Tags
baking, cake, celiac, chocolate, dessert, food, g-f, gluten, gluten-free, gluten-intolerant, pretty, strawberry, x-f, xanthan-free, yellow cake, yum
Is this not the prettiest cake you’ve ever seen? I’ve been in a rather strawberry mood lately and I haven’t made a cake in ages, so I decided I wanted a strawberry-frosted cake. Things did not go exactly as planned, but this cake was still pretty fantastic.
I searched around for a good while before settling on Gluten Free Gigi’s Birthday Cake recipe, which as written is not only gluten-free, but also dairy- and egg-free. My version included both dairy and egg, but as you can see from her recipe and photo, it works quite well without either of those!
It has been an incredibly long time since I have had a cake come out of a pan as cleanly as this cake did, and I’m including gluten-containing cakes in that list. The first cake left no bit of itself on the pan, and the second only left the tiniest of strips of itself on the bottom of the other. Magnificent. It also has a wonderful squishy texture out of the oven, and smelled marvelous.
For the frosting, I searched around a lot, and found no recipe that really appealed to me. I didn’t want an overly-sugary frosting that barely had a hint of strawberry to it, I wanted a really strawberry-flavored frosting! So intense you wouldn’t believe you weren’t just eating strawberries! Well, maybe that’s a bit overboard, but I didn’t want sugar to override the strawberry flavor, which nearly every recipe seemed to promise. I settled on a recipe to use as a base, but quickly discovered that even with a smaller amount of sugar than recommended, I was already not thrilled with the result. Strawberries also break down the frosting’s texture, so I was in dire need of an emulsifier. I eventually added an egg (as much as I prefer not to use them in frosting – I hate putting my cakes in the fridge due to texture changes), but because of my inclination to use less sugar than was called for, it still didn’t help enough. I eventually conceded defeat and slathered a layer of the strawberry substance between the layers of the cake, then sought out cocoa powder.
Cocoa powder (and possibly a bit more sugar) turned this into a proper frosting. I was careful with the additions of cocoa powder, so the flavor of the strawberry balanced with the cocoa – it was actually quite pleasant, and the strawberries gave the chocolate a rather cute pink sheen.
The cake ended up quite tasty. I admit, I still wished for a fully-strawberry frosting, but I do not complain about having delicious chocolate, and this cake was rather splendid. I was again impressed by the cake when I sliced it – I have never had a cake slice so smoothly. I do wonder if this was in part due to it having chilled in the fridge for a few hours, so I will have to investigate by making this cake again. I would also like to see how the texture fares out of the fridge – it ended up seeming quite dense, and I’m not sure if that was a result of the recipe, how I made it, or being exiled to the fridge. In the future, should I choose to make strawberry frosting again, I imagine I will acquire some strawberry extract, as that should help the frosting maintain its texture while increasing the strawberry flavor.
A Flour By Any Other Grain 