Tea Party Fare with Flair

The high school girls at our church have a discipleship group called “Ladies In Waiting" which meets weekly. Various moms provide the goodies for the tea-party-themed refreshments. Because I have no girls, I feel a “frou-frou” deficit quite often. So I volunteered to be responsible for goodies for a meeting. I finally got the call!Bad news was they only needed savories; another mother was delivering fruit & someone else was making the sweets. heavy sigh…Ah well, all is not lost! I got to make the puffs I’d been planning – I just decided to make bacon Swiss gougères and fill them with a light pesto cream cheese.I also tried my hand at some fiesta pinwheels.Oh, yeah… I ended up making turkey sammies… just in case…spread them with a lovely smoked paprika compounded butter

 

topped that with spinach

then sliced oven-roasted turkey…

spread the top with cranberry cream cheese

and cut into triangles -- YUM!

Brick Cake (heirloom Red Velvet)

When I was 8 or 9 years old, my aunt brought to a family dinner the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted. My siblings & I dubbed it “brick cake” because of its appearance when we were served a piece flat on the dessert plate.That incredible cake graced a good many happy family dinners in the years that followed. (A couple times my mom substituted green food coloring for St. Patty’s day… )

My first solo attempt at this dessert masterpiece was as a newly-wed wishing to impress my husband & family for his birthday. The cake was a triumph; alas, the frosting was not. It looked something like this:Remember: read recipe thoroughly & follow each direction. (…or you might end up with a hot roux melted butter mess…)
When I first went gluten free, I made these Red Velvet cupcakes. But, I’ve been craving the flavor of Aunt Ruth’s authentic recipe; so when Kristen announced that October’s Improv Challenge would be CAKE & FROSTING, I knew I had to challenge myself to make a genuine Red Velvet tastefully gluten free. (I am not going to go off on the ubiquitous boxedmixwannaberedvelvetsomethingfrostedwithcreamcheeseicing…)
First thing I did was to call my cousin and beg for pictures of her mom’s recipe card. (So love seeing Aunt Ruth’s writing in green felt-tip pen. Can you tell she was a teacher?)(OH! And thank you, Laurel!)
Next I did a bunch of research on flours, their weight and protein content. I detailed that thought-process in a blog post here: (well… it will be as soon as I finish it…)

¡voilà! My recipe for you:

 (I realize the format looks a little strange, but it helps me see how the individual steps work together.)

Rounded up the ingredients, then prepped my pans…

So thankful to have Colby (our cobalt KitchenAid) fully functional thanks to my resourceful daddy. This recipe would’ve been difficult to manage “by hand”.

After the initial “wet” ingredients were mixed, I weighed my flours.

The batter was a little thick going into the pan…

but baked with a decent rise.

Frosting attempt was next.

Here’s my obligatory steam shot.

The rice flour thickened the milk quickly.

I managed to split the layers, but could tell I was going to have to work around a lot of crumbs.

Took me so long to frost that the butter started melting.

Glamor shot:

Aside from the frosting looking slightly lumpy (it actually felt fairly smooth in the mouth...) I was pretty pleased with my final product.

…except for the taste.
My guys all loved it (but they’d never had a chance to sample Aunt Ruth’s stellar cake). There was just something lacking for me in the flavor department.

So I baked another one this morning. I decided to ditch the brown rice flour and use more of the sorghum, some tapioca starch plus a little potato flour.
The texture seemed right & the batter tasted pretty good; but the cakes didn’t have much rise. The texture was finer, but the layers didn’t split well.Thus, I didn’t frost them & am “forcing” myself to eat them in pieces. Actually, I do like the flavor much better and the texture appears to be the right density so I’ll be working the balance of ingredients to see if I can’t get some better loft next time I bake Red Velvet.
My Improv Challenge companions would love it if you would check out their cake & frosting links here: