Food blog five - aaargh!

This week I truly thought I had perfected the art of baking the best gluten-free, sugar-free carrot cake. Not only was the texture open ( I made it with buckwheat - which isn’t wheat but a seed) and followed my fail-safe recipe for the all-singing, all-dancing carrot cake with everything in it. Except I used sweetener in place of sugar. And the g-free, s-free one tasted like cake! I made an all-singing etc cake that same afternoon too.

In order to uncontaminate the gluten- and sugar-free version I took especial care over wiping all food prep surfaces and used separate utensils so not a trace of wheat flour nor sugar from the all-singing batter got into the mix. (All to save those suffering from coeliac or diabetes). I simply used a calculator which converted the amount of sweetener needed in place of 6 oz muscovado sugar and replaced the  SR wheat flour with the aforementioned buckwheat flour. The full recipe can be found on my previous post, food blog four.

After over seventy minutes’ baking time (35 mins each cake) two rather good-looking specimens sat cooling on their wire racks. Both were springy to the touch and were well cooked through. That same evening I carefully labelled each cake so I’d know, in three weeks’ time, which is gluten-free and which is not, and placed them in the free tray in the freezer.

Feeling pleased with the end result I planned my next cake ( gluten-free lemon drizzle perhaps) for when we are back from Devon. And then I had the horrors! Cripes! I’d used the wrong baking powder in the gluten-free cake. Yes it’s only a teaspoon in the whole of a cake but nevertheless it’s a wheat-based powder. Dammit!

I even have gluten-free baking powder sitting on the shelf next to my nutmeg, cinnamon, Madgascan vanilla essence, bicarbonate of soda and so on. What a fool! I used the wrong baking powder. I will have to come clean and declare ‘trace gluten’ in my supposedly gluten-free cake. And I really will have to bake another one - perhaps the lemon drizzle - with the gluten-free baking powder.

Aaargh!

Two weeks ago, in happier times, a minor success was my banana and sultana cake. I did check that dried fruit doesn’t lead to sugar spikes - so a diabetic could enjoy a slice. I’d hate to cause anyone harm by overlooking a (nother) demon ingredient. I still have a lot to learn, I feel. But my version of the g-free, s-free carrot cake was so much better, both in texture and taste, than the results of other recipes I’ve used that I will allow myself half a pat on the back.

Next week: lemon drizzle or banana cake...