Eggless Gluten-free Orange Cake

Ingredients

2¼ cups gluten free flour  = 1½  cups rice flour 粘米粉 + ¾ cup potato flour Mąka Ziemniaczana 
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda [known as baking soda in the States]
4 ozs unsalted butter [half a cup or 113 grams or 1 stick]

1 tin [397 g] [1½ cups or 12 fl oz] of condensed milk 

1 cup [8 fl oz] freshly squeezed orange juice
½ teaspoon orange oil or orange extract
1 oz or 30 grams of homemade orange peel - diced finely


Method

1. Grease and flour a bundt baking tin [any bundt tin > 6 cups large]. I used a 12 - 15 cups size bundt tin. 
2. Preheat your oven to 165 C - with fan switched off - if you were to use other baking tins [i.e. not Nordic Ware platinum range] then bake the cake at 175 C.
3. Sift the flour and raising agents and mix the finely diced orange peel into the flour and set aside.
4. Squeeze 3 thin skin oranges to obtain > 1 cup [8 fl oz] of juice - you need some excess juice to make the glaze for the cake.
5. Partially melt the butter in a microwave oven [about 20 seconds or so] and mix it with the condensed milk with a spoon - I use a small silicon spoon - and then mix in the orange oil or extract.
6. Pour the condensed mix / butter mixture into the sifted flour mixture and fold with a spoon.
7. Slowly add the the orange juice in three batches into the flour milk butter mixture and fold the cake batter until one gets a smooth homogeneous mixture without any lumps.
8. Pour the cake mixture into the prepared baking tin and bake on the bottom shelf of a preheated 165 C oven for 45 minutes or until the cake is cooked. 

You can turn the skin of the oranges into homemade orange peel and store these in your freezer for future use.

Use the excess orange juice [2 tbsp + 1 tsp = 20 ml] to mix with 130 grams of sifted icing sugar for the glaze.  For a thin glaze, then add about a teaspoon of liquid glucose into the glaze.

Any excess glaze can be whipped with double cream and be served with the cake.  Whip 300 ml [half a pint] of double cream with the excess glaze until soft peaks.  Serve this with a slice of the cake. 

Gluten free Chocolate cake

It is my friend's Mercedes' birthday today and she has asked me to help her to bake a cake.  She said she has run out of gluten free flour and I told her we could use Chinese rice and potato flour mixture.  So we baked a cake together.  Here are the ingredients.

Line a round 8 inch cake tin
Switch on your oven to 180 C - convectional oven - fan switched off

100 grams butter - soften over a pot of hot water but not melted

5 medium size eggs
200 grams caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

whisk the eggs and sugar over a pot of hot water [not boiling water] until it double in volume and has tuned pale colour

50 grams Chinese rice flour
25 grams Chinese potato flour
50 grams cocoa - we used Green and Black

Sift the flours together with the cocoa powder twice using a fine sift

Fold the flour into the egg mixture and then take a small portion of this mixture and mix with the butter.  Then fold the butter mixture into the main cake mixture and put this into the prepared lined baking tin and bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes.

Cool the cake in a cooling rack and when the cake is cooled, slice the cake crosswise.

Baked chocolate cake

Filling and decoration

500 gram of black cherries soaked in kirsch 
600 gram double cream
100 gram good quality dark chocolate - we used 85% cocoa Green and Black chocolate
3 tbsp icing sugar
4 tbsp of kirsch

Shave the chocolate and melt it over hot water
Pour the melted chocolate onto a marble or granite slab and allow the chocolate to flow thinly and allow it to cool.  You will know it is ready to form curls when it does not leave any chocolate when touching it.  Shave with a knife with both hands to form curls.

Drain the cherries and retain the liquid. Take about 7 tbsp of the liquid and add 2 tbsp of kirsch to it and sprinkle this liquid on the sliced cake.

Cut just about half of the cherries in halves and set aside.

Beat the double cream and add the icing sugar and 2 tbsp of kirsch until soft peaks.

Extract part of the beaten cream and mix it with the cherries halves and fill the cake.

The cover the cake lightly with beaten cream and refrigerate.  This is to make sure the crumbs from the cake is secured and does not get into the main decoration.

When the cream on the cake is set, then cover the cake with more of the beaten cream.  

Beat the remaining cream until stiff peaks and place the cream into a piping bag with a star nozzle.  Pipe florets on the top side of the cake and fill the inside with cherries.

Place the chocolate curls on the side and top of the cake for final decoration.

Happy Birthday Mercedes!