Strawberry Gluten Free Cake Tutorial

Good Evening Ya'll!
It's finally here! My first tutorial...and a gluten free one at that...how great is that! So if you guys didn't know that along with regular cakes and cupcakes, I make cakes/cupcakes for people with food allergies. My biggest food allergy group is those who are on a gluten free diet. So I do get request pretty regularly for gluten free cakes. So I decided to do a gluten free tutorial. Normally I would keep my recipes and such a business secret but since the recipe is already listed on the King Arthur's website, its not mine. If you look on their site under gluten free, you will see a recipe for a yellow cake. Now when you look at the recipe, its a pretty basic recipe in terms of gluten free recipes. So I use this recipe as a basis for my other flavors, just building upon what is already there using other gluten free ingredients.

In this case the cake was gluten free strawberry with gluten free vanilla buttercream filling. Now the biggest tip I can give before I start the actual tutorial is to make sure that all of baking items are GLUTEN FREE that includes the mixing bowl, mixer, measuring cups/spoons, etc. I have a separate set of equipment to use just for gluten free clients. You do not want to make any one sick from cross contamination. For some people, even the smallest bit of gluten can make them sick and that's the last thing you want to do is make someone sick. Now with that housekeeping done on to the tutorial!

As you can see from the picture, I start with gathering all the ingredients I need first to make what ever flavor cake I am making. I do this so I am not running around looking for ingredients while mixing the cake batter. Another tip is that I take out the milk and eggs and butter out of the fridge at least 30 minutes before I bake so they are at room temperature. So in the picture you have salt, sugar (store brand works fine), baking soda (make sure the label says gluten free on it, if not then buy one that does), King Arthur Gluten Free All Purpose Flour mix, Jello brand Strawberry Creme pudding mix (only Jello brand, DO NOT get STORE BRAND!!! Jello brand is gluten free made by Kraft), Strawberry extract and xanthan gum.  They don't sell xanthan gum in the grocery stores, I get mine from my local cake supply shop, but there are plenty of online places that you can purchase it from. Bob Red's Mill carries it as well as the Gluten Free Pantry has it as well.  Now you will notice that is the recipe they have something called Free King Arthur Cake Enhancer. I don't have that, so I leave it out, my clients like the cake just fine. If you can get your hands on it then go for it:) Also in the picture are my measuring cupcakes and spoons that used only for gluten free baking.

Here is my gluten free mixing bowl, measuring cup and hand mixer. Since I don't do gluten free baking in large numbers yet, I only use the hand mixer for now.

This is a picture of the butter and sugar mixed together. You want to make sure that thoroughly mix that butter and sugar together since this is the base of the recipe.

Next you want to add the eggs into the mixture, one at a time to make sure they are thoroughly incorporated into the mix. It should look something like the picture above.

This is the point where you add in the extract and pudding.

Once you do that, then you will add in the flour mix (flour, salt, baking powder and xanthan gum) and milk alternating between the 2. The batter will have slight pink color to it. If you want more a pink color you can add some pink food coloring to it because the pink color does bake out during the baking process.

I bake in the oven on 350. Now most you can go by the time in the recipe, which I never do. I like to baby sit my cakes to make sure they stay moist and don't over bake. So once I start to smell the cake, I keep checking it every 5 minutes until it springs back. I double check done-ness of the cake by putting a toothpick right into the middle of the cake.


Once the cakes have cooled, you can throw them in the freezer for an hour. Since gluten free cakes aren't as stable as cakes with gluten in them and crumble easily, the freezing helps leveling them out better and less mess.

Once leveled, I fill the cakes and let them sit overnight to settle before I start to cover them and decorate. This cake was just for a client of mine whose daughter was turning 2. She wanted a regular cake for everyone else and then a smaller one for a second one for herself. She told me I didn't have to decorate it, but I added some decorations to have it match the main cake.

So that is my first tutorial:) Let me know what you think...

Peace & Blessings
Kima