Oh, it has been a while since I spent half the day in the kitchen. I used to live to create sculpted special occasion cakes, covered in home-made fondant and hand-painted gumpaste flowers. At the end of the day, you wonder where the time whisked off to…why your knees and back ache, why your fingers are purple and sparkly, and who is going to get diabetes from all the sugar.

This time, my toil in the kitchen was to test out some gluten-free chocolate cakes for my husband’s birthday, in the hopes that we might discover one with a moist tender crumb that I have heard only exists on planet “wheat-gluten”. Even armed with The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum, and after studying a few favorite GF blogs like GlutenFreeGirl and Elana’s Pantry,  it still felt like I was launching my space shuttle on a maiden voyage to some unknown galaxy far, far, away, to seek out and test new gluten-free cake recipes.

My counter looked like this…

…yes, a calculator, a pencil, and a kitchen scale are most definitely part of how I bake…

And then the results…third try…

I had an idea that I wanted to bring out the starch in the recipes and substitute only a little bit of gluten texture in hopes of achieving a similar life-form to a normal wheat-flour cake. (Thank you Rose for that chemistry lesson.) The first cake try is even, dense, didn’t rise, but didn’t dome….the crumb is okay, a bit dry, and bland. Conclusion: it needs some elastic gluten properties and some other kind of sweetness, perhaps agave nectar or honey for added complexity?

The second one, whoops…didn’t know xanthan GUM does that…it well, gums. I put WAAAAY more than needed and really, the batter just balled up and wouldn’t release. We didn’t taste this one…I am thinking it will taste like Nerf.

The third try…I thought we are on our way to something yummy here. I added a smaller portion of xanthan gum, changed up the gluten-free flour blend and came out with a much smoother batter texture that ribboned correctly. You know, when you lift the mixer paddle and the batter falls back into the bowl in ribbons…well this looked just about right…maybe a teeny bit less xanthan gum yet. It did dome and it did crack slightly on top, and then sunk in the middle. Perhaps I over-beat the batter, or the oven was too hot? (Mine loves to burn hot. An oven thermometer is like a best friend.) Well, the sunk top was just not enough bake time…when I trimmed the top, it was like a molten-lava cake should be. I just hadn’t set a course for molten. The crumb was dry but very, very fine. However, regular chocolate frosting makes this one taste very much like the real thing. The only problem is I am a cake snob, and I want the CAKE to taste good too…not just have the frosting cover it up.

I am thankful I took organic-chemistry in college (thank you Prof. Mundy)….who knew gluten-free is so challenging. I guess I could just buy a boxed mix, or better for my health, give up eating cake all together?

P.S. Apologies for the few Star Trek lines in there, I grew up on Spock, Bones, Jim, and The Next Generation. Oh, and I didn’t include recipes here because I wasn’t totally happy with the results…if you are seeking a GF chocolate cake recipe, e-mail me and I’d be glad to send you my third iteration for a stepping off point to start your experimental cake baking.