We make something special for most major festivities- it's fun to celebrate and even more, fun to eat!
Aarina, baked a gluten free Date and Walnut cake on Sunday. Made of Sorghum, water-chestnut, rice and tapioca, the cake other than being gluten free was also very low in sugar (20 grams of muscovado for 500 gram cake) since the dates provide enough sweetness and the flours the flavour.
Now, this is a post to share an interesting observation of ours. Since the last five years, Aarina has baked lots of gluten-free cakes, so many that we have lost count of them and even stopped making notes! (Yes, bad habits) However, there is something that we noticed in our kitchen lab during our trials.
We do not use any baking powder or yeast in our cakes, air is incorporated by long, patient beating of the mixture. It so happens that if we use eggs from mass farmed, layer hens, the cake inevitably falls flat or caves in. But it never happens with the traditional, free range hens- The cakes always have a wonderful rise and colour. Since the day we noticed this, we have always used local, free range eggs in our cakes and we have been unable to find why such a difference. (The reason we tell ourselves is that it could be the difference in the strength of the albumins protein matrix- but it's just a speculation!)
Being off- sugar, we could just have a bite of the cake- but it was a delight to see the family enjoy a great gluten-free cake- that too nearly organic (except for the dates) and margarine free.
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