Grandma Trudie's Southern Apple Cake Made Gluten-Free

I was lucky enough to have three loving grandmas when I was younger: my mom's mom, my dad's mom and my stepfather's mom. All three were interesting, sweet women, and I miss them all now that they are gone. Each one had their own interests and kitchen passions.



My mom's mom was a Depression baby who collected cookbooks and loved to bake and I have many recipes in my card file from her kitchen experiments. Each summer we would plan lovely picnics where we would pick wildflowers, collect abandoned balls from a nearby public tennis court, and feast on deviled eggs, her special iced tea and her buttery cupcakes.

My dad's mom was a butcher's daughter and was known for her slow-cooked roasts and chops and for having an electric coffee percolator snuffling away in the corner of the kitchen when her best friend would come over for an afternoon of card playing and conversation. She was incredibly well-read and could polish off the Sunday crossword puzzle in expert time. In pen, no less.

My step-grandmother, Grandma Trudie, lived far away in Atlanta, Georgia, but would come up on the train for a week or two each year toting heavy suitcases filled with cans of my stepdad's favorite breakfast sausage and boxes of Nabisco cookies from the factory where she worked. She was a fantastic Southern cook and as a teen foodie I pestered her to explain how she made her Brunswick Stew, potato salad, and her moist apple cake. She was an intuitive cook that had most of her recipes in her head, so she'd smile when I'd ask her for measurements.

"Oh, I don't know, sugar", she'd say, "add about enough flour until the batter is right."

I'd knit my brow with youthful puzzlement and write something down to approximate what I saw her doing.

I had a hankering for my Grandma Trudie's Apple Cake last week and pulled out the framework of the recipe I had. It called for a small ("you know, small") bag of sweetened flaked coconut, but as I have a coconut-phobe in the house, I left it out. I also made adjustments to this treasured recipe to accommodate our gluten-free needs, so feel free to substitute wheat flour or your favorite GF flour blend).




Grandma Trudie's Southern Apple Cake

1-1/2 cups corn oil
1-1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 large eggs

3 cups GF flour (I used a blend of 1 cup garbanzo bean flour and 2 cups
amaranth flour to use up some bags in the pantry; later used mix of sorghum, brown rice and white rice flours)
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. xanthan gums

5 medium apples, peeled, cored and roughly chopped
1 cup chopped walnuts
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup sweetened flaked coconut (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Grease and flour a 10 inch bundt pan.

Combine oil, sugar and brown sugar and blend until smooth. Beat eggs
in, one at a time, making sure batter is smooth after each addition.

Blend together dry ingredients: flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, baking soda
and salt. Gradually add to wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

Add in apples, walnuts and vanilla and mix until blended. Batter should be wet. Spoon into
prepared pan.

Bake for 1-1/2 hours, or until a skewer or toothpick inserted into
cake comes out clean. Cool in pan 10-15 minutes.

Then invert onto plate and then invert onto cooling rack.

You could glaze it, but Grandma Trudie always just served it plain and it would disappear quickly. I sprinkled a little powdered sugar on top just to make it blogworthy.

*I made this again with a cider reduction glaze that was outstanding. Cook 2 cups cider in pan until reduced to 1/2 cup. Watch carefully, or the burned pan will have to be thrown out. Add in enough confectioner's sugar to make stiff glaze (about 2 cups). Drizzle over cake when it has cooled completely. Let sit an hour or so to stiffen up.

This recipe will be submitted to a new blogging event: Family Recipes: Memories of Family, Food and Fun, which is being hosted by my fellow upstate New York foodie, The Life and Loves of Grumpy's Honeybunch. This new event concentrates of family recipes, and this one sure brings back some happy memories of my Grandma Trudie. There's still time to join in the fun, as the deadline for this nostalgic event is May 23rd.

Mojito Cupcakes, Gluten-Free, Boozy Little Bites

Ever since last summer when I whipped up a batch of Brii's Mint Sugar, I've been thinking about making my favorite cocktail into a GF cupcake sprinkled with some of this sparkling, magical substance. I've put Mint Sugar into lots of cups of hot tea this winter, but never got to making those cupcake cuties until yesterday.


