Gluten and Dairy Free Vanilla Cupcakes

It's hard to make gluten free vanilla cake taste nice, vanilla is such a delicate flavour that it can't really overpower the flavour of the flour, so a Rice flour cake will taste like rice pudding and a cornmeal cake will taste like cornbread.

So this cake recipe has a few more ingredients than I would normally use but this is necessary to get just the right texture and flavour for a tasty cake.



This recipe work just as well as a cake, just line a 25cm round cake tin and bake for about 40min

150g Almond Flour

50g Yellow Cornmeal

50g Tapioca, Rice or other white starchy Flour

1tsp Baking Powder

250g Butter substitute

200g White Sugar
4 Eggs

1tsp Vanilla Extract

To turn it chocolate you can replace the rice flour with 75g cocoa powder

1 Batch of my Swiss meringue buttercream, coloured pink and flavoured with strawberry essence

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then add the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla extract

Reduce the mixer to a low speed and add in the flours and baking powder, mix until smooth

Using an Ice-cream scoop or 1/4 cup measure fill the muffin pans about 3/4 full

Bake in a 180 C oven for about 15-20 min or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Whip up a batch of Swiss meringue buttercream, after adding in the fats, add in 1 TBSP strawberry essence and some wilton rose food colouring

  

Fit a piping bag with a large open star tip (I use a wilton 1M)

Pipe swirls of buttercream onto the tops of the cupcakes and enjoy