I’m making fruit cakes for everybody. After reading a thread here last year on fruitcakes, and someone mentioned rum soaked fruitcakes that were good to eat, I tested a recipe, and it was delicious, nothing like the construction blocks that I had experienced before.
But I’ve got two problem eaters to deal with, one can’t eat gluten, and the other can’t eat anything (it seems that way, no eggs, meat, processed sugar, gluten, he probably considers baking powder to be a toxin). I have a lot of left over nuts, I think buckwheat flower is gluten free, and maybe I can use honey.
The gluten part isn’t really a problem. Gluten is a bad thing in fruitcake, so generally, steps like not overbeating are utilized to reduce gluten formation when using wheat. You don’t miss it because every good fruitcake you’ve ever had hasn’t had much gluten.
This gluten free fruit cake recipe is very good. However, it does have eggs. I have to be honest with you, I’ve never found the knack of vegan baking. There is this egg-free, gluten free fruit cake recipe, but I can’t vouch for it, 'cause I haven’t tried it. I admit, I’m dubious, but OTOH, since my general gripe about vegan baking is how dense the products tend to be, perhaps that trait also lends it to fruit cake.
Good luck! Let us know how it turns out.
Oh, and yes, buckwheat is naturally gluten free. Whether it was milled on the same line as wheat and picked up some gluten in the factory, I can’t say.
I’m leaning toward making a cornbread fruitcake. I can substitute rice flour for the white flour, and just use the nuts. No baking powder allowed, but baking sode should be good enough. It’s basically cornbread with nuts in it. Appropriate for a nut who thinks salt is a poison.
and yes, most Baking Powder actually contains Aluminum. Not sure how that’s going to be good for you…
As I’m also gluten-free, I can say from experience that other flours can work great too. Just pick what will go well with the other flavors in the dish. For most of my desserts, I use a blend of Brown Rice flour, Almond flour, and some Oat flour. Can’t even tell the difference from normal flour…
I made a cornbread last night using white rice flour and corn flour to replace the wheat flour. This was for the guy who can’t eat anything, so I used cornstarch to replace the eggs, and baking soda and vinegar to replace the baking powder. It came out pretty good for corn bread missing almost all the ingredients.
I’m going to try the regular fruit cake recipe tonight with the white rice flour for the other guy. He just needs to be gluten free. The cake is just flour, brown sugar, eggs, oil, and rum. From what I found online, you need 7/8 cup rice flour to substitute 1 cup wheat flour. This could work out.
WhyNot, akrako1 thanks for the advice. Must be tough to deal with a gluten problem. And an ultra-vegan better not be much of a foodie, there’s just not much to eat in that category.
