Product Review: Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Chocolate Cake

As any American would, there are times that I like my food (and my baked goods) easy. In other words: from a box. Today I decided to try out Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Chocolate Cake Mix. There were a couple of reasons I decided on this particular cake mix. 1) I like Bob's products. They're consistently good quality as far as taste, texture and appearance. 2) They included a vegan egg-free option on the back of the package. 3) Wednesday is knitting night (one of my other hobbies) and there is an individual at knitting who has an enormous amount of food allergies and is having a hard time adjusting to his new diet, therefore I decided that I would bake treats that were both tasty and available for everyone to eat. It's no fun being left out of the cup-cake party after all.

So, for this particular endeavor I substituted chocolate hemp milk (since its a chocolate cake) for the milk, safflower oil for the butter and milled flax seed + water for the eggs. As eggs are a really hard ingredient to substitute, I was unsure how this was going to work. Nevertheless, when I popped those cupcake pans in the oven the batter puffed right up like a regular cake and smelled delicious the whole time.

The other interesting thing was that right before I finished mixing the batter, the instructions had me add 1/3 cup of hot (110 degrees F) water to the mix. I was thinking on why this might be
and concluded that it must be to activate the baking powder. For those who are unaware, baking powder does not activate until it is heated. I think I can attribute this factor to the fluffy texture and supreme rising power of the batter. I will have to try adding a little hot water to other recipes in the future.

After they cooled I had one of the not-so-large ones and it was very, very tasty. I have to say I was impressed that the cake was light (so many gluten-free items are super dense) and moist and tasted like a chocolate cake should!