Gluten-Free Dessert

It’s all about the bilberries here right now; the forests are filled with them.

We call them blueberries, but they are actually bilberries as I learned not so long ago, they are smaller than blueberries and the taste is not as watery as in blueberries. The taste of them is really intense and a little sour - delicious if you ask me.  Bilberries happen to be my favourite berry.

I have been thinking about a bilberry cake for a couple of weeks now and luckily I stumbled across this recipe just when we had been out picking up some berries. The recipe sounded so decadent and lovely that I had no other choice than to try it, I am not someone who can say no to a recipe which uses crème fraîche and lots of butter. The cream cheese icing was also just perfect, it is not common to ice these kinds of cakes here, so to me the icing sounded a bit exotic and different.

The cake itself was very easy to make, I used some almond flour and white rice flour in it and that worked out well. I loved the taste of it, this is just the kind of cake I like, dense and moist, not too sweet and a little bit tart, but not too tart.

I would highly recommend trying this recipe.

I used almond flour and white rice flour, but the original recipe uses wheat flour (of course!), so if you are not celiac you should use just wheat flour instead of the almond and rice flour. Some quinoa flour instead of rice flour would also work out; I have been just very determined to try out some other flours than quinoa, at least for a while, and that’s why I used rice flour here.

I used only 1 dl/1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar in the icing, but the original recipe uses twice that amount.

The cake can be served when it has cooled down; it is very moist, so it will not hold itself together all that well when it is warm.

Bilberry Cake Recipe

The recipe was adapted from Ruoka Pirkka.

Serves 10, takes approximately 10 minutes to make and 45 minutes to bake.

The Cake

-150 grams/5,3 ounces soft butter

-1,5 dl/ 3/4 cup sugar

-3 eggs

-1 dl / a little bit less than 1/2 cup crème fraîche

-1 cup almond flour

-1 dl /a little bit less than 1/2 cup white rice flour

-2 tsp baking powder

-2 tsp vanilla extract

-200 grams/7 ounces blueberries or bilberries

Preheat your oven to 175 C/350 F.

Line a springform pan with baking paper and then grease it with some butter.

Mix together the butter, sugar, crème fraîche, vanilla extract and eggs. Mix together the flour and the baking powder.

Mix the dry ingredients together with the wet ingredients, but leave a little bit of the flour in the bowl and then gently mix the blueberries with the remaining flour.

Gently fold the berries in with the rest of the batter.

Pour into the pan and bake for 30-45 minutes until the cake is done. Let the cake cool down and make the icing.

The Icing

-200 grams/ 7 ounces cream cheese

-0,5 dl/ 1/5 cup crème fraîche

-2 dl/ 3/4 cup confectioner’s sugar (I used just half of this amount)

-2 tsp lemon juice

Mix everything together and then spread the icing on top of the cooled cake.

Popularity: 66% [?]

A clafoutis is a truly delicious French dessert which is made by baking a batter together with some fruit. I haven’t had much luck with my gluten-free clafoutis experiments; the taste has been something terrible at times and at other times edible, but not anything spectacular.

This changed when I first opened up Gordon Ramsay’s book Just Desserts and I saw the clafoutis recipe in it. The recipe used almond flour instead of all purpose flour - I somehow just knew that this was the way to make a wonderful gluten-free clafoutis and I could not wait to try it.

My feeling had been right and I am pleased to say that this clafoutis is not only edible, but it is in fact better than one made with regular flour. I think I died a little bit when I first tasted it.

So do try this, if you love clafoutis.

Almond Clafoutis Recipe

This recipe is adapted from the book Just Desserts which is one I would recommend to everyone, even to celiacs; it has a lot of delicious gluten-free recipes and it also describes basic techniques for making desserts. Of course it has some recipes which use regular flour, but there are surprisingly many naturally gluten-free recipes. Gordon Ramsay might be an extremely annoying Tv-personality, but he knows his food, in my opinion anyway.

Some people like to use whole cherries in a clafoutis - the taste will be much stronger this way - I would recommend using them whole if you don’t mind the trouble the pits give when eating.

The Recipe

serves 4

Dry ingredients:

-30 grams/0,4 cups/1 dl almond flour (do not pack the flour tightly if you are measuring it with dl or with a cup)

-1 flat tsp flour (I use white rice flour)

-a pinch of salt

-50 grams/0,4 cups/1dl sugar (I like to use unrefined sugar here, it tastes better than white sugar, brown sugar is fine too)

Wet ingredients:

-1 egg

-2 egg yolks

-1 tsp vanilla extract

-1,5 dl/3/4 cup cream ( or coconut cream for a dairy-free version)

-200 grams pitted cherries, or 250 grams un-pitted cherries (approximately a bit over one cup/2,5 dl of cherries)

Mix the dry ingredients together and then mix the wet ingredients together. Combine them into a rather loose batter. Let the batter rest for 12-24 hours. You can of course bake it straight away, but it will not be as good.

Heat an oven to 175 C/350 F.

Grease a baking dish or individual baking dishes. Place the cherries in them and then cover with the batter.

Bake for 30 minutes. The time differs because ovens are different, keep an eye on the clafoutis while it is baking.

Popularity: 49% [?]