Gluten-Free Grandma's Chocolate Cupcakes
Ingredients
- ½ cup cocoa - unsweetened - alkalized or not (slightly better rise with alkalized)
- 1 cup water
- ½ tsp salt
Dry Ingredients
- ½ cup brown rice flour
- ¾ cup cup buckwheat flour
- ¼ cup tapioca flour
- ½ cup teff flour
- 2 cups granulated sugar or rapadura (rapadura makes for a fudgier cake)
- ½ tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp guar gum (Optional - your cakes will still rise without it but it does give nice lift)
Egg OR Substitute
- 2 tsp ground salba or chia (for ground flax, increase by ½)
- ¼ cup water
- -OR-
- 2 eggs
Wet Ingredients
- 1 cup buttermilk (substitute dairy-free milk OR water with 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar)
- ¾ cup vegetable oil (safflower, sunflower - you can leave this out for a more dense cake)
- 1 tbsp vanilla
Vanilla Icing (Yield: Produces a lot of icing so halve the recipe if you are not in need of extra icing)
- 8 oz butter (2 sticks)
- 6-8 cups confectioners sugar
- ½ cup buttermilk
- ½ tsp salt (dissolve in buttermilk, if possible)
- 1-2 tsp vanilla extract
How-to
- Preheat oven to 350°. Line cupcake pans, grease and flour cake pans. Makes about two 9" cakes or 24 cupcakes
- Combine cocoa and water. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly until thick. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely
- Place dry ingredients in bowl of mixer fitted with a paddle. Stir all ingredients together
- Combine all wet ingredients. Slowly add wet ingredients to dry ingredients, EXCLUDING cocoa (add eggs or egg substitute here)
- Mix for 7 minutes, scraping down after mixing
- Slowly add cooled cocoa to batter with the mixer set to the lowest speed. Scrape down, mix for 1 more minute on medium speed
- Pour batter into prepared pans
- Bake until done - approximately 20 minutes for the cupcake, 20-30 minutes for the 9" cake. Cool completely. (The cake does not rise to a high dome, but is rich and moist)
- Top with Vanilla Icing
Vanilla Icing
- Combine butter and 4 cups of the confectioners sugar and mix until it resembles corn meal. If it combines completely, that's okay
- Add the buttermilk with the salt and the vanilla. Mix until completely incorporated. Add 2 more cups of confectioners sugar. Mix again. If the mixture is still wet, add another cup or two of sugar
- When it is spreadable but holds its shape, it is done
Optional Garnish
- shaved chocolate