It is a retro-baking concept to infuse cakes with the flavors of mixed drinks and I am partial to lime, mint and rum in their separate incarnations. With all three involved, it's a Mojito party! So I was determined to research this cocktail cake concept. A lot of these cakes were concocted of cake mixes and flavored Jello packets, poked when cooled and saturated with flavored glazes, but I was going for more of a minty fresh and aromatic cupcake and of course, I wanted to cap my creation with sparkling Mint Sugar.

Cooking with mint is a balancing act. Too much mint and you get that toothpaste taste; too little and you don't get that herbal aromatic flavor. I also had to do this baking thing gluten-free, which is ALWAYS a challenge when I'm at kitchen helm. I have to rein in my riffing impulses and I'm easily distracted, so more often than not I am roused by the screech of my smoke detector when I get spin off onto another project.

Back to my baking success, however, since I gotta crow when something works out in my oven. I started with a basic yellow cake recipe from my favorite GF baking bible, Elizabeth Barbone's Easy Gluten-Free Baking cookbook. I have Elizabeth's original self-published cookbook, but a new spiral bound, color photo-infused revised version with even more recipes is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

I needed to get that Mojito trio of flavors in there, so I pressed some dried mint through a kitchen strainer, threw in a glug of dark rum and squeezed a lime. I am also more partial to the taste, texture and protein-rich aspects of sorghum flour blends than the white rice flour blends Elizabeth uses, so I went that route. And I thought I would skip the glaze that some cocktail-flavored cakes sport so my proposed cap of minty-lime frosting wouldn't slide off.

Holy Mojito! It worked! These little cupcakes came out great and were quite delicious, though I must say the adults in our household have consumed more of them than the kiddies. Mint must be more of a grownup flavor.

Here's my recipe for these minty little gems. And thanks again to my Italian blogging buddy Brii for sharing the wonderful recipe for Mint Sugar. I put up four half-pints of this magical Mint Sugar when my garden mint was overtaking its barrel and I'm glad I did!



MOJITO CUPCAKES (Gluten-Free)

1-1/2 cups sorghum flour
3/4 cup cornstarch
3/4 cup tapioca flour
2-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

2/3 cup softened butter (10-2/3 Tbsps.)
1-1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs
1/2 cup dried mint, crumbled
1 shot dark rum
Juice of one lime

1 cup milk (fat-free, full milk, soy, etc.)

Mojito Frosting:

1 cup softened butter (2 sticks)
4 cups confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp. salt

1 shot dark rum
Juice of 1/2 lime

Mint Sugar and or 1 tsp. crumbled dried mint to garnish (if you have none, you can add 1/2 tsp. mint extract for the third key mint ingredient for this Mojito combo)

Slivers of lime peel for garnish


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix sorghum flour, cornstarch, tapioca flour, baking powder and salt together in medium mixing bowl.

In large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. A stand mixer will make quick work of this, but otherwise you can use a hand mixer or your own arm power and a wooden spoon.

Mix in eggs, lime juice, rum and 1/2 cup crumbled mint. Blend until smooth. Then alternate adding dry ingredients and milk gradually, blending in each addition until smooth.

Place cupcake liners in each of two 12-cup muffin or cupcake pans. Place in preheated oven and bake 18-20 minutes or until done. Cupcakes will be springy to the touch.

Remove from oven and place on racks to cool 5 minutes Pluck out cupcakes and let cool on rack until completely cool.

Meanwhile, whip up your Mojito Frosting:

Cream butter until fluffy. Add confectioner's sugar and salt and blend well. Add rum and lime juice and blend until creamy. Frost your Mojito cupcakes when they are thoroughly cooled. Garnish with mint sugar or crumbled mint and little lime peel twists, to keep up the cocktail theme.

Makes 24 Mojito Cupcakes.

I hope you get a chance to try these little beauties. If you don't bake gluten-free, perhaps they would be just as good made with regular flour, but I thought they had a lovely texture and a delicately tangy taste made with the sorghum blend.

