Dessert Day: Gluten Free Tim Tam Cake

On Monday Kirsti and I had our last Dessert Day of the year. We originally had been contemplating making a cheesecake with a cake star in the middle but then as a vegetarian I really cannot stomach gelatine - and because I can't plan ahead to save my life when it comes to Dessert Day - I didn't bring the vegetarian gelatine that I have (Dessert Day is full of such nonsense, Kirsti and I are quite organised people in all aspects of our life except Dessert Day).

So instead we made a Tim Tam cake! Oh boy. We used the recipe from Raspberri Cupcakes. We followed the recipe fairly closely except for these following points (we just substituted a Tablespoon of gluten free all purpose flour for the 1 Tablespoon of normal flour for gluten free-ness):

1. We learned the hard way that using the mixing bowl that comes with the KitchenAid stand mixer to gently fold in the flour into the beaten eggs did NOT work. Transfer it to a different bowl first and then fold in the sifted flour/cocoa/baking soda/etc.

2. We added a little bit of raspberry essence to the frosting in the middle of the cake. Holy Moses. It was delicious. Dessert Day would have been a giant success with only the frosting.

3. We didn't use Tim Tams because I'm gluten free. I didn't miss them at all.

4. There was a HUGE amount of extra ganache, like we probably could have covered a second cake, so maybe use 2/3 of the amount of ganache. Normally I'd have been more exciting about the excess ganache but I basically ate that whole bowl of frosting, so I was pretty sugared out.

But let's be real here...do you even care about the recipe? No. You're here for the pictures.

Kirsti and I were all overly confident about out ability to make a sponge cake. "The cake recipe should be a breeze" we said to ourselves. Well, we had to throw away one of the cake layers because the sponge was so terrible. Oh well. We learned some valuable sponge making lessons.

We also made some Lemon Sorbet however it didn't freeze by the time I left so I basically sampled some lemonade with ice cubes in it. The lemon sorbet would like to apologise for it is not particularly photogenic.

Also, I tried for a good half hour to write a New Year post and deleted all of it, twice. Basically, it's just a day. So have a great one (day that is) and eat cake. May I recommend the Tim Tam cake? It's ferociously delicious.