Gluten Free Chocolate Cake

Please ignore the chipped plate.  What?  You didn't even notice, well then forget I mentioned it.  Focus on the cake, it's good.

  So a few things to mention before this post.  Firstly, we have some answers about our van.  It is being written off, which I am really really hoping turns out to be a blessing in disguise.  We are on a really short time frame and budget, so I hope that by this time next week we are all back to normal.  Well our normal anyway.

 Secondly, I had to share a funny comment I got on my last cake pop post.  I deleted it, then I thought about it.  The comment was anonymous, which I am not surprised, people seem to have a lot of nerve behind a computer screen.   I know I say some things I would never have the nerve to say.  Anyway the comment was "These look like crap."  So I just laughed then deleted it.  Then I thought about it, technically there was a picture where the cake balls sort of look like crap, literally.  And then I though " this must mean I have made it, I got a hate mail comment."  So that sort of made me happy, so I promise to publish all the comments I get, even the bad ones, unless they are rude. And if they upset me I will leave a response, but please if you have the "guts" to make those helpful comments, put your name to it.  That is all.

My alien coffee maker, which I use at least once a month, don't tell hubby.

  And lastly, this cake, oh man, it is good! I have read many posts from others showing their gluten free treats and I have been curious about them.  Not curious enough to really make them, because I am super lazy.  But when I was doing that desert table for my friend she requested something Gluten free, and she even sent me a recipe.  She had to go find the special flour mix as I had no idea or time to get it.  As it turns out, this cake is go good, that you could not tell it was gluten free.  It is that good.

This is the flour blend and it is perfect for this as it is 3 cups in the box.

Action shot of my super amazing new mixer.  Too bad it's not a new car right?

  So to start this cake has no butter, which I was surprised at, but the batter was so silky and smooth it was just perfect.   Also another thing this cake uses is coffee.  Now I don't drink hot coffee, but I love me an iced coffee.  But I was making it a la Pioneer Woman and making my own base.  As it turns out, I don't drink it much at home, I love me my Tim Horton's.  So I stopped making it, and we found this coffee maker at a store for under $30.  It uses pods, and it is not one of the super high end ones, but it lets me brew my coffee cold and I like it.  So I used it to make the coffee for this cake, I needed 1 1/2 cups, so I brewed two pods.

All ready to go, please ignore the empty wine bottle that my sister in law left at our house after they were over for diner.  And please ignore the fact I totally didn't notice it in the picture until this very second.

  The recipe is so easy, basically you mix all your dry ingredients together, then you mix all your wet ingredients together.  Then you mix both of those all together.  Super easy people!

 Gluten Free Cake

This makes a bunch, like 36 cupcakes at least

And it was found on a TV show site, which I cannot find as I just copied it, sorry

-3 cups gluten free flour blend *

-1 1/2 cups cocoa powder

-3 cups sugar

-1 TBSP baking soda

-1 1/2 TSP baking powder

-1 1/2 TSP salt

-3 eggs

-1 1/2 cups butter milk **

-1 1/2 cups coffee***

-3/4 cups oil

-1 1/2 TSP vanilla****

Pre heat oven to 325, mix all dry ingredients together, and mix all wet ingredients together and then mix the whole lot together.  Then place in pans or cupcake liners and bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  

*My friend got hers at a health food store, but she said you want the flour blend as it helps the cake to be nice and fluffy

**I just added a bit of white vinegar to milk and let sit for 5 minutes

***I used brewed coffee but  I bet instant would work too, the coffee really brings out the chocolate flavor

****I used vanilla bean paste because I was feeling fancy, you don't have to

I just used what I had, bendy straws and left over fudge frosting.

So I wanted to make this for my family for our diner at my parents.  I decided to be brave and make a layer cake.  I was going to make it three layers as I had lots of batter, but I only had two pans and was in a rush.  So I did two layers and the rest as cupcakes.  The cakes bake up nice and flat, so there is no need to level them.  

Oh my gosh, I sort of want to dive into this. Hubby said the best part was the fudge frosting, then tried to cover himself by saying "but the cake was really really good too!"  Smart man. I will share this fudge frosting soon, I need to make it again and put it on brownies as it was intended.

See it was nice and level, I guess since it did not rise very much it was just perfect.

So this is how you cut the straws, put it in where you want it, all the way down. Then pull it up a bit to cut it level and then push it back in.

  After they baked and cooled for about 20 minutes I put them in the fridge, we were running late so I had to rush it.  I had some left over fudge frosting from the brownies I made a few weeks back.  I had kept it in the fridge so it was still great, hard though, so I had to warm it up a bit in the microwave.  Anyway I made a simple butter cream.  I have shared it here many times.  And I set to work assembling it. 

