Spummy

Is that a word? Well, I am making it one.

Introducing, "Spummy", the combination of spongey and gummy that describes a fair amount of gluten free baked goods. 

If you read my post from yesterday, yes...that does make 2 blog posts in a row...don't get used to it though, I had a gluten free Bisquick coffee cake in the oven. It smelled wonderful as I typed away. My son came home from school, smelled it and exclaimed, "apple crisp?". I made him keep guessing, since he was wrong, and then told him it was coffee cake when he guessed every other fall dessert. There was excitement in the air, I tell you. I'd been craving cinnamon something for a while now. A couple days ago it was cinnamon rolls. Then, after I saw this recipe, I wanted coffee cake. In between it was all the fall recipes starting to float around that all inevitably have cinnamon in them. It was finally THE day. The day I was going to have a cinnamon baked good.

One reason I made it was for dessert. I was going to make a nice dinner for the family since my husband had been traveling since late last week. He'd had a nightmare of an ordeal at the airport and there was now no way he was making it home for dinner. Now, I had to figure when was appropriate to dig in. Did I wait until he came home later and have some with him for a snack? As the day went on it seemed more and more it'd be a midnight snack if I waited, his 1 hour layover ended up turning into about 7 hours. My son and I decided to just dig in...we wait for no one when it comes to cake.

It looked lovely. Nice streusel topping. I cut into it and the cake had risen nicely, had a good looking crumb and color. The texture looked good. It did not crumble to pieces when I cut it or tried to get that first piece out that can be troublesome. You know what this is all leading up to, right?

Spummy. 

How can something that looks so much like the real thing taste so much not like the real thing? Oh dear. Where do I begin?

To start off, many of the reviewers on the official Bisquick website indicated that this cake needed moisture. I took their word for it. That Betty Crocker yellow cake I mentioned in yesterday's post was so terribly dry, I knew they were onto something. A majority of the reviewers added oil and sour cream to the cake and some substituted agave for the sugar. I did not have agave so I couldn't do that. I thought about maple syrup instead but decided to just use my regular sugar. I did add additional oil and sour cream. I read through the posts and decided on an amount based on what most were saying, a quarter cup of each. I baked it an additional 10 minutes or so as some indicated it would need and mine did, it was jiggly at the end of the recipe's stated bake time range. Are these modifications where I went wrong? It could be, but everyone who did this gave it 4 and 5 stars.  

My son took the first bite and said that the "cinnamon stuff" was good. Well, yeah...cinnamon stuff is always good. My first bite consisted mostly of cake. Um, not so good. It's so indescribable. There was no taste and again with the vanilla that it called for and again using Nielsen Massey and a little extra that I let splash over the measuring spoon like the yellow cake I had made. The texture seemed like it wanted to be normal. It almost was and then you realize it isn't the more you chew. You keep wanting it to be because as you are chewing this flavorless, spummy cake, you are looking at the piece of it on your plate and it's inconceivable as to how something that looks like "that" can possibly taste and feel like it does in your mouth.

I think the Bisquick I've been hoarding will be kept strictly for pancakes and garlic cheddar biscuits. This girl is done experimenting with things that I would have never used Bisquick for before I went gluten free. It's time to start using from scratch recipes for things like coffee cake. It's really not much more work in the end and I'm hopeful that it will taste better. I never really used Bisquick for too much before because the end product was never very pleasing to me so I'm not really sure why I was expecting something spectacular out of it gluten free.

Cake

It's a simple title, I know.  But when a food looks like this, do you really need to say a whole lot about it?

I have never had a lot of success with making cakes from scratch.  Perhaps that is because I grew up with cake-mix cakes and continued to make into my adult life.  I’ve tried many homemade cake recipes and while some taste good, I can’t ever recall one that tastes GREAT. 

I really love cake.  You can see that my first couple posts on this blog are about cake.  Cake soothes me.  Sounds silly, I am sure, but when I bite into cake, it makes me forget the world around me.  I don't make it often as I eat way too much of it when it's around but I usually keep a couple cake mixes in my cupboard.  Recently though, I've not felt very good about using them.  Since I have made cakes from scratch, I see what goes into them and it’s quite simple.  When I look at the ingredient list of a cake mix I see a lot of mystery ingredients.  Take a look for yourself:

Supermarket Brand Name Chocolate Cake Mix:  sugar, enriched bleached wheat flour (flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), vegetable oil shortening (partially hydrogenated soybean oil, propylene glycol mono- and diesters of fats, mono and diglycerides), cocoa powder processed with alkali, dextrose, leavening (sodium bicarbonate, dicalcium phosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate), contains 2% or less of: modified food starch, wheat starch, polyglycerol esters of fatty acids, salt, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, cellulose gum, xanthan gum, maltodextrin, artificial flavors.

What’s a diester?  What’s a polyglycerol ester of fatty acids?  I looked a few of the ingredients up and still can’t tell you what they are.  I know that my cake recipes never asked me to hunt down those ingredients.

I kept putting off buying a Trader Joe’s (Trader Josef’s) cake mix because of the price.  I know I mention price a lot and I do hope that you don’t think that I am cheap.  If you read the previous post you may understand where I am coming from when I mention the cost of food products that I discuss in my posts.  You see, a Trader Joe’s cake mix costs $2.99.  You can get a brand name cake mix at Target or Walmart for usually less than $1.50.  It’s twice as much.  Yes, I do know we are talking $1.50 versus $3.00 and not $150 versus $300 but it still all adds up.

Well, one day I did it.  I bought that chocolate Trader Joe’s cake mix.  It was worth every one of the three dollars that it cost.  I opted to use the ½ cup of butter instead of the ½ cup of oil.  It also calls for 3 eggs and water.  It was as easy as making any other cake mix but the results were amazingly different.

This cake resembled what I had always longed for in my attempts at homemade cakes.  It was not fluffy like a regular cake mix but dense, in a good way.  It had a great, deep chocolate flavor.  It tasted to me what cake should taste and I now know that spending the $3 to ensure that I have a homemade tasting cake with the ease of a mix is well worth it.

Here are the ingredients in the Trader Joe’s chocolate cake mix:

Trader Joes Chocolate Cake Mix:  sugar, unbleached enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, may contain malted barley flour, enzymes, ascorbic acid), cocoa (processed with alkali), cornstarch, leavening (sodium bicarbonate, sodium acid pyrophosphate), soybean oil, salt, buttermilk, natural vanilla flavor.

See how many fewer ingredients are in it?  Everything besides the cornstarch are ingredients I’ve used in homemade cake mixes and I love that it uses unbleached flour, unlike the brand name mix.  It’s simple and it tastes absolutely amazing.

I topped my cake mix with a basic chocolate frosting, something along the lines of this recipe.  Trader Joe’s does make a frosting mix as well. However, I have no problems with making my own frosting so I don’t usually buy frosting unless I am taking whatever it is I’ve frosted somewhere where it will be sitting outside since it’s a little more stable than homemade in warmer weather.

If you are like me and cakes are one of your weaker areas or you just need a quick to make dessert, I hope you will consider trying Trader Joe’s cake mix next time you have a need for cake.  If you do not have a Trader Joe’s around, I know that Dr. Oetker makes an organic cake mix.  I’ve never tried them but the ingredient list is similar to Trader Joe’s and there’s that added bonus that it is all organic.  I’d love to hear if anyone has tried the Dr. Oetker brand because they have a couple more flavor choices than Trader Joe’s…ya know, in case I ever get sick of yellow or chocolate.