It was recently my one year wedding anniversary and I wanted to make something special for my husband, aka Poppa Smurf! The challenge I had was to adapt this marvellous recipe to gluten free, which is becoming easier as I cook more and get to know textures and tastes and the overall appearance!
Gluten free baking isn't always a success and often takes many attempts to get the various dishes right! Often cakes flop, pastries fall apart, biscuits crumble. It's about not giving up! Its about giving it that second or third go, adjusting the ingredients, adding a bit more flour, a different blend, more butter, eggs etc. My advice is persevere, home cooking is much tastier than packet mix or frozen food! When you get the gluten free recipe right, your own cooking, you and your friends and family won't be able to tell the difference between gf and gluten filled food. Bread is the only exception, but pretty much everything else you can make to taste like the original gluten recipe you based it from!
Back to the special Cherry Ripe recipe, derived from the marvellous Delicieux, fantastic food blogger, the link to her site is here http , a must look at! ://www.ledelicieux.com
I wanted to bake the cake in a heart shaped tin, very romantic! Unfortunately I could only find 4 small heart tins, thus I had heaps of mixture left over! What to do???? I quickly decided to get the muffin tins and Xmas cup cake holders out! I was amazed by how much mixture this cake made!I had about 24 large cupcakes that the mixture made! I made these all at the same time, they took roughly 30 minutes to cook, just keep on checking with a skewer!
This recipe is something that you don't try cooking when you don't have much time, with preparation, cooking, cooling, making the butter cream filling, cutting the cakes, filling them and making the ganache, finally coating the cakes with the ganache, decorating with a cherry ripe or fresh cherries, you are looking at 2-3 hours in total! But very well worth it, with the first mouthful, your efforts will be rewarded!
Without further ado here is the adapted:
GF Cherry Ripe Cake (thanks Delicieux for the wonderful cake!)
Cake:
Butter for greasing pans
1/2 cup gf cornflour
1/2 cup arrowroot flour
3/4 cup rice flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup good quality cocoa (I used Cadburys)
2 teaspoons of bicarbonate soda (baking soda)
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups of Coconut milk (1 large tin was enough)
1/2 cup olive oil (original recipe calls for vegetable oil but I only had olive oil,I think for gf olive is the best)
2 extra large eggs at room temperature (this is important, it can really affect the cake!)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/4 cup cherry liqueur (I used Continental cherry liqueur, whatever cherry flavoured liqueur or brandy you can find)
200g glace cherries (a packet), finally chopped
1 cup of shredded coconut
Cherry Coconut Butter cream:
125g room temperature butter cut into cubes
1 cup of icing sugar
200g glace cherries, finely chopped
1/4 cup shredded coconut
2 teaspoons of cherry liqueur (or a small slug)
Red food colouring (optional, I used it and it looked great, just a few drops!)
Chocolate Ganache:
1 cup of non thickened cream
300g dark chocolate chopped
1 tablespoon of cherry liqueur (optional)
Method:
1.start with the cake I used muffin tins, you will need at least 24, with maybe a second batch! Best thing about muffin tins is you use cupcake holders, so you don't have to worry about greasing tins! Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350degress Fahrenheit)
2. Sift the flours, cocoa,bicarbonate soda, baking powder and salt. Place in an electric mixer with a paddle attachment, add the sugar and mix on low speed until it's mixed through.
3.In another bowl, whisk the eggs, coconut milk, oil and cherry liqueur. With the mixer on low speed slowly add these ingredients to the dry ingredients until mixed through.
4. With mixer on low add the coconut and cherries until just combined.
5. Pour batter into muffin tins, or to make a big cake use 2 20cm tins (my advice is cupcakes/muffins are the best size, due to the sweetness and richness of this cake)and bake for between 20-30 minutes if using muffins, check regularly with skewer as they cook quicker than a larger cake. It's cooked when the skewer comes out clean.
6.Cool in the pan for 30 minutes or more, even put in fridge or freezer to make then easier to cut in half!
7. For the cherry butter cream mix butter and icing sugar until light and fluffy. Add the food colouring and mix well. Add glace cherries, coconut and cherry liqueur, mix to combine.
8.For the chocolate ganache, use a double saucepan, the larger one filled with a bit of water and place broken chocolate, cream over low heat until melted, add liqueur, set aside until the chocolate thickens and reaches room temperature.
9. Cut cupcakes in half and fill with Butter cream, place the other half of the muffin on tip of the other half. Using 2 tablespoons pour chocolate ganache completely over the cakes, letting it run slowly down the sides.
10. Decorate with cherry ripes, fresh or glace cherries. I used a cherry ripe cut into very small pieces, 1 on each cupcake/muffin.
Note: to overseas readers Cherry Ripes are an Australian chocolate, they taste exactly like this cake! Very yummy! A great Christmas gift, anniversary or special occasion! A guaranteed hit!
Thanks again to Jennifer at LeDelicieux, a great food blogger, for making the original version of this amazing cake and for allowing me to post my modified gluten few version, for all people to enjoy. This is definitely a recipe that you can't tell is gluten free and is gobbled up by all!
Enjoy and let me know how you go! Don't forget the great competition at Delicieux to win 1 of 4 $100 vouchers from the best restaurants in Australia, only hours to go and the other amazing competition to win 6 bottles of Fresita Strawberry flavoured wine, definitely enter!
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