Tomorrow is the last day in my current position, so I'm baking a cake to work. We have one person who can't eat either gluten or milk and she was kind enough to tell me I wouldn't need to take her in consideration when I'm baking the cake, as she's OK to be left out.
So I decided to bake the entire cake as a gluten- and milk-free super nasty tasty cake.
Ingredients:
350 g milk free margarine
500 g sugar
400 g gluten free flour (I had a gluten free oat+potato flour mix)
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
3 teaspoons of cinnamon
4 eggs
400 grams of zucchini
(200 grams of walnuts, not used this time due to a nut allergy)
First of all, you will need the soft margarine in a bowl. This is easy.
Then add sugar with the soft butter margarine. Writing about baking with margarine seems so wrong, but I'm trying to survive. Every occasion I mention "butter" I'm actually talking about margarine.
So please forgive me.
I'm lazy and loving my new Electrolux Assistent, so it can mix the sugar and margarine while I'm mixing the baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon in the flour. This is to ensure they will be properly mixed together with the flour. Or not. Sometimes I just toss it all to the dough.
Not today though.
Oh no, I almost forgot to add eggs. Before you add the flour to the dough ("dough"... it's just sugar and margarine right now), you need to add the eggs. I let the machine mix constantly while I added all the eggs. I'm using my Canon 85mm lens so I can't take good closeups and neither can I climb high enough to get a nice view in the bowl.
I'm very sorry, the photos are just to make this seem more impressive.
Now the flour is added and the machine is slowly mixing the dough. I had forgotten to put the oven on, so I put the oven on 180 Celsius degrees, so it would be ready when the dough is ready. At least almost.
Looking at the machine mixing the dough is a real pleasure.
I could bake more just to eat the dough to watch more of the dough being mixed.
Chop chop. I peeled the zucchini (not sure if it's necessary) and shredded it. I'm using a yellow zucchini from our own garden and it's super nice. The zucchini cake is actually quite similar to a carrot cake, the zucchini gives the cake some texture, flavor and it keeps the cake more moist.
In the end, you'll add the shredded zucchini (and the crushed walnuts) to the dough and mix still a little bit.
Green zucchini would have looked better on the photo, but we've used all the green zucchinis for cooking. I'm very sorry about that.
Spread spread spread.
All the dough to the decent sized baking tray. In the end it turned out I should have a had a bigger one. I prefer zucchini cake as a bit thicker and this ended up being thin.
After 45-55 minutes, the cake is baked. The baking time depends on the oven and the baking tray you're using, as a thinner cake gets ready faster.
A good trick is to stick your face in the cake. If some dough sticks on your face, it's still not ready. (don't do this. Use a toothpick instead)
The topping ingredients!
This is super simple.
Powdered sugar, around 500 g
2 tablespoons of molten butter
2 tablespoons of boiling water
Just mix all the ingredients and you have a super nice topping.
What the... the topping is too thick. Is there too little water?
Fuck this, I tried to spread the topping and sprinkle a bit more boiling water to make the topping softer. When I'm trying to spread the topping, the cake starts to crumble.
Damn you gluten free cake.
400g more powdered sugar
MORE WATER
I just poured boiling water in the sugar and mixed. Now the new batch of topping is soft and easier to spread.
I spread the new topping around the old topping and now it's perfect.
The cake was crumbly though and when I cut the cake, it became super ugly.
Fuck you colleagues. Fuck you baking.
At least it's good.