How to Doctor a Gluten Free Cake Mix ~ Part 2

How to Doctor a Gluten Free Chocolate Cake Mix.

Have you been on pinterest lately?  Well I love this new way of recipe surfing.  You cover so much more ground than trying to find ideas the old fashioned search way.  I found this blog titled KevinandAmanda.com.  Love the photography on that blog.  I found a pin on how to doctor up a Cake mix and got lost in her photography of the luscious chocolate cake.  I love this idea too.  Not a new idea, I understand but her pictures are so convincing!  It made me realize that I never posted my own recipe for enhanced chocolate cake.  So here it is.....my version of How to Doctor up a Cake Mix, the gluten free edition.

1 Box of Betty Crocker Gluten Free Chocolate Cake Mix
1 3.8 ounce box of Jell-O Instant Chocolate Pudding
1/2 cup Butter, room temperature
1/3 cup Brown Sugar
4 Eggs, room temperature
1 cup Sour Cream
1 Tablespoon Vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Spray Olive Oil onto two 8-inch baking pans.

• In a large bowl, combine the cake mix, gelatin powder, butter, sugar, eggs, sour cream and vanilla. 
• Beat on low speed for 3 minutes or until incorporated. 
• Pour equally into two greased 8-inch round baking pans. 
• Bake at 350° for about 35-37 minutes or until tooth pick inserted comes out clean. 
• Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks to cool completely.

Notes:

Betty Crocker Gluten Free cake mixes made according to the package instructions only makes a ONE layer cake. With the increased ingredients of this recipe, you can get two 8" layers out of one box! See:

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How to Doctor a Gluten Free Yellow Cake Mix

How to Doctor a Gluten Free Yellow Cake Mix.

This recipe is moist and delicious, wonderfully enhanced.  I have been making my Betty Crocker Yellow Cake mix this way for so long, I have no idea why I never posted it.  Maybe because it disappears as fast as I make it and I never end up snapping a picture.  I must confess though, I originally was inspired by this recipe from a "version" of this on a blog somewhere, it had 5 eggs, one extra yolk.  I am so sorry I never could find that source again to credit them. They are pure creative genius.

I first tried Betty Crocker yellow boxed cake mix when I just started going gluten free and regular gluten filled cakes were still fresh in my mind.  I was turned off by the graininess of the cakes.  I am sorry Betty, I mean no disrespect.  I am truly grateful that this mix exists and is main stream.  I just needed to work with it like I do everything else.  It's a sort of a flaw of mine, I know. I set out to doctor up the cake mix to suite my taste.  What I ended up with is good.  Very good.  When I make it for birthdays nobody realizes it is Gluten Free.  It's hysterical how self declared anti-gluten eating folks gobble this up and never realize what they just had WAS gluten free.  Tee hee, makes me giggle in delight.

1 box of Betty Crocker's Gluten Free Yellow Cake Mix
1 3.4 ounce box of Vanilla pudding
1/3 cup Sugar
3/4's cup of Orange Juice
1/2 cup Oil
4 eggs
1 Tablespoon Vanilla Extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Spray Olive Oil onto two 8-inch baking pans.

• In a large bowl, combine the cake mix, gelatin powder, sugar, juice, oil, eggs and vanilla. 
• Beat on low speed for 3 minutes or until incorporated. 
• Pour equally into two greased 8-inch round baking pans. 
• Bake at 350° for about 35-37 minutes or until tooth pick inserted comes out clean. 
• Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks to cool completely.

Notes:
Betty Crocker Gluten Free cake mixes made according to the package instructions only makes a ONE layer cake. With the increased ingredients of this recipe, you can get two 8" layers out of one box!  See:

I will posting this recipe to:

Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays

Gluten Free Wednesdays

Works for Me Wednesday

Real Food Wednesday
Allergy Friendly Friday

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Gluten Free Birthday Cake Recipe

I was so excited to give this project a try and find out that the resulting cake was great.  LOL.  Half the sheet was gone before it cooled.  It was created out of desperation on Birthday Week where I had to make birthday cupcakes for school, for church dinner, and little chef's party of 30 something kids. Add to the mix one GIANT PEEP CAKE for Cub Scouts and you are officially out of mix.  Now add surprise visitors to the mix and a new cake recipe is born.   

