Gluten-Free Baking Secrets

If you're baking for someone with celiac or gluten sensitivity, you've probably noticed that recipes made with gluten-free flour tastes kind of...flat. Your cookies, brownies, or cakes may also feel dry and gritty.

This is what I experienced when a family member was diagnosed with celiac and I started baking with GF flours. So I did a ton of researching and experimenting to develop tricks for adjusting recipes to make them gluten-free without sacrificing flavor and texture.

I use these tricks when baking cookies for Cookie Fairies, and even ended up selling gluten-free baked goods for a while to neighbors and a local farm stand. They garnered rave reviews!

We all deserve delicious treats. So here, I'd like to share the techniques I've developed for baking the best gluten-free cookies, brownies, cakes, waffles, pancakes, muffins, and more. You can use these techniques to improve your favorite gluten-free recipes, or to make traditional recipes gluten-free. At the end of this article, I'll offer a before-and-after example for Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Cake.

Caveats: These alterations do not work for yeast-based recipes—at least that I know of. I also wouldn't try to alter recipes that heavily depend on one type of ingredient. For example, I wouldn't replace the olive oil in olive oil brownies with butter, or make radical changes to a recipe for delicate butter cookies.

If you're a new gluten-free baker, over time you'll develop a sense for which changes you can make to which recipes.

Don't Stress About Flour

You don't need to create your own flour blends or buy special, pricey blends. I just use the gluten-free flour available at my local supermarket; usually, this is King Arthur brand gluten-free flour, but I've used other brands as well. They're still more expensive than wheat flour, so I buy up a bunch whenever they go on sale.

Add Sour Cream to (Almost) Everything

I started doing this after I was disappointed by my first batch of gluten-free pancakes. I now add one tablespoon of sour cream to each batch—at the same time as the eggs—along with some of the other changes you'll read here, and you can barely tell them apart from traditional pancakes.

Don't use sour cream? Full-fat plain Greek yogurt works, too. Plain vegan yogurt, such as soy or almond yogurt, may work as well.

Replace (Some) Oil with Butter

One of the secrets to gluten-free baking is to ramp up richness and flavor by replacing some of the boring, flavorless ingredients with more robust ones. This sometimes means replacing the oil in a recipe with melted butter.

If a recipe requires a lot of oil, for example half a cup or more, start off by experimenting with a mixture of half oil and half melted butter. You can always increase the butter next time if you like.

Add Brown Sugar

Again, we're adding some more depth and richness to a recipe. If we're talking a small amount of white sugar, like two tablespoons, replace the whole amount with brown sugar. If more white sugar is required, try replacing 1/4 to 1/2 of it with brown sugar.

This works best with recipes like pancakes, waffles, muffins, and quick breads. Swapping out the white sugar in cookie recipes will change the rise, spread, and crispness of the final result, and I haven't tried it with brownies or cakes.

Add Body with Psyillium Husk or Ground Oatmeal

Gluten-free flour blends tend to be flat and fine. If you're making a recipe that could use a bit more heartiness—for example, banana bread—replace a small amount of the flour with psyllium husk (I use the powdered form) or finely ground oatmeal. I typically replace about one-eight of the flour; so if a recipe calls for one cup of flour, I use 7/8 of a cup of flour and two tablespoons of psyllium or oatmeal.

Be sure to get gluten-free oatmeal! While oatmeal is naturally gluten-free, oats can be exposed to wheat during harvesting and processing, resulting in cross-contamination.

Also, don't go overboard with the psyllium. It binds with liquid to form a gel, so you don't want to add so much that it messes with the texture of your recipe.

Go Full Fat

If you're OK with more fat in your diet, this switch can make a huge difference in your gluten-free goodies.

Often, when a recipe calls for milk, we just use whatever we have around; for many people, that's low-fat. But gluten-free flour is so lacking in flavor that anything you can do to bump it up helps a lot.

If you don't have full-fat milk, but you do have half-and-half or cream, replace a bit of the low-fat/nonfat milk with one of these ingredients. The amount you'll want to replace depends on whether the milk you have on hand is nonfat, 1%, or 2%, and whether you're adding half-and-half or cream. Start slow when experimenting; you can always adjust upward in the future.

