our R&D team decided not just to deliver a traditional-quality Devil’s food cake eating experience with the new mix, but to provide that level of quality in a gluten-free formulation, too. A DEVIL OF A CAKE bling them to add in the emulsifier. If you apply fat to powder, however, you can end up with a mixture that is difficult to dose in packaging, results in lumpy batters, and risks producing a mix that easily becomes rancid. In line with Palsgaard’s general push to help manufacturers arrive at healthier, more sustainable products, we wanted to remove unhealthy, saturated fats from the recipe, making it easier to work with in production and improving the label. Additionally, using shortening-based cake mixes requires several steps, and two or three rounds of scraping down, whereas our recipe would ideally demand only a single round, saving time and energy in the production process. in developed countries around the globe, and increasingly becoming a health-conscious choice even for those unaffected by gluten, industrial bakers and cake mix manufacturers are scrambling to meet the market. For traditional baked goods, of course, only wheat flour is used – which contains gluten. Gluten holds baked goods together, providing structure and bounce. Remove the gluten without doing much else, and you’re likely to end up with a dense, gummy result – and a cake that will quickly dry out. The last point is worth noting, in particular, owing to the current worldwide trend toward moister cakes as a consumer preference. Finding good alternatives to gluten is no easy task. Consumers who bake their own gluten-free cakes may use unexpected ingredients such as mash potato in their attempts to replicate traditional recipes. Or they may use a gluten-free baking mix to replace wheat flour. Such mixes are flour blends milled from, for example, rice, sorghum or chickpeas. The starches, fibres and protein they contain help to provide the structure needed. Un- Devil’s food cake originated in the US – and is still a popular indulgent choice among consumers today. It’s a moist, fluffy, rich chocolate layer cake whose key claim to fame (recipes tend to vary considerably) is that it contains more chocolate and more moisture than a traditional chocolate cake and is most often accompanied by a rich chocolate frosting. Achieving the same result as American bakers can with their Devil’s food cakes isn’t simply a matter of following the US recipe. The chlorinated flour commonly used in the US and Asia is not permited in the EU and many other countries. The qualities of this type of flour are difficult to match, even with heattreated flour types, and gluten-free versions require a blend of different starch types to be used. American bakers use a lot of shortening in the powder mix, too, ena- GLUTEN-FREE GROUCHES If retail cake mixes have lagged behind traditionally baked cakes for much of their existence, glutenfree cakes of all kinds have subjected consumers to varied and often disappointing experiences that threaten to distance the word ‘indulgent’ from such cakes altogether. But, with the words ‘glutenfree’ ringing bells with consumers 2
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