See you cannot even see the straws here.

My "rustic" icing job.

  First I smeared a bit of frosting on the cake plate and placed the bottom layer.  Then I pipped a dam of frosting around it, to hold in the fudge.  I spread the fudge out, not too thick a layer and then put the second layer on.  Now as I hate making cakes, and we had a long drive ahead of us, I had to be smart.  So I used some plastic straws to hold the layers together.  I just took four and put one in the middle and three around the cake.  You push the straw in, pull it up a but and cut it so it will be level.  Then you frost the cake.  

Sprinkles make everything better!

  Now real cake decorators would make a nice smooth cake, but this was for family and I wanted a rustic look.  At least that is what I am telling myself, less disappointment that way.  So I iced it and then sprinkled on some bone sprinkles because nothing says fall like bones right?

And these are the poopy cupcakes my co workers got,  but they ate them anyway.  The just wanted the sugar.

  I also really quickly piped some frosting on my cupcakes, and have made the choice that from now on when using a chocolate frosting I need to use a fluted pipping tip, this poopy looking icing is just wrong.   But it tastes so right.

  So We were in a rush so we headed out and my cake stayed nice and level, and we ate it for desert then we went home and had to lay down, too much food!  But it was good, and I don't know about you, but even if this is gluten free, I will be willing to make it again.  And again.  It was that good.

And I have come to terms that I will never get a really nice cake slice picture, so just be happy with this.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmGkVXRcfqdibcZiJKsoYvK92JaoFWr-FRH1wyAdx0HJZCXqveTH1WOVaoJgdp4Iqn13vksXQocLO015g79FoCLOVPgSFy7leqBBNOCDHiyuto8foFwAx2XINmuNwO0LGClO69qvcQ0Ko/s1600/buttonsocial.jpg

Wedding Cupcakes

After I pipped these I then realized that the tip I used was probably not the best choice.  If you don't know why, well you are more mature than me.

  Oh man, this is the year of weddings for us.  I like weddings usually but I sort hate them too.  I mean I had the wedding I planned, but looking back I would so do some different things. And going to all these weddings makes me think of all the cool things I would do now. I have told hubby my next wedding is going to be nothing but sugar and candy and some booze.  Oh and maybe some sort of vows.  I have my priorities.

  I may even invite him too.

My new pasta roller, which made this so easy.  Also my messy table, but what else is new.

  So the first for this year of weddings was my mother in laws.  Which is sort of crazy!  She married her teenage sweet heart, after not seeing him for almost 40 years.  So sweet and if you knew the hard things she has been through, she totally deserves it.  And she asked me to make cupcakes to boot.  Only thing is she wanted them to be from scratch, which if you know me, is a sticking point.

  Just a fun fact, cake mixes are great, for certain things.  Like cake balls, or for kids, it works great.  But for adults and fancy things I do scratch.  But you know I must love her if I did them from scratch without even a thought to using a mix. I mean she did give me Hubby, which at some times I am not sure if I should thank or curse her for.  At the time of the wedding, it was thankfulness, so from scratch it was.

I got this huge long strip of fondant out of like a golf ball size of fondant.

See how thin that fondant is?  Well next time I will do it a bit thicker, I lost a good many flower petals when they dried.  Also I usually would have used a fondant cutting mat or parchment, but I was in a rush and the table was actually clean, so I went with it.

   The bride requested vanilla cupcakes with chocolate icing and ribbon cupcakes with white icing.  Now I have no idea what ribbon cupcakes are, so I said something like "do you mean red velvet?"  And she was all "yeah, that is what I said."  I may have to hurt her one day, lucky she cracks me up.

  So I have made red velvet whoopie pies, cake balls and even cupcakes. But the cupcakes were made with a mix as a base.  So I had to find a new recipe, and dang it all, none of my baking books had one.  Well maybe they did but I was not getting off the sofa to look when I was all comfy and on my lap top.  So I went to pintrest and found this recipe I had pinned from  My Baking Addiction.

  Now the week before, I started making my decorations.  I had no idea what the colours were, as hubby was in charge of finding out for me.  So I found out the dress was champagne and that was it.  So I decided that since my cupcake stand was white and silver, I would do champagne and silver.  I also wanted to give it a sort of spring look, so flowers and butterflies were what I figured.

My cheap flower former.

  Now if you remember I stated I had to try and curb my spending, but this was for my mother in law, which totally gave me the ability to justify a few things.  So I got a set of fondant butterfly cutters, and a pasta rolling machine.  I have been wanting one for a while, but did not want to spend the money.  They are perfect for rolling out fondant fast and nice and thin.  Also they were super cheap at the bakers warehouse.

