Benji's gluten free cake and other goodies

Benji's Gluten free birthday cake!

Blueberry and cranberry scones- these will be a regular item at Nature's Grocer.



Happy b-day Benji!
Here's the GF birthday cake- I'll explain how we went about this creation!

A new recipe- chocolate chip walnut blondies.

Benji's liking this present thing!

Today Benji is a year old! We had a small family brunch to celebrate his becoming a whole number as his aunt Maxine calls it! Anyways with Ali trying a GF diet, what a good excuse to try to make a GF cake! And it was great! Bob made a marbled cake with a mocha frosting- delicious! We also had GF scones- blueberry and cranberry as well as chocolate chip walnut blondies. (pics are above)

Making a GF cake is really easy. I'll admit- we cheated a bit- we didn't make this one from scratch. We bought two boxes of GF cake mix- one chocolate, one vanilla, then swirled the two together in two cake pans. The frosting was Mocha buttercream. Here's the recipe:

Mocha Buttercream Frosting

6 tablespoons unsalted butter- room temp.

6 cups sifted confectioners' sugar

1/3 cup sifted unsweetened cocoa

5-6 tablespoons decaf coffee (or you could use GF coffee flavoring)

1 teaspoon GF vanilla extract

Directions: In an electric mixer beat butter until soft. Add two cups sifted sugar and beat until smooth. Scrape down the bowl and blades and then add the remaining four cups of sugar, cocoa, coffee, and vanilla and beat until smooth. If necessary,add a little more sugar or coffee to get the right consistency for spreading the frosting. Fill the cake layers and then spread over outside of the cake.

That's it! Of course you can always adapt a favorite cake recipe using GF flour mix instead of buying a ready made mix. The frosting is not too sweet and is nice and light.

So we'll call this Benji's cake- since he was our inspiration!