Happy Boxing Day! I hope your holiday season has been merry and bright so far. We’ve had a lovely time here at Four Chickens with just the right mixture of busy and relaxed. We’ve had a nice mix of parties and time with pals, as well as time as a family. Girlfriend and I have been taking care of the cats (and turtle) of a knitting pal of mine. There are 4 cats and they all have different food and activity needs. Although it’s a lot of work, the menagerie is quite cute. It’s been so rewarding to win over the more shy ones—there is one cat who hides under the bed and has a hard time coming out even when he knows you have food for him. I’ve been trying to play with him with his favorite toy and I think he’s beginning to trust me. This is more of Girlfriend’s job (she is the one getting paid) so I’m mainly the transport to the cat house and the cat player-wither. The turtle floats around in his tank all day. I go over and say hi to him and chat with him for a while. Oddly, I think he listens to me.
We also did something different for my birthday this year. As you may remember, I usually agonize over how to have a birthday party without stressing out my pals or myself. This year we decided to have a Tuesday open house a couple of days before Christmas (which was a week after my actual birthday). This turned out to be perfect. It was on a non-traditional day for a party, so folks weren’t booked. It was a couple of days before Christmas, so everyone seemed fairly laid back about work (at least as far as I could tell). To make it easy on ourselves, we ordered a few catered platters from Whole Foods (they are so good with food allergy issues and we have tons of them!), I made birthday cake.
It was just perfect. We had a nice stream of folks and everything was much more relaxed than normal, which meant that I got to hang out and chat with everyone. The food was wonderful. We also decided to let people help themselves to cake whenever they wanted (we didn’t do a big “Happy Birthday singing with candles thing), which further relaxed everyone. I loved it.
Christmas was very low-key. Our usual Christmas guests all had out-of-town visitors and couldn’t come for dinner, so we just had a hang-out-and-watch-movies-and-knit day. And I made a new dish for dinner: Chicken and Mushroom Casserole with Cider from one of my favorite cookbooks, River Cottage Every Day by Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall, from the fabled River Cottage cooking school and dining space in Dorset, England. The dish was really, really good! One of our very favorite dinner recipes that comes from the book is the Baked Chicken Curry, which was also one of Girlfriend’s first meals that she made on her own.
Today Girlfriend took a pal of hers to see Big Hero 6 as a Christmas present. We saw it a few weeks ago and Girlfriend loved it so much that she wanted to see it again with her best friend. While they were at the movie, I baked. And, it being Friday, I baked a coffee cake. This one is a Brown-Sugar Chocolate Chip-Pecan Bundt Cake. And it is spectacular. I adapted it from a recipe I cut out of a magazine (I think it was in an ad). The pecans are mixed with butter and a little sugar and sprinkled in your bundt pan before you scrape the batter in. This means that the pecans caramelize on top. The cake itself is not-too-sweet, moist with a tender, dense crumb that is dotted with chocolate chips. Also: I made it in a pan that was a Christmas present!
Brown-Sugar Chocolate Chip-Pecan Bundt Cake, Gluten-Free
Ingredients
For the topping
3/4 cup (90 g) chopped toasted pecans
1/4 cup (60 g) unsalted butter, softened
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
For the cake
2 3/4 cups (400 g) Jeanne’s Gluten-Free All Purpose Flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks; 230 g) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup (210 g) firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup (100 g) granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
4 extra-large eggs (240 ml), room temperature
1 cup (240 ml) buttermilk
1 cup (6 oz; 170 g) semi-sweet chocolate chips
extra melted butter and tapioca flour for pan
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F/180 degrees C. Butter and flour well a 10 to 12 cup bundt pan.
In a small bowl with a fork, mix together the chopped pecans, 1/4 cup butter, and 2 tablespoons granulated sugar. Use a spoon to sprinkle mixture over the bottom and lower sides of the bundt pan.
In a medium bowl, mix together flour, salt, and baking soda.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat 1 cup butter on medium high until light and fluffy—2 minutes. Add brown sugar and 1/4 cup of granulated sugar and beat on medium high for 1 minute. Add vanilla and beat until combined. Use a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides. Add eggs, one at a time, beating between each addition. After all the eggs are added, beat on medium high for 1 minute.
Alternately add the flour mixture and buttermilk in several batches, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.
Add the chocolate chips and mix by hand until combined.
Spoon out mixture into the prepared pan and smooth top.
Bake until a tester inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean, about 1 hour. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Store, wrapped loosely, at room temperature for up to 4 days. Do not refrigerate. For long-term storage, wrap tightly and freeze for up to 6 months.
Note: If you use a different gluten-free flour mix, alter the amount of or eliminate the xanthan gum or use a different gluten-replacer, use dairy-free or egg-free substitutes, or change any other ingredients in this recipe, your results may not match my results.
This post contains affiliate links–which means that I get a tiny percentage of each purchase you make through the link (at no extra cost to you!). Thank you!
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2014-2015 Jeanne Sauvage
Hi Jeanne, I am new to ur site and just made ur easy gf flour. I am about try this recipe but was wondering if it would be possible to reduce the butter and sugar quantities and not affect the texture? I already feel the pecans and chocolate chips have a lot of oil and sugar. Also I am watching my calories this year.
Linda: No, you really can’t reduce the fat or sugar and retain the texture. This is true of all dessert-type things, to be honest.
This cake looks wonderful and I’d like to make it for my gluten-intolerant son. I know pan size affects the end results of GF baked goods. That said, would it be possible to bake this in two 6 cup bundt pans and if so, do you know at what point I should start checking for doneness?