I'm sending my cupcake photo over to Bee and Jai at Jugalbandi for their Click Wood event, running through the end of this month. I took a bunch of photos of these cupcakes in various settings in an attempt to get a good natural light shot even at these northern latitudes and the best one turned out to be the one I took outside in our open-ended garden shed, perched on a large wooden spool we scavenged from the side of the road last year. Click is a monthly food photography event which is featuring the theme of wood (also includes paper and wood products) so I imagine the roundup will feature a lovely array of warm, textural food photos. Be sure to stop back at Jugalbandi after the March 31st deadline to see!

Culinary Trip Around the World: Poland

Joan at Foodalogue came up with the brilliant idea to plan A Culinary Tour Around the World event both to sample the world's cuisines and to promote BloggerAid, a new consortium of food bloggers united to raise awareness and funds for world hunger. Last time, I traveled with Joan to Norway, where unfortunately I was blinded by the whiteness of the food, but now we journey to Poland, my husband's paternal grandfather's home land. While Dan never sampled much Polish food at home as his family, like many other immigrant families at that time, wanted to be as Americanized as possible, we do know a few Polish phrases like "Dah me boozhie" (Give me a kiss) that his grandfather passed on.

I had some cabbage (kapusti) in the vegetable crisper and thought I'd try some sauteeing it up with mushrooms and dill seed for some Polish flavor. The recipe turned out to be a toothsome one and I paired it with some plain steamed rice for a simple dinner, as I had a fancy Polish cake to pull out for dessert.



Sauteed Cabbage a la Polska

1 half head of green cabbage, core removed and chopped coarsely
1/2 lb. mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
4 Tbsp. butter
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tsp. dill seed

Melt butter in large skillet. Add mushrooms and saute, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes. Add cabbage and saute, stirring, another 10-15 minutes, until softened, adding water if skillet becomes dry. Add dill seeds and season with salt and pepper to taste, and cook, covered, another 5 minutes to let cabbage steam up and become tender.

Serves 4 as a side dish.

Now, I had high hopes for my Polish dessert. I have a newly acquired cookbook, "Ultimate Cake" by Barbara Maher (NY: Dorling Kindersley, 1996), which, like the other DK publications, has clear photos and lots of them, to illustrate all different kinds of cakes and baking techniques. I was flipping through it and my caught on a Polish Coffee and Walnut Cake recipe which was virtually gluten-free, so I thought I would attempt making it, despite the fact that there were about a twenty different steps to its fabrication.

In the last book I read, Diana Abu-Jaber's "The Language of Baklava" (for the Cook the Books club), the author describes the great divide which separates cooks and bakers: "Cooks are dashing, improvisational, wayward, intuitive; bakers are measured, careful, rational, precise." I am a cook and when I tackle being a baker it takes great restraint in following instructions exactly, measuring precisely and not deviating on some cooking tangent. I was determined to make this complicated Polish treat without doing anything different other than subbing some gluten-free breadcrumbs for the tablespoon of bread crumbs called for in the recipe.

And so, with Ms. Maher's detailed cookbook instructions and lavish illustrations, I:

-Separated and whipped egg yolks and whites
-Prepared a Coffee Mousseline Buttercream Icing
-Made Simple Syrup and Coffee-Flavored Sugar Syrup
-Concocted Apricot Glaze
-Made Coffee Glace Icing
-Sliced a Cake into Layers

It took me the better part of two afternoons to do all these steps in my fabulous dessert and I enjoyed learning some new baking skills. However, this story ends badly at the very final step, when after brushing my split nut torte with apricot glaze and letting that dry, I attempted to "coax" my coffee glace icing over the top of my cake and down the sides. As much as I tried to coax this frosting over my cake, it kept bunching at the top and pulling at the glaze, which in turn, pulled at the top layer of crumbs from the cake. Granted, my cake was a little (alright, a lot) lumpier than the model cake in the cookbook photo, but this kept my Polish cake from becoming the gloriously beautiful dessert I had slaved for.

