Apple, Ginger and Cinnamon Tea Cake

Apple Ginger and Cinnamon Tea Cake. yellowreadis.com. Image: Two pictures of tea cake

About a year and a bit ago (I think, it feels like forever), with a specialists help, I finally managed to figure out that I have developed an allergy to egg. If you can’t hear the wailing and the knashing of teeth over here, you are lucky! Egg was one of my favourite foods, was an essential part of my baking and was a very difficult ingredient to replace. Not so much for its sticking power (banana does a great job for that), but for the light and fluffy-ness it adds to sponge cakes. So I have been experimenting for months and months with increasing despair – trying to bake a half-decent vegan, gluten-free sponge is hard!

But with the help of Jaime Oliver, and his magnificent Vegan GF sponge recipe, I now have cracked the code. This is not the same recipe, though his recipe is superb (I am incapable of not-tampering with any recipe). But it gave me a few pointers in the right direction for how to craft my own recipe that is repeatable and delicious.

So this is it, my Apple, Ginger and Cinnamon Tea Cake!
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Everything Substituted Spice Carrot Cake

This recipe started as an experiment to see if I could make a gluten-free, dairy-free and egg-free cake. We also had a lot of carrots, since my little girl loves buying carrots at our grocer. So it was only natural to combine the two and make a delicious and light carrot cake.

This cake is lovely on its own, but it is even better with the vanilla-cream and nutmeg icing. I had trouble taking really good pictures of this cake, and tried a few times – each time I had less cake to work with (over the course of 48 hours), because it was extremely popular and everyone kept gobbling it up!
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Gluten and Dairy-Free Train Wheel-Piston Cake

I was going to write more about our NZ trip, and I will next week, but today is recipe day, so I’m going to run through how I made C’s 7th Birthday cake. Seven? How did that happen? And after convincing him that I couldn’t design a cake with the cake-wheels on edge with an axle in between that would move, I worked through some sketches of train wheels till I had executive approval for this design.

It’s two train wheels, with a piston sitting on a train track in a coal yard. And as far as cakes go, this one wasn’t the hardest I have ever made. Working with fondant is like working with playdoh. Though it does taste rather commercial – next time I will be experimenting with different flavours but I ran out of time this year. I also think the cakes would be improved with the add‭itions of a jam layer – something tart, like apricot, so I will be experimenting with that too at a later date.

Anyway, enjoy the chaos!
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Basic Gluten-Free Vanilla Cake

This is the cake I make all the time. I don’t need to look at a recipe anymore, it’s so automatic. I use this cake-base as a start for pretty much all my cakes and cup-cakes – just add other flavours – banana, dates, cinnamon, raspberry, apples or blueberries.  It works beautifully.

This cake is lovely just as it is, but is also lovely iced, or turned into a cinnamon tea cake. Continue reading “Basic Gluten-Free Vanilla Cake”

Zucchini, Apple, Banana and Cinnamon Birthday Cake

Zucchini, Apple, Banana and Cinnamon Cake

I decided to go for a change of pace and do a nice cake recipe. Don’t worry – I’ll be back to the homeschooling series next post!!

This is the cake my other half requested for his birthday. As he doesn’t like icing or sweet cakes, this is my version of an almost-savoury cake that’s still dessert-like enough for a birthday. It won’t rise terribly high, but it’s a moist, almost bread-like cake with a crunchy outer shell – delicious!

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