Growing up a "home made" birthday cake came from a box and that was pretty darn special for us.  Most folks from our station in life purchased made cakes from the store.  My mother was a single parent who worked 3 jobs so taking the time to bake a cake was a labor of love that we really appreciated.  I'm not sure I even realized growing up that cakes could be made from "scratch" or without a boxed mix.  

I generally like to add jello or pudding to any cake mix that uses a large portion of Brown Rice Flour because I find BRF to be very grainy and unappealing.  Starchy mixes need BRF in the blend though or I find it gives off a strange taste.  This flour blend (which happens to be my favorite) is starchy enough to not need the jello or pudding but not all starch either.  If you use the pudding in this recipe, it will give your cake a very good flavor but in turn make it chewy upon refrigeration.  My whole point of creating a cake recipe was that it kept well.  I am coming to learn that not all recipes or flour blends need the gelatin. 

I gathered comments from the "wheat eaters" who fell victim to my taste testing.  Some of their comments included: good moisture and great texture.   My own personal favorite part? This cake keeps well on the counter or in the refrigerator over night.

1 1/2 sticks (12 Tablespoons) Butter
2 cups Powdered Sugar
4 Eggs
1 cup Milk
1 Tablespoon Vanilla (good quality gluten free)

1 1/2 cups Tapioca Starch *
1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons Brown Rice Flour *
1/4 cup plus 2 Tablespoons Potato Starch *
1 teaspoon Xanthan Gum
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Baking Powder


Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Spray either two 9" baking pans
     or one 9x13 can pan

• Combine Butter and Powdered Sugar in the bowl of your stand mixer and whip until light and fluffy and light yellow in color.
• Add one egg at a time and beat until fully incorporated.
• Mix in vanilla.
• Add Flour, Xanthan Gum, Baking Powder, Salt, and Milk and mix until fully incorporated.
• Place in the oven and bake for 35 minutes.

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Perfect Birthday Cake Frosting Recipe

1/2 cup Butter, room temperature
1/2 cup Shortening
1/4 cup Milk
2 teaspoons Clean Vanilla Extract
1/8 teaspoon Almond Extract
4 cups Powdered Sugar

• Whip Butter and shortening until fully combined, about 5 minutes.
• Add milk and extracts until fully combined.
• Add sugar one cup at a time and mix well until all sugar is added.

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Notes:

1. The flours I use are from Bob's Red Mill.
2. The flour blend used is the same mix that I use for the Udi's copycat bread.  I am not one to keep various different flour blends around. I pretty much develop my recipes based on this same blend, which I keep mixed up in BIG batches.

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More Gluten Free Cake Recipes and tips:

5 Tips for a Gluten Free Birthday Cake from the Kitchen

Gluten Free Yellow Cake (with mayo) from All Recipes

White Birthday Cake with Italian Meringue Icing from My Recipes*

     *This is not a GF recipe, but it is where I started 
           the basis of my own GF version.

I linked this recipe up over at Simply Sugar and Gluten Free's Slightly Indulgent Tuesday.

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Giant 3D Peep Cake

The purpose of this blog post is to allow you to follow us in our thought process as we (my son and I) plan and accomplish this awesome cake!  I have included links to important information that I found along the way. 

It was my son's Blue and Gold Banquet for Cub Scouts this past Saturday.  Each year at the banquet each boy makes a cake to be auctioned off.  The purpose is to raise funds for the boys summer activities.  We were trying to decide what sort of cake to make, my son and I, while I was going though my emails on my phone.  I opened up an email from Hoosier Homemade while chatting with my son and it happened to be her Cupcake Tuesday edition.  In that was a link for a chick cake.  For my son it was love at first site.  It was not within theme but he did not care.  He HAD to make this cake for his auction. Fine, I think, it does not look too hard (mostly round layers).  "Oh but wait, PEEPS, I must make it to look like a peep instead", he said.  GREATTtttttT, LOL.  That does not sound easy at all!!!!!!  But I am not one to back down in a challenge. We set out to plan our peep cake.   

