Gluten-Free Life Tweaks

Are you looking for a gluten-free cake recipe without rice or corn?

Try out this new recipe of mine – it uses wholegrain teff flour in addition to potato starch, so there’s a lovely toasty flavour of the teff but also a nice fluffiness from the starch. It makes a lovely moist cake with full of flavour, which you can adapt with the berries or fruits you are using. I have made this with raspberries and blueberries, but you can use also other berries or fruit like rhubarb or apples. If you haven’t got teff at hand, after the recipe there’s a list of things you can do to make this using other flours.

This cake is what my mum uses as a default base for different types of cakes and tray bakes. It’s a versatile recipe that can take different shapes or forms. I will explain a bit more about the options after the recipe!

Teff and Berry Cake Recipe:

The recipe makes around 12 slices, depending on how thick you cut them. Bake it in a big loaf tin (2lb) or an approximately 230mm diameter round cake. The batter will also fit a 210mm diameter tin, the cake will just be taller.

Equipment you need:

• Cake tin (2lb rectangle tin, measures appr. 240mm x 130mm or round tin of appr. 230mm in diameter)
• Non-Stick baking paper
• Kitchen scales or measuring spoons and cups
• One large mixing bowl
• Three smaller bowls
• Silicone spatula or large spoon
• Electric hand whisk/stand mixer or food processor with a whisk. Mixing by hand is possible but a fair bit harder.

Ingredients

150 g	Unsalted butter (or dairy free margarine or other DF baking fat)*
185g (200 ml)	Caster sugar
215 g (300 ml)	White teff flour*
65 g (100 ml)	Potato starch flour
8 g (2 tsp)	Baking powder (make sure it doesn’t contain gluten)
1 g (1/3 tsp)	Xanthan gum
1 g (1/3 tsp)	Fine salt (leave out if using salted butter)
170 g (150 ml)	Plain natural yoghurt (or dairy free alternative)
75 g (75 ml)	Milk (or dairy free alternative)
3	Eggs (UK large, around 70g per egg)
200g (appr. 250ml)	Blueberries and raspberries frozen or fresh (or other suitable fruit, see notes after the recipe

Method

1. If you are using frozen berries, take them out of the freezer at least an hour before starting to bake and measure them out and leave them to defrost. Preferably put them in a strainer over a bowl so that they drain as they defrost.

2. Take the fat you are using to warm up about 30 min before baking. Take the eggs out as well, if they are refridgerated, so that they warm up to room temp. Cut the butter/margarine into about 15 mm x 15 mm (roughly 1/4 inch) cubes so that it softens quicker. Let it soften in room temperature in until you are ready to bake.

3. Turn your oven on to 180 C traditional oven / 160 C fan oven so that it is in temperature when you start baking (15-30min depending on the oven).

4. Prepare your tin: Put a piece of non-stick baking parchment at the bottom of the round tin to make sure the cake comes out properly. Use a small amount of butter/margarine to stick the paper at the bottom of the tin so that it stays in place when you pour the batter in. Grease the sides of the tin using butter/margarine and flour with a small amount of gluten-free flour mix by sprinkling in some flour and then turning the tin so that you cover all the sides.

If you are using a rectangle tin, it is easier to line the tin with non-stick baking parchment so that it also covers the sides. You can fold the paper over the outside of the tin getting your corners sharp and then put the paper inside the tin.

5. Measure out the dry ingredients and pass them through a sieve (dedicated for gluten-free duty) into a large bowl.

6. Measure the yoghurt, milk and eggs together in a separate bowl/jug and stir to form a uniform mixture.

7. When your butter/margarine has softened, add it to the bowl with your dry ingredients in. Using an electric hand whisk (or in a food processor with a whisk) cream the fat and dry ingredients together so that the mixture resemples wet sand forming small crumbs.

8. Add the wet ingredients in three batches mixing the batter simultaneously so that you get a smooth batter.

9. Fold in your berries/fruit (strained if defrosted or tinned) so that they are evenly distributed.

10. Using a silicone spatula (or a large spoon) fill your tin with half of the cake batter. Smooth the batter in making sure the batter leaves no gaps. Add the rest of the batter in, smooth the top and in a round tin press a small “moat” around the tins edge so that the cake would rise more evenly. In a rectangular tin you can draw a line across the top of the cake to control the expansion. Don’t fill your tin to the brim, leave about 25mm (1 inch) space for expansion at the top. If you have leftover batter, you can bake the rest into muffins in muffin tins.

