This year I’ve decided to try out each of the technical challenges on this season’s Great British Bake Off. Since I’m gluten free, all of the bakes I want to eat will have to be adapted, so I’m giving myself an extra challenge! Of course, gluten free flour can be unpredictable, to say the least, so this will be a journey of discovery…

Week one is a nice one – Red Velvet Cake. I’ve made a Red Velvet many years ago before the whole gf thing, so it will be interesting to see how this turns out. Buying the ingredients made me realise this one was rather more involved – cream cheese, marscapone and icing sugar – and that’s just the icing! Quite an… indulgent… dessert I feel!

The bake started well – all the ingedients went together nicely and the mixture waas soon ready to put in the tins. Unfortunately, I don’t own three 17cm tins, so I had to improvise a little. I have two 15cm tins, so I weighed the mixture, split it into three, cooked the first two, then cooked the last layer separately. Surprisingly, this worked perfectly – I baked the sponges for a little longer to compensate for the extra depth, and they came out all looking the same height!

I did realise at this point that I’d forgotten to add the Xanthan gum, which is used to create a less crumby texture in gf bakes. Turns out this cake does not need it – must be the buttermilk! I did an extensive taste test with the cut-offs I had from levelling the cakes and they were gooood. They did not taste gluten free at all! And you don’t have to take just my word for it – all the peeps that ate this agreed with me, and they are all fully glutenated people.

Assembly was a pretty messy affair, and I wished at that point that I’d remembered to put on my apron. Also, quite a bit of the icing ended up in my stomach. I need tips here – how to stop yourself from snacking on all the sugary goodness while you’re constructing? Any advice gratefully received!

Verdict: this is a great cake – it was pretty foolproof and I reckon that this would work every time. It was easy to convert to gf, and the sponge was light, fluffy and moist. I am definitely making this one again. Maybe once I’ve bought an extra cake tin…