Americas Test Kitchen Gluten Free Freeze Cake?

'Examination Kitchen': Take Your (Gluten-Complimentary) Cake, And Love Eating It Too 36:28

According to America's Test Kitchen, the best gluten-free flours to bake with contain four ingredients — brown rice flour, white rice flour, potato starch and tapioca starch. (Courtesy of America's Test Kitchen) — According to America's Exam Kitchen, the best gluten-free flours to bake with contain four ingredients — brown rice flour, white rice flour, spud starch and tapioca starch. (Courtesy of America'southward Exam Kitchen)

It took hundreds of batches of muffins, cakes and cookies earlier Jack Bishop and Julia Collin Davison — of the public Television receiver serial America'due south Examination Kitchen — figured out the all-time ways to make delicious baked goods without gluten. They as well conducted gustation tests of packaged gluten-gratis breads and pasta.

Collin Davison tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that the show's normal testing procedures "really worked to assistance u.s. get at the heart of what makes gluten-free things gustation just equally expert as traditional baked goods."

Bishop and Collin Davison edited The How Can It Be Gluten Gratis Cookbook. They join Fresh Air to share tips, secrets and favorite recipes for gluten-free baking.

Interview Highlights

On what gluten is and does

Bishop: There are two proteins in wheat — glutenin and gliadin — and they are basically wrapped effectually starch molecules, and they're basically inert. Just when you add water or another liquid, you lot are bringing those proteins back to life, and they unwind from the starch molecules and attach to each other, and the more than yous knead or mix the dough or the batter, the more they will attach to each other, and they form this elastic network that is chosen gluten.

The gluten is really what traps the bubbles, the carbon dioxide, that is either coming from yeast, from blistering soda, from blistering pulverisation; and it'southward what gives bread, cookies, cake their structure. It helps turn them from doughs and batters into beautiful, risen baked appurtenances.

On common problems with gluten-free foods

Collin Davison: Gluten is kind of magical, and then when you take it out of the equation, you're left with flours that tin't absorb liquid as well, they tin can't absorb fat as well, and they tin't trap those air bubbles that are really crucial for baked goods. And then you current of air upward with things that are ... very dense and squat; they're oft greasy and they crumble apart. They don't have the binding structure of gluten.

On the best store-bought gluten-free flour

Collin Davison: The i that nosotros found worked best universally — and that means in cookies, in breadstuff dough, in biscuits, in muffins — was Rex Arthur Flour gluten-free blend. And information technology is very much like, actually, our recipe for gluten-free flour alloy in that information technology uses two types of rice flours — white and brown — and it also uses two types of starches, which is irish potato and tapioca. And those four ingredients, we found, were really the magic key to finding a blend that worked nigh as good as a wheat flour.

On the best gluten-free pasta

Collin Davison: We tested every make of gluten-free pasta we could get our hands on. We tested it plain, we tested it with sauce, and one make really rose to the pinnacle, once again, in terms of its texture and flavour, and that brand is Jovial. ...

A lot of the brands came out really mushy; they didn't have enough texture. Of course, you'll never become gluten-gratis pasta that'due south al dente, but the Jovial came as shut to al dente equally you tin can go. Too, it didn't take any "off flavors," which is a bonus in this globe of gluten-free products. And ... information technology really tasted more like traditional wheat pasta than whatsoever of the other brands we tried. ...

Bishop: You lot could tell what the pasta was going to sense of taste like by looking at the water in the pot. The real problem with whatever gluten-free pasta — whether information technology'due south made of corn, quinoa or dark-brown rice, which is what the Jovial is made of — in that location isn't plenty structure to contain the starches that are in the pasta. ...

The Jovial has more than protein and more fiber. And basically what that does is it prevents the starch molecules from bursting. During the cooking process, the starch is hydrating and swelling, which is a good thing, so that it goes from its dry country to something that you tin can really consume. Merely in a lot of the other gluten-costless pasta brands that we tested, the starches kept on swelling and eventually they exploded, and you could look in the pot and run across the starches because the pasta water was now cloudy — it basically looked like milk.

On foods that are incommunicable to make gluten-free

Collin Davison: I'll never say never considering I always like a good challenge. ... Gluten-costless phyllo dough — non something I think we tin can do — and a gluten-free puff pastry. That 1 — large question marking ...

Bishop: I think a croissant would be pretty hard to brand gluten-free ... in large part because of the butter issue, which is the flour has and then much problem absorbing fat and you really don't want a low-fat croissant.

On the flim-flam to making gluten-free sugar cookies

Collin Davison: You lot're dealing with the maximum amount of butter and carbohydrate, and that's what gives a traditional sugar cookie its flavor. Then [in the gluten-complimentary version], you can't use all that butter considering it just leeches out and what you current of air upwardly with is fried cookies on the baking sail, which are pretty disgusting. The other issue is that ... they'll merely spread as much as they want, equally much every bit they're allowed. ... When you're dealing with gluten-free batter or gluten-free cookie dough that doesn't have a lot of binders, it will but spread and spread. ...

The solution ... was when you take out the sugar and you take out the butter and yous accept out all that season, you lot need to replace it with a unlike kind of flavor and fat that will stay in the cookie and the fat won't leech out during baking — and that turned out to be almonds. When you think about almonds, it has a lot of natural fat in it, and those almonds will hold onto their fatty and their flavour in the oven. ... So almonds, or almond flour, was the key to the saccharide cookie, along with xanthan glue [as a folder].