11. Bake the cake about 50-60 min on the middle rack of your oven until golden brown and baked through. As different appliances vary, test with a toothpick or skewer if the cake is baked – push a toothpick to the highest part of the cake and see if there’s any uncooked batter left. You want a few sticky crumbs on the cake rather than a totally clean toothpick, so that the cake isn’t overcooked and dry but there shouldn’t be uncooked batter.

12. When the cake is done, take it from the oven and let it cool in the tin for approximately ten minutes and then take it out of the tin, peel the baking paper off and place on a wire rack top side up to cool further. Slice when in room temperature. If you want, you can serve vanilla custard (gluten-free), cream or vanilla ice cream with it.

13. The cake will keep moist in room temperature for a few days. If you aren’t going to eat in a few days, it’s best to slice it and freeze.You can either place the slices loosely in a freezer bag or separate them with pieces of baking paper so that you can take them out individually if you like.

Using different fruit

As I mentioned, this is a cake batter that can be used to make different types of cakes by switching fruit and spices.

I often use frozen berries, as they are available all year round and are inexpensive. Berries with small seeds work best – think raspberries and blueberries, strawberries and red and white currants.

Rhubarb works well, too. Cut it in small cubes if it’s fresh and toss it in some extra caster sugar and mix some cinnamon in for extra deliciousness. Tinned one you can drain and mix in. Serve the cake with custard or ice-cream to tone down the effect of oxalates.

Apples work brilliantly as well, you can dice them inside the cake or make a tray bake and lay them on top, again this cake likes some cinnamon to be added. Pears would make a lovely cake, too!

Adapting to dairy free

This cake is fairly easy to make dairy free – you can swap the butter for dairy free baking block and use dairy free yoghurt alternatives like coconut or soya yoghurt depending on what you are able to have. Swap the milk for your favourite gluten and dairy free alternative.

Different dairy free products have different water content, so if your cake batter is a bit more loose, the fruit might sink in the bottom. If this happens, try using half of the milk next time and see if that works better.

Sourcing teff flour, potato starch and Xanthan gum

I prefer to use Lovergrass Ethiopia ivory teff flour for this cake as it’s the most fibre rich teff flour I have found and it also naturally has a generous amount of iron and magnesium. With this flour you get a lot of wholegrain goodness in your cake. Lovegrass Ethiopia flour is at the moment only available in the UK and Ethiopia and I buy it from Lovergrass’ online shop. If you want a big bag, shop in their Little Addis site instead.

You can of course use other teff flour as well, but then you might need to adjust the liquid content, as the flour is likely to absorb less liquid due to lower fibre content. When buying wholegrain flours, make sure they either mention they are gluten-free, are certified gluten-free (crossed-grain) or don’t have an allergy notification mentioning that the product may contain gluten grains. Based on my experience on a lot of health food sites there seems to be a may contain statement with grains and other ingredients that should naturally be gluten-free, so it is always safest to double-check.

I prefer white teff flour for the cake because of the colour and lovely flavour but the slightly more malty tasting brown reef works equally well.

Depending on where you are in the world you might find potato starch flour quite easily, or not. I buy mine online here in the UK. You might find it especially in Polish Delicatessen, but make sure you check the may contain for gluten. If you shop on Ocado, you can also find some there, I tend to by mine online, the place varies. You can substitute potato flour with corn starch or tapioca starch, if you struggle to find it, tapioca will give the cake a slight chewiness.

Xanthan gum should be available in supermarkets that stock baking ingredients more readily nowadays. You might need to check both FreeFrom aisle and Homebaking aisle. If finding Xanthan gum is hard, shopping online might be again the easier option.

Using other flours than teff

If you can’t find teff flour, you could use half and half millet and buckwheat to substitute. Either on their own can also work, but buckwheat has such a unique flavour that in a cake I prefer to tone it down.

You can also use gluten-free flour mix, plain white flour mix or self-raising. If you are using self-raising flour mix leave out the baking powder from the recipe. Also check if the mix has already xanthan gum, or other thickener in. If so, leave out the Xanthan gum. Again, if the batter comes out soft with the flour you use and your fruit sinks, use only half the milk on your next bake.

Making other types of bakes using same batter

You can bake the cake into a tray bake or make muffins using cupcake casings – fairy cake casings are too flimsy unless they are the foil ones. You need to adapt baking times accordingly if you make smaller or thinner cakes. Muffins might take around 10min, a tray bake 20-30min. If you want to make a traybake, like the tray with baking parchment and lay fruit on top of the smoothed out batter.

I want to see your bakes!

When you make this cake, let me know how your bake turns out! Any feedback and possible issues you experience will also be helpful. Comment in this post with your questions. You can also approach me with direct message via my Facebook or Instagram profiles. Any bakes that you are posting on your socials in public domain, I’d love you to tag me in, so I can celebrate or help.