Monday, April 1, 2013

Gluten Free Lemon Cupcakes.

So, lately I have had a hard time with a tried and true basic Gluten Free cupcake recipe. I made some for the carpool princess' baptism in early March and they were soo dense and just unedible. Ick! They made great paperweights.  So I had to try them again. They were soo gooey. Kinda like the toy slime stuff from back in the 80's. (not that I remember the 80's mind you) So, I tried them again and adjusted the temp of the oven and the liquid content.  Yea, that didn't work either.  They rose nicely then fell hard like a drunk coed after last call. ( that's called imagery and my high school creative writing teacher would give me detention if she could for using that example)
On attempt number 4, I finally got a super dense but "non collapsed" cupcake. They tasted ok, but the texture just wasn't right. I'd changed the oven temp again, and cooled them more slowly, and changed the liquid and eggs and said a prayer and knocked on wood.... Still the cupcakes were meh. (yes, meh is an official culinary term)
So after much more research and a little private investigating I think I figured out me problem. Everyone who knows me knows I like a great deal. GF flour is expensive and I found some great GF flour at my IndoPak market. Well a few weeks ago I tried a larger asian market. Korean I think and got some rice flour there. The Korean market did not translate into english all the items I was looking for. Hmm. Not very helpful for this linguistically challenged person if you ask me. So I think I bought sweet rice flour instead of regular rice flour and according to my expert sleuthing sweer rice flour is gummy when used in baking.
So there you have it. Therfore I had to try my cupcakes again with sorghum flour instead. The color was slightly darker than with fine rice flour but they taste good.
GF Lemon cupcake
1 cup sorghum flour
1/2 cup tapioca starch
1/2 cup rice flour
1 tsp xantham gum
1tsp baking soda
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup sugar
2/3 cup lemon pie filling (gf)
2tsp vanilla ext
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
Learned to aerate the flour and starch before measuring and sifting together. Then wisk together well.
I baked them in a 350 degree oven for almost 30 minutes.
I then made a lemon "Buttercream". I didn't use butter though because I was in a hurry and the butter was too cold.
1 cup butter (butter flavor crisco)
4 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
1/3 cup (about) lemon pie filling
1/4 cup milk (ish)
1tsp vanilla ext.
They were really good. If I do say so myself.
Bon Apetit!

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