Gluten-Free Vegan Orange Cake - Rhian's Recipes (2024)

FAQs

How do you keep gluten-free cake moist? ›

Any gluten-free cake will dry out super-fast and get hard on the outside if it's not properly refrigerated and covered. I swear by always using buttermilk and adding a little more fat into the batter to compensate for the dryness.

Gluten-free baked goods often benefit from extra liquid to hydrate the flour blends, eliminate grittiness, and achieve a less dense or dry texture. However, it's very important to drive off this extra moisture during baking, or you'll wind up with a gummy texture.

To combat the flat cake problem, I add ½ tsp of bicarbonate of soda to the recipe even when using a self-raising gluten-free flour blend. Another tip to help achieve a real fluffy cake is to separate your eggs. First, add the egg yolks with your wet ingredients.

Using too much butter or oil in a cake will cause it to become wet and heavy, meaning it might collapse or break when you try to cut a slice out. On the other hand, if the level of fat is correct but you've used too much flour, your cake will turn out dry and is more likely to crumble when you cut into it.

Some gluten free flours will produce a cake which is on the dry side. This might be due to the lack of gluten but can be for many other reasons. Lots of gluten free flour is rice based and this can result in a dry and slightly gritty texture.

Add extra liquid: Gluten-free flours tend to absorb more liquid than regular flour, so you may need to add more liquid to your recipes to compensate. This can help to keep your baked goods moist and prevent them from becoming dry and crumbly.

We recommend covering your batters and doughs and letting them rest for at least half an hour.

Gluten-free flours often contain fine starches, so they absorb more liquid than conventional flour. To address this, gluten-free recipes usually call for more liquid and produce looser batters. They may also call for a larger quantity of leavening, like baking powder, to help add volume and lighten the texture.

This can happen for a few reasons, but the biggest reason is that your ingredients weren't room temperature. If your ingredients, even vegan ingredients, aren't all room temperature (i.e. some are cool, some are warm, some are hot), the cake will come out gummy.

Sorghum flour: great for cakes

Made from an ancient cereal grain that has been cultivated for more than 5,000 years, sorghum flour is light in colour and texture, though it is a fairly dense flour. It is rich in protein and fibre, which helps maintain blood sugar stability and may also help with digestion.

What is the best gluten-free flour for fluffy cake? ›

Oat Flour. With its creamy, earthy flavor and delicate texture, gluten-free oat flour is a staple of my gluten-free baking recipes. It bakes up soft and smooth, adding necessary starch to many GF baked goods and keeping them moist and tender due to its high fat content and stable protein structure.

Over mixing batter is another reason which causes over development of the gluten and a dense result. If your oven isn't heated to the correct temperature before you put your cake in, it can cause it to not bake properly. Using too much flour and not aerating and sifting your flour before you bake can be another reason.

YOUR CAKE IS SINKING IN THE MIDDLE OR NOT RISING

You may not have used enough raising agents. I do recommend experimenting with double action baking powders. Otherwise try using 25 percent more chemical raising agents (baking soda or baking powder) if you're converting a recipe to gluten free.

In vegan cakes, the absence of the egg makes it so that it's all about taking advantage of gluten formation to build structure. This means that when you take the egg out of a cake recipe, you're going to be taking out the primary structure builder, which means that the cake is going to fall flat.

Add more fat or liquid: It might just be that you need a bit more moisture in your recipe, especially if you're converting a regular “gluten-ful” recipe to gluten-free. Try adding anywhere from ¼ to ½ cup of liquid or fat to the recipe and see if that helps.

The simplest version of simple syrup, or soak, is nothing more than equal parts granulated sugar dissolved into water. The basic soak alone will do great things for your cake, especially in terms of moisture.

Storage information: The cake will keep at room temperature, covered with a cake cover, for up to three days; in the refrigerator, covered, for up to one week, or in the freezer, well wrapped, for up to one month.