Gluten-Free Carrot Cake with Coconut Frosting

It was my daughter's first birthday and we made two gluten-free carrot cakes. One was also dairy free and had coconut frosting. The other had cream cheese frosting. They turned out pretty good. I even fooled my little brother into thinking they were regular cakes. I used this recipe from Karina's Kitchen. We have also tried this one in the past from Allrecipes and just substituted a GF flour mix. I remember liking the Allrecipes one better, but I also used Pamala's baking mix in that one, which I don't use anymore because it has buttermilk. I decided to try letting my kids have the small amount of eggs they would get in the cake. Abbie was fine with it. Barrett didn't seem to handle it very well althoughI still suspect that buckwheat might bother him.

Here is the recipe as I made it. This is the doubled version.

6 eggs
1 cup canola oil
1 cup brown sugar
2/3 crushed pineapple or applesauce
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp Allspice
4 cups flour mix with 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda added per cup of flour*
1 1/2 cup flaked sweetened coconut (I left this out--you can also put in raisins or nuts)
3 cups processed [or finely grated] carrots (about 4 medium carrots)

*I used 1/3 c tapioca starch, 2/3 c potato starch, 4 tsp guar gum, 1/2 c buckwheat flour, 1/2 c coconut flour, 1/2 c brown rice flour, 1/2 c Bob's all purpose baking mix, 1/2 c sweet rice flour, 1/2 c potoato flour---I think I could have done with only 1/2 cup starch total and put in another 1/2 c of flour instead.

Preheat oven to 350. Spray two 9" square pans with cooking oil and sprinkle with sweet rice flour (mochiko). Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl and set aside. Beat eggs in a large bowl. Add oil and brown sugar. Mix. Add applesauce or pineapple. Mix. Slowly beat in dry mixture. Add carrot. Batter will be fairly thick. Spread batter into pans. Bake for 40 minutes (I am high altititude). Turn over onto wire racks and let cool.

Coconut Frosting.

I sort of guessed on this. I mixed coconut milk with powdered sugar and vanilla until I had a good consistency. I think it would have been better with almond extract instead of vanilla but I ran out. The coconut is a little strong or bitter or something so you might want to use just a little coconut milk and then use rice milk or water if it needs more liquid.

Cream Cheese Frosting:
1 8oz pkg softened cream cheese
powdered sugar
vanilla

Blend them all together to desired consistency and sweetness. I know it's not very helpful instruction, but I didn't measure so that's all you get.

The Baby Definitely Has A Food Intolerance Problem

It is now obvious that Abbie has a problem similar to Barrett's. Her diaper rashes and diarrhea the last week have been sure evidence. Unfortunately I can't pinpoint the exact cause yet. We started giving her more milk products like yogurt and cheese, and I also have been slack on my own gluten-free diet. It's possible the gluten from breast milk is bothering, or the increase in cow's milk has been bothering her, or both. So now we get to start the elimination process with her. Keep those things out of her diet for a few weeks to see if she improves, and then add them back in one at a time and see what happens. I already suspected gluten which is why I don't feed it to her directly, but my current theory is that both are a problem. I know for sure that she can't tolerate eggs at this point. She and Barrett both had a hard time the last time we fed eggs to them. I'm not even going to attempt soy with her if she can't have casein.

An Egg Reaction, I Think

We wanted to be sure whether Barrett was really sensitive to eggs or not so we scrambled up a few and fed them to him and his sister Abbie for dinner a few nights ago. They both ended up with diarrhea. I was not surprised about Barrett but I was surprised about Abbie. She doesn't appear to be sensitive to either milk or gluten. She is generally somewhat constipated though, so I don't know if it was just her body trying to clear itself and was just a coincidence with eggs, or if there was some bacteria or something in the eggs that mad them both sick. It's too bad it's so hard to tell these things for sure.