Daily Bread

I was idly surveying the kitchen, as one is wont to do whilst occupied in such a concentration-requiring yet otherwise stupefyingly boring task as Gouda curd-stirring - when my eyes lit upon two brown wizened objects in the fruit bowl. 'What on earth could those be?' I wondered. I risked the dreaded matting that apparently takes place if one leaves one's cheese vat for even a single second and gave the Mystery Items a suspicious poke with my right index finger.

Turns out they were organic bananas: brown, mushy, and way past their prime.

Subsequent investigation unearthed the reason for their languishing amidst the lemons, clementines, Williams pears, and Gala apples (new! improved! snack-sized!). Sir thought I had designs on them (why he thought this I have no idea: I never eat bananas out of hand - they're fattening, you know - and two is far too few to be of any practical use for chutney or jam-making). For my own part, I always assume fruit on the kitchen table is for general consumption and rely upon Sir to make steady progress through the pile as the week progresses. Somehow these two horrible specimens had wormed their way through the family net, with the unfortunate result that at any moment the juices of their decomposition would start to stain my booteek renewably-harvested rainforest-wood fruit bowl.

Banana bread! What better way to spend flocculating time, after all, than engaged in an exciting new gluten-free baking adventure?

To be fair, I wouldn't describe much of my baking as experimental at present. As a result of a number of disasters, near-misses, and - yes - successes, too, I am now reasonably adept at scanning potential recipes for gluten-free pitfalls. These days I rarely do the math required by the ever-valuable high-ratio method, but am fairly good at eye-balling ingredients and their proportions for judging the degree to which they will prove suitable for The Struggle. I try to make sure there's a good deal of fat and sugar in the mix, sufficient eggs for binding, and I am always happy to see an addition that possesses some moisture and heft - apple sauce, say, or bananas.

I went to the repository of all wisdom and knowledge for recipes Américaines, Irma Bombauer (aka 'Mrs. Joy'). She didn't let me down and in a trice the kitchen was filled with the heady aroma of good things baking in the oven. The result was nicely-risen, moistly sliceable, and delicious in the way that only something utterly free of xanthan and guar gums has the capacity to be.

We ate warm slices with butter and home-made fig jam amidst much rejoicing.

And my cheese never even noticed I was gone.

Gluten-Free Banana Bread After Mrs. Joy

• six tablespoons softened butter
• two-thirds cups granulated sugar
• one and one-third cups King Arthur gluten-free multi-purpose flour (the only kind I use!)
• one-half teaspoon salt
• one-half teaspoon baking soda
• one-quarter teaspoon baking powder
• 2 large eggs, slightly beaten
• 2 very, very ripe bananas

Preheat your oven to 350 deg F and butter a 6-cup loaf pan.

Beat together the butter and sugar. I tried to use my new electric handmixer for this job - purchased after many months' worth of comparison shopping - and found it woefully underpowered for the task. Disaster! I was forced to drag my standmixer from its place on the Metro shelves and my bread production proceeded with no subsequent snafus.

Whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Gradually add this to your butter/sugar, beating madly all the while. Mrs. Joy characterizes the resulting substance as 'the consistency of brown sugar' and I am obliged to agree.

Beat in the two eggs (the mixture was still disturbingly stiff and dry at this point) followed by the bananas (Eureka! bananabatter!).

Glop the batter into your prepared pan and bake it in the bottom third of your oven for an hour or so or until it's cooked. Cool on a wire rack. The bread is excellent as is on the first day, but like many g/f productions doesn't hold brilliantly. On the second day Sir toasted a slice and declared it perfection, while I heated some up in the microwave - also a successful strategy. It was still pretty good, heated, on the third day.

We've Got a Winner

You may recall that last weekend I conducted a highly successful gluten-free baking experiment, during which I produced a delicious, moist, xanthanless carrot cake with excellent keeping qualities. At the conclusion of the exercise (wrapped up on Tuesday, when the last slice of cake was consumed as part of a hearty breakfast), I felt I was nearing the stage where I'd gathered sufficient evidence to promote my high-ratio cake-hypothesis to the status of full-blown theory.

But I had one more test to carry out before I felt truly able to generalize from my findings. Yesterday, as I contemplated the uses to which I might profitably put my fabulous new Weck jars, I addressed the final challenge: an applesauce ginger cake from The Joy of Cooking. The recipe was not high ratio in the strictest sense of the term (they seldom are) but I have opined previously (and often) that near enough is sufficient.

