Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Perfect Pumpkin Applesauce Bundt Cake

More fall food, you say?  Why yes!  Readers, as you know, in the fall I'm all about the awesome autumn ingredients!

I'm going to get a little reminiscent here; this cake means a lot to me.  When I was first leaping off the gluten train, I felt lost and overwhelmed.  First I had to mourn the loss of conventional baked goods, then I had to figure out how to make GF baked goods.  This led to much kitchen trauma.  Gluten-free living wasn't as well publicized 5 years ago (forget about those poor people who had to go GF 20+ years ago!  They had to search high and low for info.)  Even in the last 2 years, I have seen leaps and bounds in availability in products and awareness in lifestyle.

So after much confusion regarding mixing flours and figuring out substitutions, I started baked away and failing.  Not just failing- failing wildly!  Unbaked cakes.  Burned on the outside cakes, undone in the middle.  Brick heavy baked goods.  Tasteless.  Odorless.  Odor-full.

Frustrated, I reached out on message boards to experienced GF bakers for help and consolation.  One genius baker suggested a fix to my unbaked cake debacle:  She used bundt pans for cakes because there was no center, so everything baked fully and well.  Looking back, I'm sure there was a scientific fix to this disaster, but I thought that was a brilliant idea!  I bought a bundt pan and tried again.  Success!  Happiness flooded my tired, frustrated GF body, and I nearly cried.  It was the moment I realized I could do this.  I could bake GF, and it would be okay.  Everything would be okay.

This Pumpkin-Applesauce Bundt Cake is the very first cake recipe I made-up (based on a basic regular cake recipe) and it not only baked beautifully, it tasted fantastic.  In fact, it's my highest rated public posted recipe on Food.com.  It was the first time I felt truly proud of making something from scratch.  This cake defines the beginning of my GF journey.

As an added bonus, I recently had the opportunity of sharing this cake recipe on the brilliant site Eating Rules which marked another one of my firsts:  a guest post.

So get ready to bake up and enjoy this moist, delicious superstar.  Feel free to add some festive chocolate glazing for a fantastic Halloween treat!

NOTE: Do NOT try and make this cake in any regular pan. Because of its moisture level, it will only cook normally in a bundt pan.

Pumpkin Applesauce Bundt Cake



Ingredients:
2 cups sugar (I've been using Coconut Sugar these days, but any will do)
2 cups cooked/canned pure pumpkin
1 cup unsweetened natural applesauce
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 eggs
2 cups any all purpose gluten-free flour mix (I like to use a sorghum mix, yay whole grains!)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder (corn-free, Hain Pure Foods is great)
2 tsp cinnamon

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a large bowl, beat eggs until fluffy.
Blend in sugar, pumpkin, applesauce, and oil by hand or with a mixer on low just until combined.  Do NOT overmix!
Add all dry ingredients, one at a time, blending together.
Pour batter into a greased, large bundt pan and bake for 1 hour.
Check with a toothpick/knife to make sure it's cooked through, cool, and enjoy!


Don't forget to freeze left-overs, wrapping in parchment paper before storing.

I hope this cake brings you as much joy as it brought me :)

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