March 2008

I was going to make this originally for the Go Ahead Honey, it’s Gluten free! event, but alas came Easter and I had no time to do this. The idea was to make a basic cake filled with mashed kiwis and bananas, those two flavors are a match made in flavorheaven, try them together in some way, if you haven’t already.

I wanted to use pink and green as the decoration colors since those two colors remind me of spring and Easter. Using marzipan in cakes is somewhat easy, you just need to use butter cream underneath it so that it does not become too wet and soggy, if you use just whipped cream it will go bad much faster. Sugar fondant is another great alternative with cakes and it is usually gluten-free. It has a sickly sweet taste to it and taste wise I prefer marzipan, but looks wise I would say fondant wins.

The cake-base was made a bit differently than what I usually do; I used potato flour in it, not just quinoa flour the way I usually do. The end result was fluffier than with just quinoa flour and the taste was good, a bit of almond flour might have been a good addition.

How to use marzipan in cakes

Roll the marzipan in to a ball and then put it between two baking papers, roll it with a rolling pin until it is big enough. Lift it on top of the cake carefully with a rolling pin, it can be done using just hands, but the rolling pin really helps. Press the marzipan tightly onto the cake and cut the remaining parts off. If there is a long time between the making of the cake and the serving, brush the cake with some sugar water so that the marzipan does not dry out.

Gluten-Free Cake with kiwi and banana

Cake base:

-250 grams margarine, use non-hydrogenated

-1 cup or 2,4 dl caster sugar

-3 tsp no-egg mixed with 3 tbls water

-1/2 cup or 1,2 dl soy milk

-1 tsp vanilla extract

-1 cup or 2,4 dl potato flour

-1 cup or 2,4 dl quinoa flour

-2 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 170 Celsius.

Beat the margarine with the sugar until fluffy. Mix together the dry ingredients potato flour, quinoa flour and baking powder. Add the no-egg and water mixture to the margarine and sugar, stir to combine. Add the milk and vanilla extract, stir to combine, then add the flour and fold everything together. The batter should look like a smooth and thick paste now, if it seems too dry try adding a tablespoon of soy milk to it.

Grease an 8 inch springform pan and shake some flour in it so that the cake is easy to remove from the pan, spoon the batter into the tin.

Bake for 1 hour and 30 minutes, make sure the cake is done by inserting a toothpick into the cake and making sure it comes out clean.

Let the cake cool completely before you start filling it.

The filling

-3 ripe bananas

-5 ripe kiwis

- 1 liter whipped cream with sugar and vanilla added for flavor (or use 1/2 liter whipped cream and 1/4 liter drained plain or vanilla soy yogurt, this tastes much better in cakes in my opinion than plain whipped cream)

Cut the cake in half, be careful and make sure it is really cool, it will break easily if it is still warm. Mash the kiwis and then mash the bananas, keep them separated. Whip the cream. Start with a layer of kiwis and then add the whipped cream, spread the mashed bananas on top of the whipped cream very carefully.

The butter cream

-2,4 cups or 6 dl confectioner’s sugar

-0,8 cups or 2 dl shortening or margarine

-1-2 tsp soy milk

Mix the margarine with the sugar, beat them for 5 minutes, then add the soy milk carefully so that it does not become too moist. Beat everything together for another minute.

Frost the cake with a thin layer of butter cream and then place the marzipan on top of it. Decorate it with some gluten-free candy.

Remember that this cake should not be placed in the fridge at any point since it is a butter cake.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Lupin is a legume which contains the full range of essential amino acids and therefore it’s a great protein source, especially for vegetarians. You can find lupin “tofu”, milk and lupin flour in Germany, it’s not so common in other places as far as I know, but due to the fact that lupins can be grown in cool climates, which soy can not, it is becoming more common.

I’ve wanted to try lupin for a while now in some form, but I couldn’t actually find any recipes or much information about it online, so I decided to just try it on my own. I found some whole lupin seeds and some ground seeds at my local health store. Those ground up seeds seemed more appealing and I wanted to try them in baking and so I bought them. They were grown locally here in Finland by a farm which specialises in growing protein sources for vegetarians. At first sight they didn’t seem like much; it looked like some sort of grainy flour, but the taste was good when I tried having them just raw, I wanted to know the taste before trying out the baking part.

I have wanted to try out this one recipe I found on a Finnish blog, which I visit regularly; they had a recipe there for muffins with chocolate, toasted hazelnuts and bananas. The taste combination was something I couldn’t stop thinking of and so why not combine those lupin seeds with that recipe. The original recipe contained eggs which I just left out since it had bananas in it, I also wanted to add some muscovado sugar which is a dark sugar with a unique taste, try it if you haven’t already, it’s in irreplaceable especially in chocolate dessert; the taste has a hint of liquorice in it. Try replacing the muscovado with some regular sugar if you don’t have it.

Everything went well with the recipe and I thought that the lupin seed flavor was pretty good. They were denser than what you would get with just wheat flour, but that is to be expected when baking gluten-free. If you want to try this with just wheat try replacing the quinoa flour with all-purpose flour and the lupin with some whole wheat flour. All in all I would recommend at least trying out lupin in some form. I think that I will also try making some “lupin tofu” from it, it never hurts to try out different replacements for tofu.

You can see the original recipe here.

Gluten-free muffins with lupin, chocolate, toasted hazelnuts and bananas

-125 grams margarine

-1 1/2 dl sugar

-1/2 dl muscovado sugar

-1/2 dl plain soy yogurt

-1/2 dl soy milk

-3 dl quinoa flour

- 1/2 dl ground lupins

-2 tsp baking powder

-1/2 tsp baking soda

-1 tsp cinnamon

-2 bananas

-150 g chopped chocolate, I used sweet chocolate, but in the original recipe they used dark chocolate

-80 g toasted and chopped hazelnuts

Preheat the oven to 200 Celsius.

Whip the sugar and the margarine together in a bowl, when they are fluffy add the muscovado sugar and whip once again. Mix the flour, the lupin, the cinnamon, the baking powder and baking soda together in a different bowl. Mash the bananas and add them to the margarine and sugar mixture, then add the yogurt, vanilla extract and soy milk to it, then add the dry ingredients. Check the consistency; if it is too dry add some soy milk.

You will need to fold everything together in the end to avoid a rubbery consistency, the secret to making non-rubbery muffins in general is not to over mix and just fold everything together. Spoon the batter into muffin papers and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

I baked these for 30 minutes, but if you are using all-purpose flour something like 20 minutes will do.

Popularity: 13% [?]