Gingerbreads often have very thin drippy batters anyway and Mrs. Joy goes on at some length about how 'the tenderest results [are achieved] by mixing the batter entirely by hand.' The only reason I can think of for forsaking my favorite electric handmixer is because it might overwork the gluten in an undesirable way - ergo, gingerbread is a perfect candidate for gluten-free flour blends.

Clever, no? Sometimes I impress myself tremendously.

In addition to these promising omens, I decided to include in the cake some of my famous home-made applesauce. This stuff has enough pectin in it so that it puddles not at all under pork chops or good sausages and, indeed, one can stand a spoon on end in it if the jar is full enough. I trusted the applesauce would give the cake some extra oomph - or at least, sufficient body so that it wouldn't fall apart when I tried to remove it from the pan.

I followed the recipe reasonably closely, although I substituted Lyle's Golden Syrup for light molasses and altered the spicing for a more gingery result.

The final cake was well-risen, moist, tender as promised, and deliciously aromatic. I iced it with some cream cheese frosting (because I had some left in the freezer) and served it with fresh berries surplus to the requirements of my Weck work. The cake is not terribly sweet and would be perfect with morning coffee.

And since today it is uncharacteristically dark, rainy, and miserable outside, that's just how we ate it.

Gluten-Free Applesauce Ginger Cake (after Mrs. Joy)

• one cup of awesome home-made applesauce
• one-half cup of golden syrup
• one teaspoon of baking soda
• one and one-half cups of King Arthur Gluten-Free Multi-Purpose Flour (the only kind I use)
• two teaspoons of ground ginger (at least)
• one teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• one-quarter teaspoon of allspice
• pinch of salt
• two large eggs
• two-thirds of a cup of granulated sugar
• one-third of a cup of canola oil

Preheat your oven to 325 deg F. Butter a nine-inch round cake pan. Since this is a sticky sort of cake, you should line the bottom and sides of the pan with silicon parchment and butter that too.

Bring the applesauce to a boil in a large-ish saucepan. Stir in the golden syrup. Add the baking soda and watch it foam and bubble in a maelstrom-like manner. I'd never used this technique in cake-making before - it was quite fun. When the pyrotechnics are over, remove the pan from the heat and let it cool slightly.

In a large bowl sift together the flour, spices and salt.

In another large bowl beat the eggs and sugar until they are pale and thick. Slowly beat in the oil.

Now, fold into the eggs the flour mixture and the applesauce mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.

Bake the cake until it is done (mine took about an hour). Cool it in the tin on a cake rack for about ten minutes then remove it from the pan (trust me - you'll be glad of all the effort expended on lining the tin) and cool it completely. I made mine yesterday and it is still excellent today - I am confident it will still be good tomorrow.

Hurrah for the high-ratio gluten-free cake theory!

(patent pending, all rights reserved)

Eight Carrot Gold

Even the joy of seeing my new brassica babies for the first time was insufficient to quell the longing for cake precipitated by my trip to the gluten-free freezer aisle on Wednesday. Loyal readers may recall that at that time I was mightily tempted by ginger cupcakes with fluffy white icing - only to discover at the eleventh hour that they were adulterated with coconut, my least favorite ingredient of all time.

Still, my hunger for moist cake topped with snowy sweet deliciousness could not be contained, and I resolved to address the situation ASAP. I returned home, rummaged around in the refrigerator, and came up with the perfect solution: carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

Why do I always have surplus carrots in the house? I'm not sure - but there always seems to be at least one bag in the crisper drawer that requires urgent attention before its contents go all wilty. This is not to say I haven't cooked with them extensively since the commencement of my gluten-freedom fighting. One of my go-to weekday microwave lunches is my famous curried carrot pilaf with toasted pecans and Hunza raisins. I have also made carrot jam with great success, although that happy outcome was tempered by my disastrous Last Resort baking project several weeks later.

But since September I have not attempted an old-fashioned carrot cake. This turns out to have been an unecessary sacrifice on my part, because as I leafed through my traditional recipes - every American cookbook I own seems to contain at least one version - it quickly became clear that almost all carrot cakes are made with high-ratio batters than can (theoretically at least) be adapted to gluten-free ingredients with little or no problem. The recipe upon which I finally settled (from The Joy of Cooking) easily fit the bill for g/f conversion: it contained more liquid than sugar (if you include the liquid in the eggs and carrots, which you should); more eggs than fat (a whopping 100% more, by weight); and, if not more sugar than flour, at least close-to-equal amounts. Anyway, the formula was near enough that I had very few qualms about its likely success.

