After several bakes of sugar and grain free apple and sultana bread, I have decided to simplify the recipe and make only gluten free version. I modified the recipe to make this loaf cake with simple, ready to use ingredients.
Time consuming apple puree preparation was eliminated, and almond meal was replaced with gluten free self-raising flour. This loaf cake has only 6 essential ingredients, which can be found in any gluten free pantry, and is super easy to make.
When developing this recipe I followed several objectives:
- Only ready to go ingredients, without preliminary preparations, have to be used. My own thick apple puree, which I make and regularly use in cakes, was replaced by commercial SPC 100% apple puree, sold in a pack of 3 tubes of 140g each, which can be found in the caned fruit section in the supermarket.
- Preparation procedures had to be simplified. I used whole eggs instead of separated eggs.
- To provide wider options of dry ingredients I used gluten free self-raising flour, instead of almond meal. I decided to go with the option of just one flour, and not a mix of different flours or flours with almond meal, to make the recipe simple, straight forward and super easy to follow. Finally, I decided against using any butter in the recipe, expecting that apple puree in itself would make the cake moist.
- As I usually do for new recipes, I baked 1/2 portion, based on 2 large eggs and baked in mini loaf pans. If happy with the result, the whole portion of the batter for a regular bread loaf can be prepared by using double amount of the ingredients. But even then, I personally prefer to do my baking in half size bread loaf tins. In gluten free baking they provide better and more reliable baking results.
Ingredients:
- 2 large or extra large eggs
- 120g sugar
- 10g vanilla sugar, can be replaced by vanilla bean extract, but vanilla sugar gives far superior results
- 1 tub of apple puree, part of 3x140g SPC apple puree
- 150g gluten free self-raising flour, I used Well&Good brand
- 10g cinnamon powder
- 200g raisins, I used Aldi Organic raisins
- 1/2 tea spoon of lemon essence, optional
- unsalted butter and extra granulated sugar for the pan
Preparation:
- cover raisins with boiling water for 10 min to rehydrate them
- drain raisins and rinse them with cold water
- dry raisins on paper towel until completely dry
- place eggs, sugar and apple puree in a large bowl
- beat eggs with sugar and apple puree on high speed for 10 min until pale and increase in volume, it will be runny, add lemon essence (I made this batter with using both, benchtop mixer, and handheld mixer)
- generously grease 16x10cm baking pan and dust it with sugar
- add cinnamon powder and vanilla sugar to self-raising flour
- mix dry ingredients until fully combined
- take one table spoon of dry mixture and add it to raisins
- shake raisins to cover their surface with flour and cinnamon mixture
- add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, mix them in
- fold in raisins
- make sure that raisins are spread evenly in the batter
- pour the batter into greased and dusted tin, it will be filled nearly up to the top
- bake in pre-heated 170C fan-forced oven for 60min, check the loaf with a skewer, when it comes out clean the loaf is ready
- rest the loaf in a tin for 3-5min, take it out and rest on a wire rack until completely cool
I like to rest this raisin loaf cake on a wire rack, placed in the switched off, but still warm oven, to dry the crust and make it wonderfully crunchy, while the cake remains soft and moist. The cake smelled and tasted so nice, that it became the most addictive bake in our family. We can hardly restrain yourselves to leave anything for the next day. It has become our favourite bake for now. This loaf cake is easy to make and it has my favourite texture. Apple puree, cinnamon and vanilla sugar are a perfect match. I tried different ways to make it. With beating the eggs first and only later adding apple puree, tried different baking regimes, and the ones described above make the best bake. The slice of apple cinnamon and raisin loaf cake does not need any extras to go with, but with soft butter it is just divine.
It tastes even better the next day. To have an excuse to bake this cake again and again, I used different baking tins, as well as self-raising flour from Aldi. With the different flour brand the cake was still nice and tasty, but it had more firm and dense texture, more like raisin bread, than raisin cake. Well and Good self-raising flour gave perfect results, while an Aldi one – very good.
I want to make a special remark about SPC apple puree. It has no added sugar, it tastes wonderful, just the taste of fresh apples. I could not resist to have it as a topping on my yogurt. It is excellent with ice cream and is perfect as a snack. I am glad that I was able to find this product on the market to replace homemade apple puree, which makes a nice cake but takes time to prepare from scratch. It is the first time I baked a cake based on commercial flour mix as the only dry ingredient. Judging by results, I am tempted to do it again. As a positive observation, I must point out, that this particular brand of gluten free self-raising flour has the best nutritional value among the same type of products, with nearly 4 times the amount of protein compared to some other brands.
Cooking Without Gluten 