Gluten Free Caribbean Black Cake

I decided to pick up the unspoken challenge laid down by my childhood friend Cleo when she tagged me in a photo of her black cakes which is a traditional Caribbean fruit cake made with fruit that had been soaked for months in rum/sherry then baked with molasses and more rum poured on top. It has been at least ten years or more since I last made one of these and given my stomach problems I would now have to make it gluten free.

The Aussies – bless their hearts love fruit cakes so locating the supplies was quite easy: mixed dried fruit already mixed and in packages are sold at Woolworths as are dark brown sugar, molasses, rum, rice flour, and the standards – eggs, butter, baking powder, butter, mixed spice, vanilla. I did have to go to Coles to get the xantham gum though.

Since I did not have months to soak my dried fruit in alcohol I decided to cheat and boil them in some rum instead, about 10 minutes of boiling and they were nice and plump and had absorbed all the rum and could be removed from the heat.

Lacking a hand or stand mixer (not yet replaced from my move) I decided to try to cream the butter and sugar in the food processor – if anyone tells you this cannot or should not be done laugh in the face of their negativity and whip out the Kitchen Aid. I have never had such beautifully smooth creamed butter and sugar ever!

I added the molasses, then eggs and in another bowl sifted my rice flour added the baking powder (opps just realized when writing this that I used unsalted butter and forgot to add salt but it turned out great anyway). I looked it up online how much xantham gum to add – for cakes the rule is ½ tsp per cup of flour http://glutenfreerecipebox.com/xanthan-gum-how-much-use

Combined everything together – it was a little moist so I added another ¼ cup of sifted rice flour and a pinch of xantham gum which gave it the right texture. I preheated the oven to about 160 C and put it in using parchment paper to line the tin.

I think over all it took about 90 mins to bake, I cannot be sure as I did not have a recipe with a time stated and was going by ear but I cleaned up the kitchen, mopped the floor, called my Mom and took out the trash.

Here is the recipe I came up with

·         2 ¼ cups of rice flour

·         1 1/8 tsp xantham gum

·         1 ¼ tsp baking powder

·         ½ lb butter

·         1 cup dark brown sugar

·         1 jar molasses  ~ 1.5 cups

·         Vanilla

·         1 tsp mixed spice (nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice)

·         5 eggs

·         20 oz dried fruit (boil in rum)

·         Rum

After I took it out of the oven I poured 3 more capfuls of rum over the surface and covered it with foil and went off to the gym while it cooled down.

The texture was amazing!! Moist and flavorful the fruit plum and juicy with rum when you bite into it, even I could not tell that it was not made with rice flour. However, my stomach can and I will not be waking up in the middle of the night with crippling stomach pain. Tonight I get to have my cake AND eat it. Hmmm now how to get rid of the rest.

First Apartment Inspection

I recently had and survived my first rental inspection. What is that you wonder? Well here in Australia the majority of the property market is controlled by Property management agencies and rental agents and as part of their duties and as I suspect to convince the owners that they are doing a good job they inflict upon the tenants inspections every 2-3 months. I received a letter in the mail that I would be inspected in a week and a half and that I needed to have the property in tip top shape, I should also not try to reschedule or change the date as that was the only date I was going to get. Like the telephone, UPS and cable guy they gave a wide window 9am to 4pm so naturally I could not sit around all day waiting for them just to find out what it was going to be about.

So since I did not have any pets and pet paraphernalia to hide to I cleaned nonstop for 3 days and hoped for the best despite being really annoyed about it. I kept thinking – “I have been renting for the past 12 years how dare these people inspect me and question my house keeping skills?” See when you get that letter in the mail it feels really truly, deeply personal but it really is not personal. It has nothing to do with me as individual it’s just a really odd system. But I suppose with regular inspections you do not have the problem of people renting out houses to then turn into indoor pot growing farms as we have seen in some areas of California J

A week later the inspection report came in the mail and is below for your enjoyment (or NOT)

There were also pictures of almost everything/area in the apartment but it will be quite a bit of work to get them out of the PDF and attached to the blog. So the area I was digned in like the patio I have to remedy before the next inspection - I am not sure what happens if you just ignore the warnings but I will let you know if I find out :-)