Sure enough, the finished cake was moist, flavorful, and delicious - hardly distinguishable from its gluten-rich cousins. Some individuals might feel it would benefit from the addition of chopped walnuts, or raisins, or crushed pineapple, but I eschew random bits in my cakes as unwelcome distractions. Already over 24 hours old, the cake still passes the acid test of gluten-free edibility at room temperature.

It was almost too easy.

Gluten-Free Carrot Cake

Butter a nine-inch round cake pan and line the bottom with silicon parchment. Butter that, too. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 350 deg F.

Sift and whisk together one and one-third cups of King Arthur Gluten-Free Multi-Purpose Flour (the only kind I use!); one cup of granulated sugar; one and one-half teaspoons of baking soda and one teaspoon of baking powder. For spice, add one teaspoon of ground cinnamon,  one teaspoon of ground allspice, one teaspoon of ground ginger, and one-half teaspoon of freshly-grated nutmeg.

Whisk together three eggs and two-thirds of a cup of oil (I use canola) and stir that mixture into your dry ingredients.

Finally, add one and one-half cups of finely grated carrots (about eight medium-sized roots).

Note the utter lack of xanthan gum or other strange chemical additives!

Bake the cake for about forty minutes or until it's done. Cool it in the pan on a wire rack for ten minutes or so, then turn out and cool completely.

Ice the cake with your favorite cream cheese frosting - the one you learned to make in home economics (when home ec was still part of the public school curriculum, that is) will work fine. The one I use to cover the top of a nine-inch cake contains eight ounces of cream cheese; five tablespoons of butter; two tablespoons of vanilla extract; about two cups of sifted powdered sugar; and (for carrot cake) the grated zest of an orange.

The result is pure gluten-free gold.

Coming soon: I discover that the next cake recipe in The Joy of Cooking - applesauce gingerbread - also looks promising for gluten-free conversion. An additional use for Lyle's Golden Syrup and my fabulous home-made organic Granny Smith preserves!

It's a Date

Readers may recall that, overladen with bananas from jam-making and in the grip of a sudden baking frenzy, I decided to fabricate a recipe for sticky toffee pudding - adopting g/f flour and applying high ratio baking principles - from the current issue of Bon Appetit magazine. My first effort was excellent in terms of flavour and visual appeal, but the texture of the cake was not perfect: it was a tad too dry and heavy and there was a certain almost indescribable powderiness to the final product. It kept in the fridge not at all well and was a veritable brick after less than 24 hours.   

Of course, as I pointed out previously, it was only about half-way to being a proper high-ratio cake and I attributed this deficit to the dessert's shortcomings. Nudge that ratio up to two-thirds or so, I reasoned, and I would have something of which to be proud. I admit the science gets a little shaky at this point, but there is a certain amount of instinct involved in these things, after all.

I already had more liquid than sugar in the recipe, so that was satisfactory. My two remaining problems (from a high-ratio baking perspective, at least) were my excess of flour (over sugar, by weight) and fat (over eggs, by weight).

What could be simpler? I made the adjustments necessary to approach more closely my high-ratio goal: I reduced the amount of flour by 0.5 cups; increased the sugar by adding 2 tablespoons of the soft brown stuff, another banana, a handful of dates, and two tablespoons of orange juice (the extra liquid also helped combat the heaviness of the g/f flour); and added another egg. The final batter was much floppier than it had been for my previous effort, so I sifted in corn starch until I judged it had sufficient body to hold its shape when baking.

The result was absolutely delicious and great huge warm slabs slathered in butterscotch sauce were enjoyed by all. Science triumphs once again!

Gluten-Free Banana and Date Cake
(which becomes a pudding when served hot with Butterscotch Sauce)

• one and one-half cups King Arthur Multi-Purpose Gluten-Free Blend (the only kind I use)
• one-half cup corn starch
• one and one-half teaspoons baking powder
• three-quarters of a cup of butter at room temp
• two-thirds of a cup plus two tablespoons soft brown sugar
• three large eggs
• four very ripe bananas (a little over a cup), mushed up
• two tablespoons freshly-squeezed orange juice (the original recipe called for a tablespoon of dark rum, but I didn't have any in the house. Note to self: must get some in advance of my gala Cheese-making and Caribbean Cocktail Convention)
• one and one-half teaspoons of vanilla extract
• around ten dates, chopped very small (the lack of dates in the original recipe was a crass oversight by the editors of Bon Appetit, in my opinion, as without them no recipe for toffee pudding is complete)

Preheat the oven to 350 deg F. Butter an 8 inch x 8 inch cake pan and line it with parchment paper. Butter that too.