Nonetheless, my culinary Polska Palooza proved to be a hit with my family, as we all enjoyed the humble cabbage dish and ate my less-than-perfect cake, as it was still awesomely tasty.



I hope to join Joan on some of her other stops along her Culinary Tour of the World. Next up is Germany, which is another cuisine I'm not entirely familiar with, so I will have to go forth and research their traditions before attempting a Teutonic feast. One thing is for sure, I am not going to try any fancy cakes!

Rebecca Reilly: Gluten-Free Baker

I just bought a copy of Rebecca Reilly's "Gluten-Free Baking" (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2002) and am delighted with it. Baking has never been my strength, even in the days before gluten became our nemesis, so I having several gluten-free cookbooks for my baking library is essential. Reilly is a Cordon Bleu-trained chef, former restaurant owner and caterer and is gluten-intolerant herself, so she is obviously an expert Gluten-Free Baker.

My daughter and I went a little wild at the grocery store in buying up seasonal fruit and couldn't eat up all the blueberries, nectarines and plums we had overbought so I thought I'd make up a dessert and freeze some extras. The cookbook had a lovely photo of a Plum Coffee Cake (recipe on page 62) and after reminding myself to follow the recipe exactly, it came out beautifully. Best of all, Reilly's recipe made two cakes, so we devoured one and I smuggled out the other to frozen for later consumption.



I'm not going to share the recipe for this excellent edible without the author's permission, but I can recommend her cookbook highly. The recipes are very detailed, but don't have overwhelming, difficult bakery tricks to master, so I found this plum project easy enough. There are also many unusual recipes, like Fresh Nectarine Almond Cake, Crostata di Riso, six kinds of biscotti and Raisin Cream Scones, mixed in with more common recipes, to make the cookbook a worthwhile purchase.

I can, however, pass along the link to four of Reilly's recipes which are posted online at this site. She is going to be a presenter at a Gluten-Free Cooking Expo - what fun! -- in Oakbrook, Illinois on Sept. 12-13,2008. Click on the above link to get her gluten-free recipes for: Moroccan Quinoa, Cream of Vidalia Soup, Brownie Cheesecake and Caldo Verde.

When Life Hands You Lemon Balm.....

Last year a friend gave me two fat clumps of lemon balm, a perennial member of the mint family that smells heavenly and is wonderful chopped into salads, both savory and fruity, and dried as tea. My mom grew lemon balm in her garden when I was a child and I remember enjoying it then (but just a little bit!) over buttered noodles. This year the clumps have really become overgrown and put forth little lemon balm babies amidst my other garden patches, so I have been enjoyably plucking them out for kitchen use.

There is a lot of great botanical information about cultivating lemon balm and a number of recipes at the Seeds of Knowledge site. Lemon Balm is a native plant from Europe, where it has historically been used as a remedy for insomnia and cold sores and as an aid in calming the digestive tract. The leaves bruise easily, so you should rinse them gently and cut with a pretty sharp knife or they will look dark and unappetizing, like basil leaves do when you are too rough with them. I have dried a bunch of lemon balm for winter teas in my new dehydrator (a tasty and CRISPY post to follow shortly on that subject) but I wanted to make something in the oven that would showcase the bright lemony flavor of this delicate herb.

I found a toothsome sounding recipe for Lemon Balm Tea Cake on an Australian gardening web forum and tried to make a gluten-free version for my husband. For the trial run I subbed in 1-1/2 cups of white rice flour and 1/2 cup of cornstarch for the regular flour because I thought that was appropriately delicate, but the cake was just too insubstantial to hold up to a hot lemon balm glaze poured over the top. It crumbled into mush.

A second stab at this lovely, well-perfumed, but terribly inedible, treat was attempted in the Crispy Cook test kitchen, this time trying 1 cup of brown rice flour, 1 cup of potato starch and some chopped pecans. The cake certainly turned out sturdier; and in fact collapsed into a lemon-scented brick once it cooled. I couldn't even salvage it by cutting it up into cubes for a bread pudding. Martha the dog sniffed at it hopefully, but I just launched it into the compost pile where it will perhaps degrade someday into loamy soil. Perhaps.

