How to stop gluten free cakes being dry

In the recent years, I’ve started to experiment more and more with gluten free baking.

My little niece and nephew are both celiacs and I’ve also find out that my digestive system is happier with the occasional gluten-free bread or cake instead of the regular bake.

Whilst I’m quite happy for the taste and texture to be different, it’s not that nice to have a cake or a muffin that feels dry few hours after you’ve baked it.

That is why in this blog post, I wanted to find out more about how to bake gluten-free cakes that don’t end up too dry.

GLUTEN FREE RECIPES

• Pumpkin Spice Muffins >>
• Peanut Butter & Chocolate Biscuits >>
• Banana & Walnut Bread >>
• Banana & Carob Pancakes >>

Use gluten-free blend specific for your cake

Using just one type of gluten-free flour will likely result in the flour being too light. It’s better to use a blend of different flours, which have a different amounts of protein, nutrition and structure.

This is because if you have just one type of flour, the texture might be too close and you’ll end up with a dense (and dry) cake.

You can make your own blend, but you can also buy ready made gluten free flour blend.

If you prefer to make your own blend, choose at least 2-4 different types of flours, such as rice flour, coconut flour, oat flour, lupin flour, sorghum flour, almond flour, soy flour, chestnut flour, potato flour, quinoa flour, millet flour or buckwheat flour.

Gluten free flours are also blended with starch, such as cornstarch or potato starch, which helps to bind them together.

You can easily make potato flour at home as well as almond or other nut based flours.

Use recipe specifically developed for gluten-free baking

I’ve been caught many times thinking that I can just replicate my favourite cake recipe and swap the regular flour for gluten-free flour. It turns out that it’s not that straight forward!

If you substitute the same amount of gluten-free flour for regular flour, you’ll certainly end up with a dense cake, which will be a lot drier and less fluffy than a normal cake.

This is because gluten free flour is much lighter than a regular cake flour and behaves differently.

Use the right flour

Make sure that your flour is either specifically blended for cake baking.

If you are blending your own flour, use type that has high amount of protein, such as quinoa, millet, sorghum, amaranth, buckwheat, teff, bean flours and nut or seed flours, like almond flour.

Protein (in this case) will replace (to some extend) gluten and will help to mimic the regular flour.

Use the right amount of liquid in your cake

If you follow recipe for gluten free cake, you will probably notice that the recipe has a higher amount of liquid ingredients than a regular cake.

This is because gluten-free flour with xantham gum soaks up a bit more liquid than a regular flour. The cake batter might appear thinner than with regular cake, but when it’s baked it will come out perfectly.

So, just resist adding more flour, even if the cake batter looks runny!

Some flours, such as potato flour or coconut flour also soaks more water than regular types of flours.

Measure your ingredients correctly

This goes especially for your gluten-free flour. Since gluten free flour is much lighter than regular flour, it’s best to measure your flour based on what your recipe recommends.

Again, it’s not a good idea to just assume that one tablespoon is going to weigh 15 grams (which is what regular flour would be).

It’s more likely that one tablespoon is 8-12 grams depending on the flour. You can see that if you need 150 grams, you could be quite off with your measurements if you choose spoon volume rather than a weighing scales.