We will always have cake

Hello, friends. There have been a lot of birthdays in our family over the past 2 months. As a consequence, there has also been a lot of cake.

I grew up eating birthday cakes made from boxed cake mixes. Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines were our household familiars, and my mother jokingly called those cakes her “scratch” cakes. Sadly, I don’t feel much confidence in packaged foods, these days, and I’ve grown sensitive to their inevitable “boxed” flavour. But oh, I adore that light, fluffy, super-moist texture. So I was thrilled to find this recipe for a Chocolate Bundt Cake that gives you the boxed-mix texture with pure, intense chocolate flavour.

It’s a perfect recipe, as written. But I’ve also tinkered with it to make it gluten-free. I don’t know a great deal about gluten-free baking, but the Gluten-Free Girl does, and I’ve used her formula for a gluten-free flour mix. In this case, the gluten-free version requires no weird gums or stabilizers. There’s no hard gelled texture, no dry crumbliness. Just moist, delicate, cakey goodness. I am so enamoured and proud of this cake, which is just as well, since birthdayfest is only now starting to wind down.

Gluten-Free Chocolate Bundt Cake (adapted from Food52, using Gluten-Free Girl’s flour mix)

• 2 cups sugar
• 225 grams gluten-free flour mix
• 3/4 cups Dutch-process cocoa powder, plus more for dusting
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 cup sour milk or plain yogurt
• 3/4 cup strong black coffee
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil or coconut oil
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Butter a Bundt pan and dust the inside with cocoa powder. Set aside.
2. Sift together sugar, flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.
3. With a mixer, combine the milk, coffee, oil, eggs and vanilla at low speed. Then, with the mixer still on low, slowly add the dry ingredients. Once all the flour mixture is added, mix the batter for a full four minutes on medium speed. The batter will be very thin. It’s okay!
4. Pour the batter into the Bundt pan and bake for 45 to 60 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool to room temperature on a wire rack. You can also use this batter to make about 22 cupcakes, in which case bake them from 22-26 minutes.

I hope you enjoy it!