I was going to try a third round, but my gentle husband interrupted my kitchen frowning to tell me that he really wasn't all that interested in the whole Lemon Balm Cake idea anyway, and would just as soon have a nice pitcher of iced Lemon Balm tea. I untied the apron strings, pulled off my oven mitts and produced a cooling beverage for my sweaty sweetheart in short order. It is easy enough:

Lemon Balm Iced Tea

3 cups chopped fresh lemon balm
6 cups water
Honey to taste

Place water and lemon balm leaves in saucepan. Bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer 5 minutes. Turn off heat and let steep another 10 minutes.

Swirl in honey to dissolve. Pour in pitcher filled with ice cubes and chill in refrigerator until suitably cold.

Makes 2 quarts.

I am submitting this recipe to the wonderful Weekend Herb Blogging Event started by Kalyn's Kitchen almost three years ago (!) and hosted this week by Marija at Palachinka, a Serbian food blogger with some mighty tasty recipes and ethereal photography. Check out her latest post about Peach and Poppy Seed Jam.

The Search for a Gluten-Free Cannoli

Last month, my daughter needed to make an Italian food to bring to school and wanted to bring cannolis. It was easy enough to find a recipe for the filling, but the cannoli shells seemed too daunting to attempt, gluten-free or not, so we went to our local supermarket and bought a batch of unfilled shells.

We filled them with a blend of ricotta cheese blended with some vanilla, instant coffee powder and powdered sugar and then stuffed the filling into a plastic bag with a corner snipped off for a makeshift pastry bag. Then we dipped the ends of the cannolis in mini-chocolate chips and Badda Bing! They looked rather splendid and I can assure that none were left on the plate by my daughter's classmates.


I still wanted to scout out a gluten-free cannoli shell recipe so I could use the leftover ricotta filling to make Dan some of these beauties, but I couldn't find any information on the Internet or in any of my gluten-free cookbooks, so I think the wheat gluten may be somewhat vital to the architecture of these crispy little tubes. Perhaps some Daring Baker out there would like to tackle this as a gluten-free baking challenge?

I did find some mention that a gluten-free pizzelle, a crispy sort of Italian fried cookie, might be a good substitute cannoli shell if rolled around a metal cannoli tube. Apparently you also need a special pizzelle iron to make these cookies, so I was further thwarted in my quest for a gluten-free cannoli, although here is a link to a pizzelle recipe for those dessert makers more stubborn than I.

All was not lost for Dan's sweet tooth, however, as I made him a different kind of Italian treat with some cannoli goodness: a Sicilian-style Cassata Cake. I figured a good, firm sponge cake would be an easy gluten-free thing to bake up, and it thankfully was according to this recipe.. I then let the sponge cakes cool and topped each layer with some of the coffee-flavored ricotta filling and there was a tasty, cannoli-like dessert for Dan, which he enjoyed especially over several mornings with his cup of coffee.

Now if only some gluten-free baking entrepreneur would manufacture a gluten-free cannoli shell that I could purchase through the mail and stick in the freezer to pull out as needed for my sweetheart......

Coca-Cola Cake KO'd by Canine

I made a delicious Coca-Cola Cake as per Gluten A Go Go's wonderful recipe. This cake is moist, chewy (as most gluten-free cakes I bake don't seem to be) and has a great, exotic flavor. The Turbinado sugar crystals also give a nice crunch to the cake. I substituted equal amounts of cornstarch for arrowroot powder and xanthan gum for the kudzu powder called for by Sheltie Girl, Head Baker at Gluten a Go Go, and this seemed to work out just fine.

All humans in the family gave this cake a thumbs up when I served it for dessert. Unfortunately, a certain thumbless member of the pack

got her snout under the cake cover during the night and gobbled up and licked a third of the remaining deliciousness. It is a testament to the delectability of Sheltie Girl's creation that we all just cut off the dog-slobbered part and chowed down on it the next day. It's that good.