  Funny side note, the lady at the bakers warehouse was all, "We don't sell pasta stuff here, why do we have this?"  And I explained how it was great for sugar paste and such.  Then she was all "Well we sell cannoli forms and pizza wheels too, that makes no sense!" And when I tried to explain that the forms were for the pastry version of a cannoli and the pizza wheel made cutting dough and fondant easy she nearly lost her mind.  Or she just gave me the "you are just talking crazy now" look.  Which sort of annoys me, I wish the people that worked at the store knew about their product, and they are not new.  So just saying, sometimes going into a store will not get you answers. At least they are nice, that counts for something right?

I put them all on a cookie sheet so I could move them around easier.

I made the butterflies thicker, because I learn from my mistakes.  Sometimes.

This worked great, until someone, Hubby, moved it and a bunch fell off.  But that was okay as they dried really fast. I tried to make a few larger ones with a folded bit of parchment, it worked okay.

 Anyway back to the baking stuff. I started by mixing my fondant half and half with gum paste.  I do this because I read on a great blog, Sweetopia that she did it as it makes for a stiffer decoration, without being too hard.  So after I mixed it all I rolled it out with my pasta roller and cut out the flowers.  I wanted them to be a little curved,so I put them in paint trays.  You can buy the real flower ones that Wilton makes, for a lot or do what I did and get the cheap ones in the artist isle.  Now not 100% sure they are perfectly food safe, but I put icing sugar in them so the flowers hardly touched them.  And a lot of people don't even eat them.  Then you leave them to dry over night.  I then cut out my butter flies and draped them over the side of a cake pan.   I wanted them to look like they were flying.

If I had been smart I would have kept the flowers and butterflies in different containers.  As it was I had to pick them all out, and think about how dumb I was.  I think that a lot some days.

  Once they had totally dried out I wanted to dust them with silver luster dust.  But doing it dry was not giving much of a shine, so I resorted to doing it wet.  I took some vodka,just a little.  And I added the dust and stirred it with a paint brush, then painted the decorations.  This worked great but uses a good deal of the luster dust, so be aware.

So this was the set up, until I found I did not like how little the luster dust showed on the flowers.

  Once they were dry I mixed up some icing sugar and water and piped tiny dots on the flowers and stuck a silver pearl in each one.  Looking back I should have coloured it with some grey colour as the white stood out. Oh well, live and learn.

Booze to the rescue!

See they look like they were spray painted.  Which I just now realized would have been way easier as I bought a stupid can of the silver stuff at Micheal's, by Duff I think.  Sigh, this post is depressing me at how many things I did wrong, or you know, the hard way.

I was covered!

See how cute?

And an almost in focus shot.  Almost.

  So for the cupcakes I made the red velvet with the great recipe I found on  line.  I didn't really read it before I started and was shocked when it turned out there was no butter, only oil in it.  I also got a little worried as it was so watery and I thought I had screwed up.  I hadn't, that is just how it was.  I found putting the batter in a squeeze bottle was the easiest way to get the cupcake liners filled without a mess.  I used these silver liners, that were a total pain to pull apart,but were so nice and sturdy and did not get oily or soft.  So as much as I hated pulling them apart, I will so buy them again.  And I think I paid about $10 for 500 of them, good deal if you ask me.

I got these amazing liners at the warehouse, I love that place.

As my post is super long, I will just link the recipes here. There is also a link to the post with the vanilla cupcakes and the butter cream I make.

Red Velvet Cupcakes by My Baking Addiction 

Vanilla Cupcakes From Sugarlicious, my older post

 So once my cupcakes were baked I made my butter cream and iced them, I did about 10 at a time and them stuck a flower or butterfly on them.  Then as I did not make enough decorations I put silver pearls on the rest, making sure to do them as soon as I had piped them, or else the butter cream would start to crust and they would not stick.  Then they were packed up and we went to the wedding.

These are the red velvet and they were really tasty.

 I was also surprised as Pork Chop ate about 6 cupcakes as I was decorating them.  They were mini ones, but he ate them, and most of them with frosting.  He only ate two at the wedding, but begged me to make more when we got up the next day.  As we are tearing the house apart for a garage sale I had to promise to make them again that week.  He would not stop talking about the red velvet ones all weekend.  So that was weird.  And the little bugger found the one little one I had hidden for me to eat later, so he ate it.  Good thing he is cute or I would kill him!

And if you still don't know why I am not happy with the piping, thank you for being so mature.  If you do see the reason, thank you for letting me not be the only 12 year old boy here.