So where to start, where to start.  First I googled Marshmallow Peep Cake.  In fact, I tried so may different search terms like Chick cake, Easter chick cake, 3D chick cake, chick peep cake.  The results ended up being lots of cakes with peeps on top.  Not what Im looking for.  I did find a really cool "How To" on instructables.  It was a step by step process for making a 3D Bunny Cake.  This step by step plan is what I needed to start to form our own plan.  Next I found this picture.   The how to make a 3D Bunny Cake post suggested you make a blue print and that is exactly what purpose this picture served.  I printed it out and taped it to the cabinet above our work station.

We discussed what would be the best cake pans to use.  We ended up with a sheet cake bottom, 9" round was next lined up to the edge, 8" slightly offset (peeps lean backwards) and then the rounded top head again offset.  "Glue" the layers together with the frosting and chill in the fridge for an hour at least to set.

Next get out the bread knife and cut out the V to create a "chin" and another V in the back to form the tail and back.  The rest is fine tuning.  Just keep looking at your picture you have posted somewhere nearby and save those scraps!  Cake Pops will be in your future!!!

Crumb coat the entire cake and insert a chop stick though the head to hold the cake layers together.   Look at it,  does it look like you want?  It's not too late to make changes.  Chill for an hour and whip up your yellow frosting.  

The trickiest part of the entire process was getting the sugar to stick to the frosting on the vertical parts.  I ended up applying a bunch to my hand and slapping it on.  There was lots of excess on the flat surfaces that I ended up brushing off with a pastry brush.  Worked like a charm.  

I think this would be a wonderful idea to bring to big Easter party or event!  Don't you?

Good luck and happy baking!

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Gluten Free Cake Pops (Bakerella Cake Pops)

I attempted to make Gluten Free Cake Pops as the treat my son would hand out for his birthday at school.  My son does not have to be Gluten Free. He vowed to be gluten free like me to support the littlest Celiac in the family.  Besides, I wanted to try them gluten free.

Gluten Free cake being a more dense type cake enabled this wonderful treat to be easier to handle, roll and dunk in chocolate.  I am a rookie chocolatier so it took me a few try's to get the coating right.  At first I did not achieve a nice liquid melted chocolate because of overheating.  If your coating is turning out too chunky, add a teaspoon of oil at a time until smooth.  I learned to turn the double boiler on, get the water heated up and steaming, then take it right off.  Chocolate will still be mostly chunky at this point so you have to keep stirring off the heat until it is liquid.  Place back on top of water portion of your double boiler as necessary.

Another key point I wanted to mention is how to do the dunking portion of this project.  Watch the Bakerella video I included and how she dunks the cake pop and swirls around without really moving the cake pop up and down.  This is extremely key.  The cake pop has to come out of the chocolate sideways or the stick will pull right out.  I also found that chilling the cake pop a few minutes after you insert the stick is helpful for new timers.  On this video below, she does not do that.  But I'm sure she has made thousands of these.  Its harder than it looks.  LOL.

The flavor was out of this world.  The best part of the cake, the frosting, all though the pop.  The frosting is the best part of the cake for most folks. What a wonderful idea. It was a HIT with the kids.  My son tells me that another child brought in Lollie Pops and the kids were trying to barter the Lollie Pops for extra cake pops.

The Cake Recipe I Used:
1 Box of Betty Cocker Gluten Free Yellow Cake Mix
3.8 oz Box of of Jello Pudding (I used White Chocolate)
1/3 cup Sugar
4 Eggs
1/2 cup Oil
3/4 cup Milk
1 T Vanilla
1 tub of Betty Crocker Chocolate Frosting
Melting Chocolate (I used white and colored it orange)