This chapter in my Adventures in Gluten-Free Baking was brought to you by Sea over at the Book of Yum who is hosting an Adopt A Gluten-Free Blogger Event to get us all trying out some new recipes. Gluten A Go Go has lots of great recipes, particularly for baked goods, as well as wealth of interesting links and articles, and I would urge you to check it out. Thanks Sea and Sheltie Girl!

Damp Apple and Almond Cake

One of my wonderful customers at the bookstore was chatting with me about baking and I told her about our new gluten-free lifestyle and how baking is quite a challenge these days. She recommended that I try Nigella Lawson's weirdly-named Damp Apple and Almond Cake. Through the power of the Internet I scrounged up the recipe which you can also access here for a better photograph.

The cake turned out to be delicious although I was a bit put off by how truly damp it is on the inside. I prefer my baked goods a bit more dessicated, so I limited myself to one slice and a few stolen crumbs here and there, while Dan devoured the remainder. The cake is not too sweet and would make a nice teatime treat.

Damp Apple and Almond Cake

Nigella Lawson

Serves 12

INGREDIENTS

• 3 apples eating apples, such as Braeburns

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

• 2 teaspoons sugar

• 8 eggs

• 1 3/4 quarters cup superfine sugar

• 3 1/4 cups ground almonds

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

• 1/2 cup flaked almonds

• 1 teaspoon confectioners’ sugar

DIRECTIONS

Peel, core and chop the apples roughly. Put them in a saucepan with one the lemon juice and sugar, and bring the pan to a boil over a medium heat. Cover the pan and cook over low heat for about 10 minutes or until you can mash the apple to a rough puree with a wooden spoon or fork. (You should have about one heaped cup of puree.) Leave to get cool.

Preheat the oven to 350°F; and oil a 10” springform pan with almond oil or a flavourless vegetable oil and line the bottom with parchment paper.

Put the cooled puree in the processor with the eggs, ground almonds, superfine sugar and a tablespoonful — or generous squeeze — of lemon juice and blitz to a puree. Pour and scrape, with a rubber spatula for ease, into the prepared pan, sprinkle the flaked almonds on top and bake for about 45 minutes. It’s worth checking after 35 minutes, as ovens do vary, and you might well find it’s cooked earlier — or indeed you may need to give it a few minutes longer.

Put on a wire rack to cool slightly, then remove the sides of the pan. This cake is best served slightly warm, though still good cold. As you bring it to the table, push a teaspoon of confectioners’ sugar through a fine sieve to give a light dusting.

Gluten-Free Cheesecake

My mom came over to spend some time with us and showered us with much-needed cooking, gardening and child care assistance. Also, a lot of love. She made us the delicious New York-style cheesecake which is shown above during its brief life before being devoured by a horde of hungry humans. She originally got the recipe from the back label of a certain cream cheese brand, but we adapted it to be safe for gluten-free diners. Here's our version:

Mom's Famous Cheesecake

3/4 cup crushed gluten-free cookies (we used gluten-free animal crackers from the store, but homemade gluten-free cookies would of course be preferable)
2 Tbsp. melted butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 (8 oz.) pkgs. cream cheese, softened
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup sour cream
2 eggs
Raspberry preserves

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line one round 9 inch cake pan with aluminum foil, folding edges over sides of pan.

Mix cookie crumbs with butter and 1 Tbsp. of the sugar. Press crumb mixture into bottom of cake pan.

Beat cream cheese, remaining sugar and 1/2 tsp. vanilla in large bowl with mixer until well blended. Add 1/2 cup sour cream and continue mixing. Add eggs, one at a time, blending well. Pour into cake pan.

Bake 40 minutes or until center is almost set. Mix remaining sour cream, another 1 Tbsp. sugar and remaining vanilla until well blended. Spread over top of cheesecake and bake an additional 10 minutes. Cool cheesecake.

When completely cooled, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 2-3 hours before serving. Top with raspberry preserves or other preserves. Fresh ripe berries or other macerated fruits in season would also be lovely.

Serves 8. Leftovers unlikely.