Crazy Orange Turtle’s Gluten Free Kitchen

Next weekend there is a baby shower for my partner’s new niece. I was conned into volunteered to make all the food for the party. My problem: they wanted cupcakes. Anyway, long story short: I had to test drive a cupcake recipe for next weekend. I found this cupcake recipe on all-recipes.com and tweaked it slightly to fit my personal agenda. I topped the cupcakes with my famous strawberry papaya butter cream icing which is dyed bright red with gluten-Free food colouring. The candies you see in the photo may not be gluten-free, I have no idea - but my partner bought himself a big bag and since the cupcakes are really for him and his friends I decided to use them to top 1/2 of the cupcakes. I kept the candy off of the cupcakes I made for myself.But enough of my rambling. You don’t care! On-to the recipe!

GF Vanilla Bean cupcakes with Strawberry Papaya Icing
(makes 1 dozen)

INGREDIENTS

• 3/4 cup (180 mL) sweet white rice flour
• 1/4 cup and 2 tbsp (90 mL) tapioca flour
• 1/2 tsp (2.5 mL) salt
• 1/2 tsp (2.5 mL) gluten-free baking soda
• 1.5 tsp (7.5 mL) gluten-free baking powder
• 1/2 tsp (2.5 mL) xanthan gum
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup and 2 tbsp (155 mL) white sugar
• 1/3 cup (80 mL) gluten-free mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup (125 mL) vanilla flavoured almond milk (cow milk or other milk substitute will also work)
• 3 vanilla beans (or 2-3 tsp, 10-15mL, pure vanilla extract)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350F (180C) and put cupcake/muffin liners into the bowls of a muffin tin. If you want you can grease the sides of the tin and omit the liners, but the liners make cleanup so much easier.
2. Take the vanilla beans and split them length-wise. Scoop out all of the lovely seeds and pulp. Place these in your mixing bowl. Do not use the empty pods for this recipe. Either discard the pods or place them in an air tight container along with some white sugar. This will result in your sugar becoming ‘vanilla sugar’ in only a few weeks.
3. Put the milk or milk substitute in the same bowl. Add the rice flour and mix. This step will help to eliminate most of the “grittiness” associated with using rice flour in cakes.
4. Put the rest of the ingredients in the bowl. Yes, that is right, I didn’t mix the dry ingredients together, and so you shouldn’t have to either. If you want to be technical you ARE supposed to make sure all the dry ingredients are blended before adding them to the pre-mixed wet ingredients but today I was lazy. The cupcakes were wonderful, so I’m telling you that you can be lazy and just plop everything in the bowl together.
5. With a hand-mixer (or a stand mixer if you have one, but it isn’t necessary) mix the ingredients together until the batter is smooth and lump free. If there are lumps keep mixing until there aren’t any! Just scrape the sides of the bowl a few times.
6. Fill the muffin cups NO MORE THAN 3/4 way full. I filled two liners right to the top and the cupcakes rose a lot and then sunk in the middle. The muffin cups that I filled 3/4 way full yielded perfect cupcakes.
7. Bake for about 22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cupcake comes out clean.
8. When finished, allow to cool in pan for 2-3 minutes and then remove to a wire rack.
9. When 100% cooled, ice the cupcakes with the frosting recipe shown below

Strawberry-Papaya butter cream icing

technically this icing can be made in any flavour. Just substitute the strawberry-papaya jam with a jam flavour of your choosing. During strawberry season (June) I make my own jams, so I pulled out my favourite - strawberry papaya. The icing was exquisite! I’ll put jam recipes up in June. At the moment I’m too lazy.

ALSO be aware that this icing is too thin for piping. If you want, you can add another 1/2 cup of icing (confectioner) sugar which should give you a better consistency for cupcake decorating.

Ingredients

• 1.25 cups (310 mL) gluten-free icing/confectioner sugar
• 1/4 cup (60 mL) homemade, gluten-free, strawberry-papaya jam
• 1/4 cup (60 mL) butter, slightly cooler than room temperature
• 2 tbsp (30 mL) table cream

Directions

1. Break butter up into cubes and place into a mixing bowl
2. Add the rest of the ingredients
3. Blend with a hand-mixer until smooth - no lumps allowed!
4. If desired add gluten-free food colouring

ENJOY!!!

Technorati : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, frosting, gluten free, gluten-free, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean
Del.icio.us : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, frosting, gluten free, gluten-free, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean
Ice Rocket : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, frosting, gluten free, gluten-free, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean
Flickr : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, frosting, gluten free, gluten-free, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean
Zooomr : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, frosting, gluten free, gluten-free, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean
Buzznet : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, frosting, gluten free, gluten-free, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean
Riya : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, frosting, gluten free, gluten-free, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean
43 Things : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, frosting, gluten free, gluten-free, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean

Technorati : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, food, frosting, glutenfree, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean
Del.icio.us : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, food, frosting, glutenfree, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean
Ice Rocket : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, food, frosting, glutenfree, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean
Flickr : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, food, frosting, glutenfree, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean
Zooomr : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, food, frosting, glutenfree, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean
Buzznet : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, food, frosting, glutenfree, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean
Riya : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, food, frosting, glutenfree, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean
43 Things : celiac, cupcake, cupcakes, easy, food, frosting, glutenfree, icing, papaya, party, recipe, strawberry, vanilla bean