Toss the chopped dates with a tablespoon or two of the g/f flour and set aside (you don't want them sinking to the bottom of the cake, after all). Sift the remaining flour, corn starch, baking powder, and a pinch of salt into another bowl and set that aside.

With your electric mixer, beat together the butter and sugar until creamy and gorgeous. Beat in the eggs one at a time, followed by the bananas, orange juice, and vanilla.

Beat in the flour mixture in several batches, making sure the batter is well-mixed after each addition. Finally, fold in the chopped dates.

The batter should be nice and floppy: add a tablespoon of water or some more OJ if it seems too stiff. Pour it into the prepared pan and bake for half an hour or so, or until it's done.

Cool on a wire rack for thirty minutes or thereabouts, then slice and dollop with butterscotch sauce. The addition of some more sliced bananas or banana jam would also be most welcome, as would a spoonful of whipped cream or ice cream if you were feeling totally wicked.

Fresh from the oven the pudding is moist, squidgy, and completely addictive. Like many g/f cakes of my acquaintance (pumpkin cake is an exception) it won't keep more than a day or two in the fridge and should be heated up in the microwave before serving for optimum deliciousness.

Near as Dammit

For some reason lost to the mists of time, every month I receive via snail mail the current edition of Bon Appetit magazine. To my knowledge I have never paid for a subscription or counted myself among the publication's loyal readers, but there it is. Like clockwork, it appears in my mailbox and I dutifully flip through its pages to see what's new and exciting in the wonderful world of culinary advertising.

This month's issue, however, contained destructions for a dessert that made me sit up alertly in my favorite toile-upholstered armchair: Sticky Toffee and Banana Pudding.

Of course, the words 'sticky' and 'toffee' are likely to grab anybody's attention, particularly a gluten-freedom fighter such as myself, cruelly deprived of the goodies taken for granted by other, more fortunate souls. Additionally, seeing a recipe for bananas reminded me that I still had in my fruit bowl (even after using pounds' and pounds' worth in my preserving projects) five or six rapidly over-ripening organic beauties surplus to jam and chutney-making requirements.

So I decided to take a quick break from conserving and address myself to some baking. Just for a change, you understand.

The question of the hour, of course, was how well the recipe (let's not kid ourselves, it was really for banana cake with caramel sauce) would hold up to gluten-free ingredients. I remembered Jeff Potter's dictum for high-ratio cakes and decided to apply it in this case, thinking it would be a good mental exercise for clearing away my conserve-related cobwebs.

A high-ratio cake (as you no doubt recall) has the following characteristics:

• more sugar than flour (by weight)
• more eggs than fat (ditto)
• more liquid than sugar (ditto ditto)

I previously proved through the production of an excellent gluten-free pumpkin cake that the happy by-product of high-ratio baking is the ability to do without xanthan gum and other horrid additives in one's tea-time sweets. Would the same hold true for gateau de banane, I wondered?

I visited the USDA National Nutrient Database for some much-needed data on the moisture and sugar content of bananas and made the following calculations, based upon the recipe's ingredients list:

• sugar: 189 g (133 g granulated sugar + 56 g in the bananas)
• flour: 250 g
• fat: 170 g
• eggs: 66 g
• liquid: 200 g (58 g in the eggs, 112 g in the bananas, 30 g in rum, vanilla, etc.)

Hmmm. Clearly, I did not have a high ratio mixture in the strictest sense, but I was about half-way there. I definitely had more liquid than sugar, and although I did not have more sugar than flour, the two were reasonably close. Where I really fell down was in the eggs-to-fat-ratio, oh well.

I decided to give it a try anyway - my bananas were getting browner by the minute and I was not about to make more jam out of them when I still had pears, pineapples, limes, and Meyer lemons with which to deal.

I did a straight substitution of King Arthur Multi-Purpose Gluten-Free blend for the unbleached all-purpose flour called for by the recipe and set to work. I did not like the look of the toffee topping offered by the tipsters at Conde Naste (1.5 cups of heavy cream? really?)  and used instead the butterscotch sauce I always employ in such circumstances. 

