My Mom’s Carrot Cake

Carrot cake is my farovite and I remember making the cake with my Mom when I was about 10 or 11. It was a favorite among my family too so we made it often. Forty some odd years later I still make the cake from the recipe that my Mom penned with her own hand. The paper is yellowed and stained in some spots but the recipe and the memories it brings back are precious

I’ve adapted the recipe to be gluten free and its another one of those recipes that works very well because of the fruit and the carrots that it holds. It can be made as sheet cake, in a bundt pan, or as a 2 layer cake.

My Mom’s Carrot Cake

3 cups Gluten Free Flour Blend
2 cups sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons xanthan gum
10 ounce can crushed pineapple, drained and syrup reserved
4 eggs at room temperature, beaten
1 cup olive oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups grated raw carrots, loosely packed
1 cup chopped walnute or pecans (optional)
Combine flour and next 5 ingredients, mixing well. Drain pineapple, saving syrup, set aside. Make a well in center of dry ingredients; add pineapple syrup, eggs, oil and vanilla, blen throughly, stir in pineapple, carrots, and nuts. Turn into 2 greased loaf pans Bake in 325 degree oven for one hour hour or a long wooden pick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes and turn out onto a rack to cool completely.
Sheet cakes and bundt cakes bake for approximately hone hour. Two nine inch cake pans requires approximately 45 minutes.

Frost or glaze cake as desired.

Gluten Free Apple Blackberry Pie

This is a light and flaky crust pie filled with apples and studded with berries  To make the crust flaky, chill the dough for about 40 minutes and add the egg  to the dough only after the dough is removed from the refrigerator.  This allows the coconut oil to partially solidify.  When oil melts in the baking process you get a flaky dough.

Gluten Free Pie Crust

2 cups gluten free all purpose flour blend

1/4 cup sweet rice flour (50 grams)

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon xanthan gum

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup coconut oil

1 1/2 tablespoons cider vinegar

1 egg (added when the dough is taken out of the refrigerator)
Mix the flour blend, sweet rice flour, sugar, xanthan gum and salt in a medium bowl.  Mix in coconut oil and vinegar.  Refrigerate for 40 minutes, or until very cold.  Remove from the refrigerator and mix in the egg.  Divide dough in half and roll out between 2 sheets of parchment paper.  Lift the parchment with the dough and invert into the pie pan.  Fill with the apple berry mixture.  Top with the second half of rolled dough.  Cut slits into the top of the pie and bake in a preheated 425 degree oven for 40 minutes.  Cover with foil and bake for 25 minutes more  Cool on wire rack.

Notes:   When the egg is added to the chilled dough the result is a soft  dough that is easy to roll.  However it is also difficult to move to the pan without the use of the parchment paper.
Apple Blackberry Filling

3 pounds Granny Smith Apples

3 pounds Braeburn Apples

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup GF Flour Blend (for the apples)

1/2 cup coconut oil

1 12 oz package frozen blackberries (2 cups)

2 tablespoons GF Flour (for the berries)

1.  Peel apples and cut into 1/2 inch wedges.  Toss with sugar and 1/2 cup flour.

2.  Melt coconut oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add apples and saute 15-20 minutes until apples are tender.  Cool completely – about 1 hour.

3.  Toss frozen blackberries with 2 tablespoons flour and stir into apple mixture.  Use immediately.

4.  Bake at 425 degrees  on the lower rack for 40 minutes.  Cover with foil and bake 25 minutes more.

Making Your Own Gluten Free Flour Blend

You may wonder why you wouldn’t just use one kind of flour such as sorghum, millet, or rice.  Many gluten free flours are dense and can make your baked goods heavy.  Rice flour is light but I feel that the baked product is not as nutritious as it could be.

I like to keep a full canister of gluten free flour blend in my pantry.  That way you can quickly measure out what you need and quickly make a batch of cookies.  It doesn’t take long to make a canister of flour.  A kitchen scale is essential to make the flour blend as well as in the baking process.  Simply measuring out the flours by the cupful could result in flours that are not proportionately balanced as a cup of flour could be more or less densely packed than it should be.

Flours that I like to mix and match in the blend include white rice flour, sorghum, tapioca, millet, buckwheat, potato starch and almond flour.  I like to make a blend that where approximately seventy percent of the blend is of the heavier flours (rice, millet, buckwheat, sorghum) and thirty percent and 30 percent make of lighter, starchier flours (tapioca, cornstarth, potato flour).

Gluten Free All-Purpose Flour Blend

(This blend is for all baked goods not made with yeast.)

1 cup white rice flour (158 grams/cup)

1 cup sorghum flour (127 grams/cup) (Or substitute with millet or buckwheat)

1 cup tapioca flour (125 grams/cup)

1 cup cornstarch (128 grams/cup)

1 cup almond flour or coconut flour

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl.  Whisk to ake sure the flours are evenly distributed.  The recipe can be doubled or tripled.  Stour in an airtight container.
You can recalculate the grams per cup of the flour blend when you substitute another type of flour but I have have found that using the average of 127 grams per cup of GF Flour Blend works well.