The Fluffiest Gluten Free Vanilla Cake Recipe | sugar free, low carb, paleo (2024)

FAQs

What makes a gluten-free cake rise? ›

2 teaspoons of baking powder per cup of gluten-free flour is necessary to ensure proper leavening. Baking soda and buttermilk can be used to leaven instead of baking powder, but 1-1/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar should be added for each 1/2 teaspoon baking soda used.

Let Your Batters & Doughs Rest

We recommend covering your batters and doughs and letting them rest for at least half an hour. Note: This will also help batters become thicker and doughs to firm up.

Gluten-free baked goods often benefit from extra liquid to hydrate the flour blends, eliminate grittiness, and achieve a less dense or dry texture. However, it's very important to drive off this extra moisture during baking, or you'll wind up with a gummy texture.

Gluten-free batters need to rest.

Even the best combinations of gluten-free alternative grains and flour blends can yield a gritty texture. This is remediated by resting your batter for about 30 minutes so the flour has time to hydrate and soften.

Eggs are natural leaveners that help boost the rise and volume of bread. Eggs also add moisture, flavor, and protein to gluten-free bread recipes. If you select a gluten-free bread recipe that includes eggs, you have a better chance that the resulting bread will have good color, more volume, and softer texture.

Over-mixing can beat too much air into the batter and cause it to collapse. Less is more with mixing a gluten free cake batter — try to blend the batters for less than one minute.

Gluten-Free Bread Flour can be swapped 1:1 for all-purpose flour and bread flour by both weight and volume.

Make sure all ingredients are at room temperature.

If your ingredients are cold, that will reduce the warmth and your dough may not achieve the rise it needs. Conversely, make sure that your mix isn't too warm/hot either. Yeast likes it to be warm and cozy.

Use xanthan gum or guar gum: Gluten-free flours lack the elasticity and structure that gluten provides, so adding a binder like xanthan or guar gum can help to hold the ingredients together and give your baked goods a better texture.

If the gluten free flour you are using doesn't contain xanthan gum, then you'll want to include it in your list of recipe ingredients. Even more so if you're making cake, muffins, bread and pizza crust, as these recipes typically rely on the structure gluten provides.

Why are gluten-free cakes so expensive? ›

The production of high-quality and reliably gluten-free food is fully automated and relies on the most modern technology. Rice and corn, the primary ingredients mainly used instead of wheat in gluten-free food, are also more expensive than wheat.

Rice Flour & Brown Rice Flour – high in carbohydrates. The main drawback is a tendency to produce a bitter taste, especially if baked goods are kept for any period of time. Will give a slight gritty texture when baked.

The Cake Is Gritty:

If your cake turned out gritty, you used a gluten free flour blend that isn't milled as finely. Usually, rice flour is the main culprit of gritty gluten free cake.

Fat tenderizes the gluten. Examples of fat are butter, margarine, hydrogenated vegetable shortening, or oil. Leavening agents are added to most shortened cakes to make the cakes rise and become porous and light. Examples are baking powder or baking soda and sour milk.

By adding gluten-free baking powder, it automatically gives your bakes a little extra rise so that in some cases, you don't even need to add extra baking powder. However, it's still pretty common to add a little extra, just in case.

Cakes, pancakes, quick breads, other batter-based products: Batter-based products need gluten for its gas-retaining ability that produces a well-developed interior structure and a tender crumb. Replacing wheat flour with a combination of gluten-free flours and gums can help retain gas to develop structure.