The result was squidgy and delicious straight from the oven, especially when doused with a liberal dollop of luscious butterscotch. The most important finding was that the spirit (if not the letter) of high-ratio baking is sufficient to keep the xanthan imperative at bay. However, I think some tweaking of the recipe might improve its gluten-free deliciousness, using the above ratios as a guide (an extra egg, perhaps? less flour? Also, the cake was crying out for some chopped dates in the batter - an element without which I have never seen a proper sticky toffee pudding - and which I happen to have as a byproduct of my chutney-making).

I shall get to work this weekend and report my findings in due course.

Meanwhile, here is a recipe for the best butterscotch sauce in the world, courtesy of my go-to gal for such delicacies, Delia Smith.

Butterscotch Sauce

In a saucepan, slowly melt together 2 oz butter, 3 oz soft brown sugar, 2 oz granulated sugar, and 5 fl oz of Lyle's Golden Syrup. If, tragically, your supermarket's shipment of this wonderful indulgence is delayed by gales in the North Atlantic, dark (or light) corn syrup makes an excellent substitute.

Stir often and do not let the mixture boil! Once it has all dissolved and is liquidly lovely, cook on low heat for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat.

Gradually stir in 4 fl oz of whipping cream and a few drops of vanilla, and stir for another few minutes until the sauce is utterly smooth and gorgeous. You should probably taste some to make sure it's done.

This sauce is stunning when poured over warm cake of any description (especially banana, I have discovered); ice cream; or apple snow. If you keep it in a jar in the refrigerator, it will be good for weeks and weeks and weeks.

Coming soon: the perils of pectin

Pumpkin: Ratios but No Pi

I wrote previously about how, inspired by a new concept of high-ratio cakes and a shiny box of King Arthur Gluten-Free Multi-Purpose Flour, I tested my theory that - just by examining ingredient weights - one can immediately judge whether a recipe will be amenable to gluten-freedom without all that tedious xanthan gum business. I decided to try Jeff Potter's Pumpkin Cake recipe as a first proof, since of the total 920 g of ingredients, only about 20g is gluten. I reasoned it would hardly be missed!

Since the weight of water is important to the ratio, I was a bit concerned about the presence of pumpkin (a notoriously damp substance, after all) in the recipe. Jeff conveniently relates that 245 g of pumpkin contains 220 g of water and then even more helpfully points out that such information is available to the non-paying public courtesy of the USDA National Nutrient Database. Isn't that endearing? I foresee many happy hours at my computer with a cup of Earl Grey, researching ingredients to my heart's content.

Anyway: back to business. I was encouraged by the new flour when I opened the box: it was fine and pale, not too clumpy, and smelled fresh and flour-like (that shouldn't be too much to ask, but alas - I have found it to be so). There was no hint of metallicism when I tasted some from my finger. Cautious but hopeful, I prepared the cake batter. Jeff's instructions are economical as good science tends to be, so I applied a little of my own knowledge to the procedure (see below). The resulting mixture was delightfully thick, creamy and smooth - and all without so much as a hint of added xanthan gum! It also tasted wonderful when I licked the bowl.

I was pretty sure I was in good shape, but you never know about these things, do you? I popped the pan in the oven and waited expectantly. Soon, the house began to smell like a cake was baking! It was very exciting. After 40 minutes (Jeff's recipe said 20, but I suspect his pan was a different size from mine) I had something that looked suspiciously like a well-risen, nicely-set sponge.

While it was cooling on its rack, Sir and I went for a long healthy woodland walk in anticipation of the calories to come. It was bitterly cold and we reasoned we'd used up sufficient energy after about an hour. Coincidentally, this was the exact amount of elapsed time necessary for the cake's core temperature to drop to an invitingly warm thermal state. I turned it out and noted with great contentment that it stuck to the pan not at all.

A few quick slices and the job was done.

Now, loyal readers know I am as critical of my own creations as anybody on the planet - probably more so. Many of my experiments have required several attempts before I could report a successful outcome. I am keen that my gluten-free cooking please everybody - and would rather guests not know that they are eating anything unusual. So you should all know I am not being frivolous or undiscerning when I say this cake was virtually perfect. It was light and airy (Sir called it 'ethereal') like the very best sponges are. The crumb was almost imperceptibly fine. It was moist and flavorful and downright delicious. Sighs of contentment and relief were heard throughout the kitchen. Honestly, the cake was that damn excellent.

