Gluten Free Gingerbread Cake House

Helen and Luke like to decorate gingerbread houses at Christmas time so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try this recipe.  One of the things I liked about it was that it spelled out all the ingredients rather than calling for a “gluten free flour blend”.  I haven’t baked gf enough to have a favorite blend, so I like a recipe that calls for specific amounts of each flour/starch.

The recipe calls for “sweet rice flour”.  Another name for this is “glutinous rice flour”.  I find most of my flours and starches at a local Asian market.  Much cheaper than the gluten free baking aisle of the local grocery store.

The recipe also calls for buttermilk which I never have.  I do, however, always have these two ingredients on hand: 

Mix together 1 tablespoon of lemon juice in 1 cup of milk.  Let it sit for five minutes before using it in the recipe.

Look at this beautiful batter.   If that doesn't scream gingerbread, I don’t know what does. 

A couple of years ago I bought this nifty Nordic Ware Gingerbread House Bundt pan.

I use cooking spray to grease it well.  Gets all of those nooks and crannies.  It took 55 minutes at 350 degrees to cook completely.

After it came out of the oven, the challenge was to get it out of the pan in one piece.  Success!  Or so I thought...

 When I went to trim a little off of the bottom to even it out:

Disaster struck.  Magnitude 8.2 quake? 

The flavor of the cake is very good.  One of the biggest problems with gluten free baked goods is that they’re very crumbly.  Luckily I had a couple of traditional spice cake mixes in the pantry so gingerbread house decorating was able to go on as scheduled.