Sunday 17 June 2007

Wee cakes for wee girls

Having a new gluten free cookbook and a visit to my gluten free sister, Susie, and niece, Grace, provided the perfect opportunity to try out a new gluten free recipe.

I decided to make some cupcakes. My sister Francesca wants mum and me to make cupcakes for her wedding and so we will want to make some gluten free cupcakes. Plus I know kids love cupcakes. My interest in cupcakes lately has been piqued by a number of new colourful cupcake cookbooks. One comment I read recently was that cupcakes are just any cake recipe baked as small individual cakes. What a liberating thought. So I took the Victoria Sponge Recipe and used it to make plain vanilla cupcakes.

I made them Friday night while I made the Guinness Chocolate Cake. I also had some new silicon mini muffin pans and wanted to try these out. I made one batch in cupcake papers, one in mini muffin papers and one in the silicon pans without papers. So I have estimated the baking time, because I was a wee bit distracted to take proper notice and it varied from batch to batch.

What I liked about the recipe is that it just is like an ordinary cake recipe with brown rice flour instead of wheat flour. Given my bad experiences with commercially prepared gluten free flour, I thought this an easy option. Although my mum says she has just used a gluten free flour for cupcakes and it has worked fine. Maybe this is due to us using different brands! Anyway, the cupcakes were excellent – E was most impressed by their lightness and asking me to bring him some home.

The real fun with cupcakes is icing them. My four young nieces were the icing team and I just was the coordinator, and take full responsibility for the brightness of the colours – I didn’t take as much care with adding colouring as I usually would. Quin and Maddy spread on the icing and Grace and Ella sprinkled the coloured chocolate bits on. We ended up with as many chocolate bits on the bench and the floor as on the cupcakes but it was lots of fun and they seemed to enjoy eating them almost as much (except Grace who doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth).

Gluten Free Cupcakes
(adapted from Louise Blair)

175g margarine or butter, softened
175g castor sugar
175g brown rice flour
3 eggs
1tbsp gluten free baking powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tbsp milk

Preheat oven to 180ºC. Put all ingredients in a bowl and beat til combined and smooth (or blend in a food processor). Spoon into min-muffin pans or cupcake pan. Made 18 mini muffins and 8 cupcakes. Bake 10-15 minutes til just golden brown and a skewer comes out cleanly. Cool on a rack and ice and decorate when cool.

On the Stereo:
Mozart Wind Concertos: Berliner Philharmoniker Karajan

6 comments:

  1. The school I work at are having a Highland Games this week. Part of my effort is to bake up a storm for the "tea tent". But I'm not a baker at all!
    Will give these a try. :)

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  2. Hope your baking goes well, Wendy -I think people always appreciate home baked goods at these events - nothing like highland games to fill people with good cheer - especially if the sun shines - wish I could be there

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  3. Those cupcakes make me want to shout! They are gorgeous and happy and fun. Totally wonderful... Thank you for sharing!

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  4. Those cakes are so pretty!

    How good were the silicone moulds? I have pondered over them!

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  5. Those look awesome, Johanna! So much fun and delightful color!

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  6. thanks Kleopatra, Holler and Jenn - these are some of the most colourful cupcakes I have ever made - was lots of fun with the kids - my little 2 year old nieces were so excited to be decorating them!

    Holler - jury is still out on the silicone moulds as far as I am concerned - they were floppy and needed to be on a tray - the cakes came out fine with a wee bit of prodding, but it didn't seem miraculously easy - when I ate at kathleen's, she said how much she loves all her silicone moulds for baking and uses them a lot.

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