Gluten Free Cake from Sola Cafe

Thrown into the busy Christmas season was my In-law's 50th Wedding Anniversary.  50 years is an amazing milestone and we had a great family gathering at Fairmont to celebrate.  I was in charge of bringing the cake and I knew I wouldn't have time to bake something and fuss over it so I ordered a gluten free red velvet cake from Sola Cafe.  Not only was it beautiful but it was delicious.  I expected it to be really rich but it wasn't, it was a perfect cake.  If you need a cake for any occasion give them a call, they were very helpful.

Sola also has an assortment of Christmas cookies for sale, I caved and bought a pack and man were they delicious.  We ate them before I could get a picture.  The scale wasn't too kind to me afterwards but I enjoyed every bite.

Creamy White Frosting - Dairy Free

Another birthday party passed through my house this weekend and I can finally relax a little bit. The next cake isn't needed until August 15th. I was originally going to make my favorite chocolate cake and try it dairy free but the cake I was making suggested to use a white cake mix and I figured I better follow the directions to keep the color of the cupcake liners bright. This prompted me to take a gluten recipe and convert it to GF/DF. It tasted really good but it was chewy. I didn't care for the texture though everyone seemed to love it so it wasn't a total fail at least. The two things I was really happy with were my frosting and how cute the cake turned out.






Creamy White Frosting GF/DF
Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book

1 C shortening, I used Spectrum
1 1/2 t vanilla extract
1/2 t almond extract
4 1/2 C powdered sugar
3-4 T rice milk (regular milk or another DF milk will work also)

Beat the shortening, vanilla, and almond extracts on medium speed for 30 seconds. Add half the sugar and beat well then add 2T milk until incorporated. Add the remaining sugar beating well again then add enough milk to reach your desired spreading consistency. I used all 4 T but start with 3T to ensure you don't over do it.

The cake my girl picked out came from the Hello, Cupcake! book. It's the Big Birthday Cake design. It was easier to put together than I expected and the candies on top made for a nice treat when eating the cupcakes. The bottom layer has 17 cupcakes (I could only get 16 to fit), then 8, 5, 3, and 1 for the remaining layers. I used Skittles and Runts for the candies since I needed to avoid chocolate candies to keep things dairy free. The only thing I omitted was the pirouette cookies the book had for candles. I couldn't find GF pirouette cookies so I made some but I didn't really have room for them once the cake was put together. The layer everyone wanted was the yellow one, if I did this again I think I'd do that layer in the middle so more people could enjoy the banana Runts.

Birthday Cakes

I apologize for being MIA. This time of year is crazy busy for me at work and at home but I'll stick to the fun "busy" stuff at home. We have 3 birthday's that hit within a 2.5 week time frame, that makes for a lot of cake. The first was my birthday at the end of June and Hubby was sweet enough to buy me an Opera Cake from Sweet Pea Bakery. It was beautiful and the frosting just melted in my mouth. The downfall was they couldn't do dairy free so Hubby wasn't able to have any.

The view of the inside of the cake, look at those layers!

My son had his 4th birthday which called for a Transformer's cake. It was easier than the topsy turvy cake I did last year but still took some time. I was happy with it and made The Baking Beauties confetti cake recipe but doubled it and made two 9" cakes to layer. It tasted really good but it wasn't quite as light and fluffy as I'm wanting to find in a white cake. It also didn't rise as much as I expected but it worked out. The frosting I used was store bought because I was feeling lazy and didn't want to make my own. It was GF and DF but the flavor just isn't as good as homemade.

Top view of the cake and the much needed Autobots logo. Sorry the picture isn't horizontal, it wouldn't load properly.

The finished product which my son didn't even eat, he was too busy playing. Obviously that ice cream in the back ground is not DF.

My girl's birthday is a little over a week away so I'll be trying another white cake recipe, not sure which one though. Maybe it will be the perfect one I'm searching for. Do you have a fluffy GF white cake recipe for me to try?