Dark Chocolate Cupcakes

Why This Recipe Works

The ultimate chocolate cupcakes are moist and tender with rich chocolate flavor. Taking a cue from the success of our moist and tender Chocolate Layer Cake, nosotros scaled the recipe to fit in a standard 12-cup muffin tin and simply adjusted the baking time. The combination of rich chocolate flavor and light, fluffy crumb once again fooled tasters into thinking these cupcakes couldn't possibly be gluten-free. One time frosted, serve the cupcakes within a few hours.

Makes 12 cupcakes.

ane/ii loving cup vegetable oil
three ounces bloodshot chocolate, chopped
i ounce (1/iii cup) unsweetened cocoa pulverization
3 1/2 ounces (3/4 cup) ATK Gluten-Free Flour Alloy
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon blistering soda
ane/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon table salt
2 big eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 1/four ounces (3/4 cup) carbohydrate
ane/2 cup whole milk
two cups frosting

1. Suit oven rack to lower-heart position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 12-loving cup muffin tin can with paper or foil liners.

2. Microwave oil, chocolate, and cocoa together in bowl at 50 pct ability, stirring occasionally, until melted, nearly two minutes. Whisk mixture until polish, then gear up aside to cool slightly. In separate bowl, whisk flour alloy, baking powder, baking soda, xanthan mucilage, and common salt together.

3. In big bowl, whisk eggs and vanilla together. Whisk in saccharide until well combined. Whisk in cooled chocolate mixture and milk until combined. Whisk in flour alloy mixture until batter is thoroughly combined and smooth.

4. Using ice cream scoop or large spoon, portion batter evenly into prepared muffin can. Bake until toothpick inserted into eye of cupcakes comes out clean, 16 to xviii minutes, rotating muffin tin halfway through baking. Allow cupcakes cool in muffin tin on wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove cupcakes from tin and let cool completely, nearly 1 hr. (Unfrosted cupcakes can be stored in airtight container at room temperature for upward to ane twenty-four hour period.)

v. Spread or pipe frosting over top of cupcakes and serve.

Excerpted from The How Tin Information technology Be Gluten Free Cookbook. Excerpted by permission of America'due south Exam Kitchen.

(Courtesy of America'south Test Kitchen)

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Why This Recipe Works

We started our testing by swapping in our flour alloy for the all-purpose flour in a standard Toll House cookie recipe. It was no surprise that these cookies had problems: They were apartment, sandy, and greasy. We'd discovered during our baked goods testing that gluten-free flour blends but can't absorb as much fatty as all-purpose flour tin, so cut dorsum on the butter helped to minimize greasiness. Less butter, along with some xanthan mucilage, likewise helped alleviate the spread event, so the cookies didn't broil up and then apartment. As for the sandiness, we knew from our gluten-free muffin testing (see Chapter 1) that fixing this problem required a two-step approach. The starches in our blend needed more liquid likewise as more time to hydrate and soften, and then we added a couple tablespoons of milk and let the dough balance for xxx minutes. This resting fourth dimension as well had a secondary benefit: Information technology gave the sugar time to deliquesce, which led to faster caramelization in the oven. And that meant a cookie not only with deeper season, but also with a chewier eye and crisper edges. Finally, we wanted our cookies to exist less cakey and more chewy. We realized creaming the butter, every bit the original Toll House recipe directs, was aerating the butter also much. Melting the butter instead, and irresolute the ratio of chocolate-brown sugar to granulated sugar, gave our cookies the correct chewy texture. The extra dark-brown sugar also gave our cookies a more complex, toffee-like flavor. Bite for bite, this was a chocolate flake cookie that could rival the best versions of the archetype. Not all brands of chocolate chips are processed in a gluten-free facility, so read labels carefully.

Makes nigh 24 cookies.

eight ounces (13/4 cups) ATK Gluten-Free Flour Blend
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
one/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
5 ane/4 ounces (3/4 cup packed) calorie-free brown saccharide
2 1/three ounces (1/3 cup) granulated sugar
i large egg
two tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
7 i/2 ounces (11/4 cups) semisweet chocolate chips

one. Whisk flour alloy, baking soda, xanthan glue, and salt together in medium bowl; set aside. Whisk melted butter, brown saccharide, and granulated sugar together in large bowl until well combined and smooth. Whisk in egg, milk, and vanilla and go along to whisk until smooth. Stir in flour mixture with safety spatula and mix until soft, homogeneous dough forms. Fold in chocolate chips. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough residual for 30 minutes. (Dough volition be sticky and soft.)

2. Arrange oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Using 2 soup spoons and working with about 11/2 tablespoons of dough at a time, portion dough and space ii inches autonomously on prepared sheets. Bake cookies, ane sheet at a fourth dimension, until golden brown and edges take begun to set but centers are still soft, 11 to xiii minutes, rotating canvass halfway through baking.

3. Permit cookies cool on sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature. (Cookies are best eaten on day they are baked, just they can be cooled and placed immediately in airtight container and stored at room temperature for up to ane solar day.)

Excerpted from The How Tin Information technology Be Gluten Gratuitous Cookbook. Excerpted by permission of America's Test Kitchen.