  So that is wedding one down.  We have one in June, and then two in September.  I am making stuff for the two in the fall, so those will be fun!

  And the wedding was insane, lots of stuff to do, but at the end of it all my mother in law found her true love and he cried when he tried to tell her how much he loved her.

 What more can a girl ask for?

Banana Chocolate Chip Whoopie Pies - Eating the Alphabet

This is the best picture I could get, Porky was having a play date and I thought I was going to kill one of them.  So no time for pictures, just eating them!

 So this is going to be a great post.  I am really excited to be part of this blog hop.  I was first introduced to blog hops through the 12 weeks of Christmas cookies.  And it was perfect.  I learned so much and I really enjoyed that there were so many others out there reading and sharing with me.  That awesome blog hop was put together by Brenda over at Meal Planning Magic.   And I loved every minute of it, so when Brenda sent out a note to all of us letting us know about her new years blog hop suggestion I was so excited.  Now mind you I think she meant for most people to put together cooking posts.  I said well I want to play, but it will be sweet, because if there is one thing I love, it's sugar.  

  So here it is, the first instalment of eating the alphabet.  This months letters were A and B.  And I was all set to make something with apples.  Then I thought about it and figured I would have to peal them probably and that is a lot of work.  Then I thought well bananas, so that is what I went with, if you couldn't tell by the title.

  Now baking with bananas means you need really ripe bananas and I didn't have any, so I had to plan ahead.  I got hubby to buy me some bananas, but I had no idea what I really wanted to make, so we may have bought a few extra. They are now safe and sound in the freezer all ripe and ready for when I want to make these again, because you know I totally want to.

So to start off, I was thinking of making banana bread or muffins, but those are not usually cute.  So I thought about cookie, and that just didn't sound right either.  So I found my trusty baking book and picked out a whoopie pie to make.  I changed it up just a tiny bit, but you know it's still going to be good.

See this looks gross, but it smells really good.  Bananas and lemon juice

So here you go, super yummy baking with fruit in it.  Which I may have pointed out before as being wrong, but for this, I will admit I might change my mind.

Banana Chocolate Chip Whoopie Pies

Adapted from Whoopies, by Susanna Tee

set oven to 350

-2 ripe bananas

-1 TSP lemon juice

-1/2 cup butter

-1 cup light brown sugar

-1 TSP vanilla 

-1 extra large egg

-2 cups all purpose flour

-1/2 TSP ground cinnamon

-1 TSP baking powder

-1 TSP baking soda

-pinch of salt

-3 TBPS sour cream

-1 cup mini chocolate chips

Start by mashing your banana with the lemon juice.  I used a potato masher and then a fork.  Set it aside.

Blend butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy.

I was a little worried because the mix was sort of watery, but it was fine.

Add the egg.

Combine and sift all the dry ingredients, and add them to the butter mixture.  Then add the banana and mix.  

I only got 6 on a tray, and a total of 20 full pies.

Lastly add your chocolate chips and stir until they are distributed.

I would be lying if I said I didn't eat a few of these hot out of the oven,  so good!

Take a small cookie scoop and place the mixture by the scoop full on a parchment lined cookie sheet.  Bake for about 8 minutes, until they are done, but still soft.

Once baked, let them fully cool and make your filling.

Filling

-1 1/2 cups butter

-1 TBSP vanilla

-3 TBSP cocoa powder

-icing sugar

-milk

So this is just like my regular butter cream, just no shortening.  So cream the butter, add your vanilla and cocoa and then alternate adding sugar and milk until you get as much as you want, and as thick as you want.  I made mine with 2 KG of sugar, so I had lots of extra to make other stuff with.

I made way too much, I have like 5 cups left, I would not be opposed to eating it with a spoon for diner.

Place your pies half wrong side up and the other just regular and using a piping bag with a large star tip, pipe as much or as little as you would like.  I like a lot, obviously, so I did more.  But feel free to do less, I won't think any less of you, I would just have to eat more of yours.  

I set them all up, only because I am OCD with some things.

I put a lot of filling, the chocolate and banana was just amazing.

That's it, then just store them in a container in the fridge until ready to eat.  Mine didn't last too long, and one girl at work told me she really liked my "whoopie cushions"  which was hysterical, because she really thought that was the name.  So no matter what you call it, they are good.  And as an added bonus they are healthy.  I think the ratio of banana to sugar and butter is fair, and if not, at least you get a bit of fruit in your diet.

Another view because I think they look so yummy.

Oh and the one on the left is the left over monster one I made.  And I ate it and had to hear my tummy gurgle for hours afterwards.  So only small ones for me from now on.