton - so make sure you have built in additional headroom by inserting a slightly taller parchment liner on the side or used a tall pan.
Once you are able to insert a skewer into the middle of the cake and have it come out dry, the cake is baked. Remove from oven and, when just barely warm or cooled, poke holes all over the top of the cake with a fork or skewer and pour a cup (or less if the cake is smaller than a bundt cake) of simple syrup and rum mixture over the top (see below). If you pour the syrup over the top before it has cooled, some of these gluten-free flours (like oat) can get gummy.
Simple syrup and rum:
Over medium heat on a stove, dissolve
1 C Sugar
1 1/4 C Water
Once it has cooled, add 1 cup Rum
Allow to cool completely. It can now be eaten as is, or, if an icing is preferred, you can whip up an easy rum fondant by combining one cup of powdered sugar with a 1/4 cup of rum, and adding more liquid (or sugar) as necessary to thin the icing down (or thicken it up). This will get hard if left out uncovered. If allowed to dry and then covered with plastic, it will keep the cake moist. We preferred the iced caked.
Here's a picture of one of my cakes, covered in icing - I had a little chocolate coffee rum liqueur left over (I made it about 2 years ago) and I used that in place of rum, which I ran out of.
Of course I cut it open (and ate almost a quarter of the cake!) to inspect the crumb. It is extremely dense (while it was baking I had a momentary panic that the lack of gums in the cake would prevent it from forming a decent crumb, but I was wrong, thank goodness).
I brought a piece to my friends Bill & Yvonne. I gave them a small piece first...I told Yvonne that if she liked it, I'd give 'em an entire cake. I know gluten-free isn't everyone's cup of tea. She took the piece from me and brought it back to her husband, who was in the kitchen of their restaurant, working. She reappeared a few minutes later. "He likes it," she said. "He says it is moist." I produced a whole cake from my bag and presented it to her. She took it from me and returned to the kitchen.
Just two more cakes left to give away...
