Commonly assumed fact: all gluten-free desserts are tasteless or, even worse, downright disgusting.
Unknown fact: they do not have to be.
A friend of mine told me recently about her favorite gluten-free dessert, a flourless chocolate and vanilla marble cake. She described the concoction as “divine,” and recalled that it was made with chocolate, eggs, sugar, cream cheese, butter, and salt. No flour. I wanted to trust my friend’s judgment, but wondered how any cake could taste decent without flour, the building block of all baking. I was skeptical.
Then I made it.
Another friend of mine and I tackled it together, and were soon whisking the two batters, one vanilla and the other chocolate. As we were combining the copious amounts of unhealthy ingredients, my skepticism melted with the chocolate and butter in our makeshift double-boiler.
“Well, with butter and chocolate and sugar, you can’t go wrong!” I told her.
Indeed.
The beautiful marble cakes baked for 40 torturous minutes, a chocolaty aroma filling the house. When a group of my friends sampled the experiment, everyone had two pieces.
The flourless wonder has a smooth consistency and deep chocolate flavor. It is denser than most cakes but lighter than fudge. The two batters –– vanilla and chocolate marbled together –– serve more than decorative purposes, the vanilla sharp and the chocolate rich.
The cake is positively addicting, and I should know, since the leftovers have been haunting my kitchen counter ever since the experiment.
Clearly, the old rice cracker with peanut butter gluten-free staple has been eclipsed by desserts of much more substance and taste. I highly recommend the flourless vanilla and chocolate marble cake (recipe from Fine Cooking Magazine), and submit that gluten-free desserts are not as bad as their reputation.
For more gluten-free recipes, I recommend visiting livingwithout.com, which boasts recipes of cakes that look like ordinary cakes, minus the gluten.
sgilman@hillsdale.edu