Debi: I haven’t done it in anything other than my large bundt pan, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. I would say start checking at around 40 minutes. Let me know how it goes!
Thank you so much for responding so quickly. I’m going to order the ingredients to make your GF all purpose flour (I love King Arthur but it’s just too expensive) and when I do, I plan on making your cake in the half size pan and I’ll let you know.
Debi: Yay! Happy baking!
Hey Jeanne, so happy to have found you. Thanks so much for sharing the good stuff. Looking forward to sharing with you in the new year.
For now, just thought I’d let you know I’d mentioned your fantastic work in my latest post :))
http://foodthatsings.com/gluten-free-food/
Cheers Roni xx
Roni: Welcome! And thanks so much!
Hi Jeanne,
Just discovered your blog from an article in the December issue of GF Living magazine. I purchased your e-book and made your basic bread recipe and the buttermilk biscuits. My hubby and I loved both. I especially loved the biscuits and am going to try to adapt my Irish Soda Bread farls with the biscuit recipe. My Soda Bread won’t rise, even with your AP flour. It’s a simple recipe with 2C AP flour, 2 tsp Baking Soda, 1/2 tsp Salt and 1C Buttermilk. Mix with fork, roll out, cut like a pizza and cook on a hot dry griddle. I miss my soda bread and was wondering if you had any tips for getting it to rise. I’d really appreciate it.
I make my own pancake recipe with your AP GF flour and they get light and fluffy and delicious.
I’ve never heard of a lot of the cookies in your book but I’m going to give them a try. Thank you for taking the time to do all the hard work for us Gluten intolerant folks. Baking (and eating) is fun again.
P.S. Happy Belated Birthday! I have a (big) birthday coming up in a few days and am going to make your birthday cake. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
All the best for 2015!
Rita: There are a couple of things hindering the rise here. First, I would recommend that you add some baking powder. Maybe 1 1/2 tsp? Also, cooking them on the griddle makes it difficult for them to rise more than a bit. But, add the baking powder and see how it goes. Also, read my Baking Powder post for info on how to buy them for best results. Happy new year! And Happy Early Birthday!!
Thanks Jeanne, I’ll try the baking powder and baking them in the oven. Will let you know what works. I found your Irish Soda bread recipe last night, just about to make that. Excited, thanks!
Rita: Yay!
Jeanne, SUCCESS! I used your biscuit recipe and added 2tsp baking soda instead of just 1/2tsp and it tasted just like my soda farls! I’m delighted. Thanks again.
Rita: Yay! I’m so glad!
Happy birthday! Hope you had a great holiday! The cake looks delicious.
El: Thank you so much!!
Happy Holidays Jeanne! I NEVER read any recipe blogs, but this one caught my eye and I have read some of your others. The brown sugar-chocolate chip coffee cake looks delish! Thanks for all your recipes and hard work. It is greatly appreciated. By the way, I could never get the sweet rice flour and tapioca flour mix to work for some reason! Maybe it was because I bought them at an Asian market. I settled on my own mix for now, but I use your sandwich bread recipe anyhow. If you have any thoughts on this later you can let me know! Happy New Year to you and yours. xoxo
Karen: Yay! Thanks for being here! When you say that you couldn’t get my mix “to work” what do you mean? Also, Happy New Year to you, too!
Thanks Jeanne!
The tapioca flour/starch and sweet rice flour I bought came from an Asian market like I said. Everything I tried to bake with it came out heavy, heavy, heavy and would not even firm up. Sort of disastrous. I blame the quality of the flour(s). Maybe if I ordered them online I would have better luck. As of right now, I am using a brown rice flour, white rice flour and potato starch mixture that I make up. Works ok so far. I don’t really know what to think about the asian flours.
Karen: Hm. That’s odd. If this is a mix that only contains tapioca flour and sweet rice flour, of course the mix is going to be heavy because it’s too much starch. Mine has brown rice flour, white rice flour, sweet rice flour, and tapioca flour. It should act very closely to all-purpose wheat flour.
Jeanne, I did make the mix according to your directions with all that you mentioned. This was the mix that was too heavy. I do blame it on the flours I got at the Asian market. I may try to order it online and see if that makes a difference. Thanks for your input!
Karen: Ah, OK. That’s really weird. I’m going to be honest: I’m not clear how the fact that they were Asian flours might have changed things that much. Unless they were incorrectly labeled or something. I would try again, and maybe measure by volume if you measured by weight. Also, what were you trying to use it on? If it was a *yeasted* wheat recipe that you were converting, that would be problematic. Yeasted recipes are always more complicated to convert. Otherwise, I’m not sure what’s going on.
Happy Saturday after Boxing Day to you!
Making your fabulous recipes feels like baking together in my imaginary your kitchen all these years! (Though I am familiar with the tree planted out front!) The coffee cake is in the oven here in my cabin kitchen across the water from Seattle…and I used an unmeasured glupp of vanilla since it is mentioned but not listed. : ) Guess this makes me a recipe tester.
It is fun to watch your reach, wonderful. All best.
Hi Nancy! So nice to “see” you here! And lol–oops on the vanilla. It’s 1 tablespoon, so a “glupp” should be just fine! I added it to the recipe–thanks! And yes–can you believe how big the tree has gotten? It’s amazing. The same age as Girlfriend. I still think of you when I go out and look at it! Happy holiday weekend to you!