A long awaited carrot cake

It is a long long time since I have been here. While Lachie has been eating gluten and we have been waiting the the results of his coeliac test I think we have been resting on our laurels. Not exactly forging ahead with exciting new baking! But this week we have baked alot and the most exciting baked item was a vegan carrot cake. I love carrot cake but don't think Lachie had ever eaten any. 'Carrot cake' is now very much part of his vocabulary.

I found this recipe after a google seach for 'vegan carrot cake' and it is excellent. I was a little worried after the addition of the water, it looked a bit ... watery. But have faith, the reults are superdoo.

Carrot cake (dairy and egg free)

8 oz grated carrot

6 oz raisins

10 oz self raising flour

6 oz soft light brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

7 floz sunflower oil

7 floz water

a pinch of salt

a dash of vinegar

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Mix together the dry ingredients and then mix in the wet ones. Pour the mixture into a lined square cake tin (I think mine is about 10 inches). Bake in the oven for 45 minutes at 190 degrees Celsius and then another 30 minutes at 160 degrees. Cool in the tin.

We iced our cake the next day with 3 oz icing sugar beaten into 1 1/2 oz diary free margarine with a dash of vanilla essence. This was a bit stingey on the icing front, I think you could easily double that.

I have to say that having made this cake I can't see why you would feel the need to put egg in a carrot cake. I loved it, the boys loved it and Hamish's friend Nancy who came to tea loved it. Yum.

Lemon Dream Cookies

Poor wee Lachie has been down with another ear infection so he had to stay at home this afternoon rather than heading off to the pool with Hamish and Robert. Never mind, we did some baking instead! Last week I saw some Dove Farm gluten-free lemon biscuits in Morrisons and felt inspired to attempt something similar. Lachie and I got inventive and adapted a recipe for Dream Cookies that Granny has had for as long as I can remember.

Lemon Dream Cookies (free from gluten, dairy and eggs)

4oz dairy-free margarine
3oz caster sugar
4 1/2oz gluten-free self-raising flour
juice and zest of half a lemon

Cream together the sugar and margarine. Stir in the flour and lemon. For normal dream cookies this would make a mixture you can roll into balls. I thought the gluten-free flour would soak up the lemon juice but this didn't seem to be the case and this actually makes a cakie sort of mix. Spoon the mix into 16 pieces onto a greased baking sheet (Lachie got a bit anxious at this stage, obviously thinking I'd forgotten a key ingredient and started shouting 'Chocolate chips! Chocolate chips!' but I perservered - not all biscuits have to contain chocolate chips Lachie!). Bake in the oven for 15 minutes at 160 degrees celsius and cool on a wire rack.

As you can see from the picture, Lachie couldn't wait to get his hands on one and Hamish also thought they were pretty good when he came home from the pool. They have a crunch on the outside but are chewy within and really very nice. I'll go and try another one now just to make sure...
Mmm yes, subtly lemony too.

Daily bread

Lachie is a bit of a toast monster - he could easily eat 3 or 4 slices for breakfast. So when Lachie went gluten-free we knew that a replacement for ordinary bread had to be found, and we thought we would make our own. It turns out that making gluten-free bread is really easy. Having said that, I don't actually make it, my husband does. Robert bakes 2 loaves a week for Lachie using the following recipe from the excellent How to Cook for Food Allergies by Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne. I havn't altered the recipe other than reducing the salt, but we always make the nut-free version. There is no need to let the bread rise (no gluten to hold the dough together after rising!), you just mix it and put it in the oven. You do need a bit of organisation however - all those different flours! We have made a few variations on the flour mixture when something runs out! Tapioca flour seems to be hard to come by at the moment, I don't know why. We buy a couple of bags when we see it in the health food shop. Rice flour, cornflour and now potato flour can all be bought in Tescos. Xanthum gum powder can be bought in health food shops.

Gluten-free bread (also dairy-free and egg-free)

6 oz potato flour
4 oz cornflour
2 oz tapioca flour
2 oz rice flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp soft dark brown sugar
2 tsp xanthum gum powder
2 sachets dried yeast
1 tbsp rice bran
2 tbsp sunflower oil
12 floz warm water

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl and add the oil to the water. Add most of the liquid to the dry ingredients and start mixing. The mixture will be very gloopy but should suddenly come together. Add the rest of the liquid if you need to - you are aiming for a mix that will just drop off a spoon. Beat everything together well. We usually add all of the liquid - Robert thinks the amount of liquid required might vary according to the batch of cornflour.

Spoon the mixture into a greased 2 lb loaf tin and smooth flat. Bake for 45 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius. Cool the bread on a wire rack.

Lachie likes this bread as toast for breakfast cut into bite sized pieces with marmite and, strangely, a Dove Farm chocolate star on the top of each piece. At lunch time he just has it with houmus.

Edited to say that I think this needs a bit more liquid so that the batter is like a cake mix and really will drop off a spoon - see the post on 23rd January for the spectacular results!

A Snowflake Chocolate Cake

This afternoon Lachie and Hamish helped me to make our favourite chocolate cake. I have adapted this recipe from when we were just egg- and dairy-free and works brilliantly with gluten-free flour. This cake is delicious and you would never guess what it didn't have in it!

Chocolate Cake (gluten-free, egg-free and dairy-free)

For the cake
10 oz gluten-free self raising flour (we have been using Dove Farm)
3 tbsp cocoa
6 oz caster sugar
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 pint soya milk
5 oz dairy free margarine
3 tbsp golden syrup

Mix together the flour, cocoa and sugar and rub in the margarine until it looks like crumbs. Mix the bicarbonate of soda with the milk and pour over the crumbs along with the golden syrup. Beat all the ingredients together until you have a runny batter with lots of little lumps. Divide between two greased 8 inch cake tins and bake for 25 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. I find that vegan cakes are best left to cool in the tin.

Icing
To ice the cake I make up a bowl of chocolate 'butter cream' icing. Cream icing sugar and cocoa into dairy free margarine. I don't measure this, I just keep adding and tasting until it looks and tastes right. I use the icing to sandwich the two cakes together and cover the top.

The snowflake
I was feeling festive this evening and decided to surprise the boys with a snowflake on the top of the cake. I used a paper snowflake we had make for the window, laid it over the cake and dusted with icing sugar. Take away the paper and there is your snowflake pattern. It made the boys smile!