• Mix cake up and bake on 350 for approximately 35 to 40 minutes.
• Cool Cake.
• Crumble cake into crumbs.
• Add about half of a tub of Betty Crocker Frosting.
• Combine like you were making meatballs, go ahead and use your hands :-)
• I used a small cookie scoop and got out a heaping bunch and rolled into a meatball style ball.
• Place on parchment lined baking sheet.
• Insert stick with a tiny bit of melted chocolate.
• Chill for 15 minutes.
• Turn double boiler on (water should be only half way and not touch upper pan).
• Place remaining chocolate over double boiler for a few seconds and take right off the heat. 
• Stir like crazy until chocolate melts.
• Take pops out of freezer and insert pop straight into chocolate (I had to tilt pan to get it deep enough).
• Using a rocking motion, GENTLY rock the pop until all of it is covered.
• Lift pop out horizontally so stick does not pull out from the weight of it.
• Tap, tap, tap horizontally until all of the chocolate stops dripping off (this takes some patients).
• Put your coating on if desired and plunge into a double paneled shipping box to cool upright.

I strongly recommend watching the video to see how she does it.



A few Tips:

• Careful not to overheat the chocolate, it will look only slightly melted when you need to take it off the heat.  Stir, stir, stir.  The residual heat from the pan will do the work.
• Does the chocolate not go on your pop smoothly?  The chocolate may be overheated.  Use Oil in your overheated chocolate ~ one teaspoon or two to try and save the overheated chocolate.
• Careful to not move that pop around too much in the chocolate, just gently rock.
• Pull pop out sideways!
• Tap Tap Tap, don't rush.  Its a mess if you don't do this part right.

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Make your own Barbie Birthday Cake

My daughter was turning 5 this month.  She never had a "real" birthday party.  You know like the HUGE 1st birthday parties most kids receive.  Our lives were in turmoil from the moment I found out we were pregnant.  Relocations (twice), my illness and a complete and total loss of income for our household for a few months all weighed on our ability to celebrate her life.  This year was the year I was going to finally give her the "big" party she deserved.  

She and I are both Gluten Free.  And I did not want to make it obvious at her party that she needed a "special" cake ~ translation "odd".  My crazy mind I know.  So I set out to figure out how to make her a very special cake.  You know the cake that was in front of her made the cake the guests were going to eat look lesser in comparison.

First I had to tackle making a good cake.  I used Betty Crocker Gluten Free Yellow cake mix.  Now I happen to think this cake mix is awful!  Awful was not going to do for my special girls birthday.  But if my failure to make good Gluten Free bread was any indicator, I was in big trouble.  But then I found a recipe that enhanced the boxed mix and made it more palatable.  The blog is called "A Gluten Free Guide" and here is the link to the recipe. I first baked a regular cake to try it out.  You know what, it IS GOOD! Moist, not crumbly, the Jello pudding definitely adds a nice texture.  Sorta smooths over the grittiness I noticed upon first trying BC cake mixes.  I have included the recipe below for your convenience (and mine).  I plan on making this recipe for the devils food mix too using chocolate pudding and maybe sour cream instead of OJ.  

Second, how in the world do you do it anyway?  I found this link with great step by step instruction.

Finally, following the directions I viewed, I baked THREE (3) 8" round cakes and 1 rounded bottom pyrex bowl about 2/3's full of batter.  Now note the instructions on the video say TWO (2) 8" round cakes.  Only 2 cakes for today's super tall barbies and princesses is not enough hight. You will find yourself in a state of panic with not enough cake.  You will need 3 round cakes.

Once cakes are baked and cooled, take a small juice glass and cut a circle out of the middle of all cakes. 

Stack your cakes in this order (round, round, round, circle ~ smaller circumference up) and Crumb coat your cake with frosting. Chill.

Wrap Barbie's legs in Plastic wrap up to her waste (in our case Aurora from Disney Princess line).

Insert Barbie into the cake.

Apply final Frosting and smooth out with cut out strips of paper.  

I used the canned frosting with the piping tips to decorate the waste and bottom of the dress with the star tip.

Enhanced Betty Crocker Gluten Free Cake Mix Recipe

1 Box of yellow Cake Mix

1  3.8 ounce box of Jello Pudding (vanilla)

1/3 cup Sugar

4 eggs

1/2 cup Oil

3/4 cup Orange Juice

1 T Vanilla Extract

Combine ingredients. 

Pour in equal amounts into greased 8" cake pans.

Bake at 350 degrees for 41 to 46 minutes.

I had to make two boxes for this Barbie Cake.  

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