gluten free spiced apple, cranberry and blueberry cake

This cake is sweet and tart with just a hint of spice.  It has plenty of fruit but isn't a solid wodge of dried fruit like some cakes of the wedding/christmas cake variety.

Many of my recipes happen in a slightly random way, driven by things that need using up.  Today I found I had seven small apples from a batch that hadn't been as crisp as expected, and were beginning to look a bit sorry for themselves, a large mandarin orange that had lost its gloss, and a husband that keeps wanting lunch early as there is no cake to go with his mid-morning coffee.

A large fruit cake seemed the obvious way to solve all of these problems.  I had already cooked the apples, chopped but not peeled, in with the orange juice and zest, before I decided to make the cake.  You wouldnt need to cook them first if you prefer the apple to stay in chunks in the finished cake.

Set oven at 170C fan
Grease and line two large cake tins.  I used a long pullman loaf tin (the lid is handy if the top starts to get too brown) which has a capacity of 3.5l and an ordinary one pound loaf tin (750ml) to fit all the mixture in.  I like to make a small cake for immediate eating and a larger one to mature, though having two different sizes means you have to keep an eye on how cooked they are as they will need different times.

Ingredients
500g cooked/chopped apples
juice and zest one small orange
500g dried blueberries
500g dried cranberries
8 eggs
300g soft brown sugar
250g soft butter (I keep mine in the freezer, so just zapped it on medium heat in the microwave - not so good for the precise temperatures needed for creaming, but fine for just mixing in)
400g flour
5 tsp baking powder
4tsp mixed spice

The flour used in this was 300g of my current flour mix(1/3 each urid lentil, brown rice and buckwheat) and an extra 100g urid lentil flour.  I ran out of flour and didn't want to make a fresh batch - so considering how much fruit there was in this cake just added extra urid as it will help hold it together.  I am sure 400g of the standard mix would have been fine.

Whisk the flour, baking powder and spice together.  Mix all the other ingredients together.  Stir together.  Put mix in greased lined tins and bake.

The smaller cake took an hour to cook.  Test with a  skewer or fine knife.  I use a knife even though I get a bigger hole as I find it easier to see the cake residue.  I turned the heat down to 150C and cooked the larger cake for a further half an hour.

Cool on a rack.

Good immediately; will keep well.

BBC Good Food Chocolate Fruitcake p151 Dec 2010 magazine bbcgoodfood.com

Original recipe calls for butter and self-raising flour. I have had a look at the recipe and decided to make six different versions for comparison.

Flour swaps

I was going to test Doves Farm, my own mix and chestnut puree. I drove to a large supermarket thinking they would be bound to have chestnut puree seeing as they had converted the entire store to Christmas shopping. Couldn't find it, staff couldn’t find it, computer at customer services said there were 19 tins but it didn’t know where they would be. I gave up. Instead I tried a flour I was given recently called Bob’s Red Mill all purpose baking flour. I have seen it in lots of US recipes. A UK supplier has started stocking it and sent me some bags to test (lavidafood.com). I was tempted to try grated sweet potato, as that has worked well in recipes before, but I decided six recipes at once was quite sufficient.

I divided the full recipe into three as there were three eggs. Using double the ingredients gave me the six cakes.

I also used raisins instead of current as I don’t have currents. I used cranberries and blueberries instead of sour cherries and mixed peel. Peel always has sulphites in it I and I try to avoid these. I had meant to put some citrus zest in to balance the flavour but decided not to as I ran out of energy. Once I know what flour and fat mix works I can worry about tweaking the flavour if needed.

Ingredients

65g fat (either butter or Pure margarine)

65g dark brown soft sugar

35g dark chocolate

25ml rum (it asked for brandy but I had rum available)

1/3 tsp vanilla

160g raisins (should have been half currants)

50g cranberries

50g blueberries

........

65g flour (Doves Farm, Bob's Red Mill, or 40g urid lentil and 25g tapioca)

1 tsp baking powder

35g ground almonds

1tsp cocoa

1/3 tsp mixed spice

.........

1 egg, beaten with fork

Method

Place first group of ingredients in saucepan and heat gently until chocolate and fat have melted.

Stir in egg when mix is cool enough not to scramble the egg

Sift / whisk third group of ingredients together and stir into mix.

Place in greased and lined tin and bake. Original recipe calls for 150C /130C fan / gas2 for about 1.5 hrs. I set my oven to 35 minutes for the first check as I have small cakes and the adjustable tins which cook more speedily.

In order to tell which cake was which when finished I put varying types of nuts on the top of the batter and, here is the important bit, made a note of which was which.

As I was using a Silverwood Multisize Foldaway cake pan lining it was a bit awkward. I found that if I cut nine strips of non-stick baking parchment the width of the tin I could place one each way into the tin with the edges sticking up. I then took another piece the same size, greased it, wrapped it around my hand, and putting my hand into the small cake tin, let it spring open into place.

They are in the oven, not quite done at 35minutes. Will post results of taste tests later this week.