Today we did something new! We made grain-free and gluten-free cupcakes in four different flavors for a wedding cupcake tasting.
Now gluten-free is our bread-and-butter. Quite literally. But grain free? Well we had to do a bit of research to see what qualifies. It turns out that in order to make something completely grain free, you have to exclude the following ingredients:
- wheat
- rye
- barley
- oats
- sorghum
- corn
- rice
- millet
- teff
Since wheat, rye, and barely also aren't gluten-free, we already don't use them at the bakery. But we do use a fair amount of the other ingredients in our products. So what could we use? Surprisingly there are a lot of grain-free and gluten-free options including many we use already:
- almond
- arrowroot
- tapioca
- potato
- coconut
- amaranth
- quinoa
- buckwheat flour
Did you know that these weren't all grains? I sure didn't. I of course knew that almonds weren't grains. And I could identify the flours made from root veggies like potatoes and tapioca. But the two that really tripped me up were quinoa and buckwheat. Quinoa is actually the seed of the goosefoot plant. Buckwheat comes from a fruit and therefore is also not considered a grain. In the end we used a mix of almond, tapioca, and potato for our gluten-free, grain-free flour blend. Do you have a favorite grain-free blend? Let us know in the comments.
Using this blend we made four flavors for the wedding cake tasting that were also dairy-free:
- red velvet cupcakes with vanilla buttercream
- black forest chocolate cupcakes filled with rum-soaked cherries and topped with swiss buttercream frosting and chocolate shavings
- german chocolate with coconut pecan filling and chocolate buttercream
- coconut with coconut buttercream
As evidenced by the empty cupcake wrappers, the bride really loved all of the flavors!
In the end she narrowed it down to the coconut and the german chocolate. She also requested a little mini cake for them to cut during their reception. So fun!
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