What about non-dairy milks? I don't normally bake vegan, but I would assume you could replace some of the almond or oat milk with a fattier ingredient like canned coconut milk...as long as a bit of coconut flavor won't wreck the recipe.

The same goes with yogurt, cottage cheese, cream cheese, sour cream, or any other ingredient that comes in a variety of fat levels. Go with full fat!

Add Espresso to Chocolate Recipes

This one is huge. People can taste that my brownies and chocolate cakes are richer and more flavorful than expected, but they can't put their finger on the secret ingredient that makes it happen: espresso powder.

You only need a small amount; for example, I use only a teaspoon or so in an 8" x 8" chocolate cake. If you want, you can add more and have a delicious mocha-flavored treat.

If a chocolate recipe calls for water, instead of using espresso powder you can try replacing the water with cold brewed coffee, either decaf or regular.

Use More Liquid (If You Need To)

Gluten-free flours tend to be more absorbent than wheat flours. If your recipe feels too dry or sticky, add a bit more of whatever liquid is in the recipe until it reaches the desired consistency. I find this is usually the case with pancakes, waffles, and muffins, but have never had the problem with cookies, brownies, or cakes.

Mix, Mix, Mix

Traditional recipes for baked goods usually warn you to not overwork the batter/dough because this will overdevelop the gluten and result in a tough cookie, cake, or whatever it is you're making.

But guess what? Gluten-free flour don't have any gluten. So there's nothing to overwork! And you need some extra mixing time to help the GF flour absorb the liquid. (See below.)

So beat the dough a little more than you would in a traditional recipe. Use your eye to tell you when enough is enough; for example, you don't want to go so long that—depending on the recipe—ingredients separate, butter melts, etc.

Leave It Alone

Giving the flour a chance to absorb the liquid in the recipe helps resolve the slightly gritty texture GF flours are infamous for.

So let your dough or batter rest for a while before baking. Usually, I give it 10-15 minutes. If the recipe calls for you to, say, make a topping, you can do this during the resting period.

Let It Dry

Another problem with gluten-free flour: Because it's so absorbent, it can take longer to release moisture than wheat flour. That means you check your cake, cookies, quick bread, etc. at the recommended finish time and it still has a ways to go—even if the edges are starting to look overdone.

I've found that it helps to reduce the oven temperature just a little bit, say by five to ten degrees, and then bake the treat longer. If the top of a cake or quick bread is browning too quickly, lightly cover it with foil for the rest of the bake time.

I've also turned off the oven when the bake is almost-but-not-quite done and let it sit in there a few extra minutes to drive out the rest of the extra moisture.

Bask in the Glory

Rescue yourself—and your celiac and gluten-intolerant friends—from a lifetime of dry, off-flavor treats. It takes a bit of learning and experimenting with new ways of baking, but it's worth it to finally be able to enjoy delicious baked treats again.

EXAMPLE RECIPE

HERSHEY’S “Perfectly Chocolate” Chocolate Cake

Source

2 cups sugar
1 - 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
1 - 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 - 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tsps vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans.

Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, espresso powder, and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, sour cream, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely. Frost with "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Frosting.

HERSHEY’S “Perfectly Chocolate” Chocolate Cake—Adjusted for Gluten-Free

Changes are in red.

2 cups sugar
1 - 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
2 tsp espresso powder
1 - 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 - 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 Tbsp sour cream
1 cup full-fat milk
1/2 cup melted butter
2 tsps vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water (if not using espresso powder, replace the water with hot brewed coffee)

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans. [Note: I use a 13x9" rectangular pan, and you could also use two 8x8" pans. You may need to adjust the bake times slightly if you make these changes.]

Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, espresso powder, and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, sour cream, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water or hot coffee (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans. [NOTE: No need to mix this more as two minutes is already plenty.]

Let the batter rest for 10-15 minutes, then bake 30 to 35 minutes or more as needed, until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. If the edges are looking done but the center is still liquidy, loosely cover just the edges of the top with aluminum foil. If the cake is so close to done and you're afraid more baking will burn it, turn off the oven, crack the oven door open, and let the cake sit a minute or three until it's just right.

Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. [NOTE: If using rectangular or square plans, no need to remove the cake; you can frost it right in the pan.] Cool completely. Frost with a chocolate cream cheese frosting (I like this one) with 1/2 tsp espresso powder added.