A few lessons were learned from this experience. Firstly, my suspicion that the high-ratio cake model would prove applicable to gluten-free baking was confirmed. For this recipe, I did a straight one-to-one substitution of g/f flour for all purpose and the result was peerless. Now that I have a formula (courtesy of Cooking for Geeks), it will be a relatively simple matter to go through my cookbooks to see which recipes will lend themselves to gluten-freedom without the addition of unwanted substances such as xanthan gum.

In addition, I was thrilled to discover that King Arthur Flour make a gluten-free blend I can use without fear of unpleasant flavors or side effects. In gratitude, I will be buying shares in the company at the earliest available opportunity. 

Jeff Potter's Pumpkin Cake (gluten-free version)

• 245 g pumpkin puree
• 200 g sugar
• 160 g canola oil
• 2 large eggs (about 120 g)
• 180 g g/f baking flour (I recommend KAGFMPF wholeheartedly and without reservation)
• 40 g raisins (I left these out, since I have an aversion to raisins in my baked goods)
• 2 tsp cinnamon (I also added 0.5 tsp. ground ginger and several grates of nutmeg, which seemed appropriate. I will up the ginger to a full teaspoon next time I make the cake)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Jeff's instructions are brief and to-the-point. This is my interpretation of his procedure. Preheat your oven to 350 deg. F. Butter a 9-inch cake pan (I used a round one). Line the bottom with silicon parchment paper and butter that too.  Sift together the flour, sugar, spices, salt, baking powder and baking soda into a bowl. In a big measuring cup, pour yourself the required amount of canola oil; add the pumpkin, eggs and vanilla and mix it together. Dump that into the dry ingredients and give it a few whirls with your electric handmixer.

Pour it into your prepared pan and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until the cake is done. Eat it while still a little bit warm, if possible. I served it with whipped cream (enriched with vanilla and a bit of powdered sugar) and it was a triumph.

A Feast for Geeks

Seeking some new books for my Kindle, I was browsing Amazon for exciting new culinary ideas and chanced upon a tome that could have been written just for me: Jeff Potter's Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food. Was there ever a more fortuitous publication in the history of the world? What riches! The work contains a good deal of info on gluten and its mysterious ways, which I will be scrutinizing in the days to come. Although I have not yet had the time to study its wisdom in great depth, some thoughts on gluten and cake-baking immediately leaped out at me from its electronic pages.

Clever Jeff conceptualizes cakes and their gluten content in terms I have never come across before and that I anticipate will be extremely handy during my baking experiments in the months ahead. He distinguishes between high-ratio cake batters and low-ratio cake batters and defines them as follows. A high-ratio cake is one where there is more sugar than flour (by weight); more eggs than fat (by weight); and more liquid than sugar (including the liquid in the eggs : guess how that is measured). Low-ratio cakes, presumably, are all the other ones. His point is that high-ratio cakes don't contain a high proportion of gluten-producing flour and that gluten development itself is hindered by the high percentage of sugar and fat. Isn't that cool? His conclusion is that the texture of high-ratio cakes will have a finer crumb than others.

My conclusion is that high-ratio cakes might necessarily lend themselves to gluten-free flours. Interestingly enough, two of my most successful baking experiments (frangipane and financiers, neither of which required xanthan gum for a successful outcome) were high-ratio cakes, or near enough, although I didn't know it at the time. Eureka - a whole new way of looking at gluten-free baking possibilities!

In a serendipitous, simultaneous development, my FRiV (Field Researcher in Virginia) last week carried out extensive pancake studies involving King Arthur Gluten-Free Flour and reported encouraging results. Although I had purchased some KAGFF during my Whole Foods trip of a few weeks back, it has since languished untried in my pantry, my attention having been distracted by all the boxed mixes I purchased during the same expedition. Somewhat disheartened by these products, I have been reluctant to undertake new g/f baking challenges, but this aligning of the stars inspired me once more. 

I retrieved one of the unopened boxes and compared its ingredients to those of Bob and his Red Mill. They were different, all right. The KAGFF is made from rice flour, tapioca starch, potato starch, and whole grain brown rice flour. It lacks the chickpea flour, white sorghum flour, and fava bean flour that I think makes Bob's product a little too assertive for butter cakes and other plain fare. A winner, perhaps?

Armed with Jeff's recipe for high-ratio Pumpkin Cake, a fresh box of KAGFF, and a cup of pumpkin puree left over from Thanksgiving's dessert mousse, I set to work with new-found confidence and the joie de vivre that comes from a couple of days off work. Tune in for my next exciting installment, where I reveal the degree to which my theory about adapting high-ratio recipes holds true under the cold light of day.