Skip to content
Annie's Recovery & Knitting Blog
Menu
  • ModeKnit Yarn
  • Books
    • Confessions of a Knitting Heretic
    • Knitting Millinery
    • Flip Knits
    • Knit With Courage, Live With Hope
  • Lymphoma Blog
Menu

Cake for my Birthday!

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Annie

I’m 52 today, and I baked a cake earlier this week.

I can’t eat gluten – I’m not celiac, but I do have fibromyalgia and I’ve noticed my pain increases and my mobility decreases when I eat even a tiny bit of gluten. So I avoid it, and overall it’s been good for me.

My mind’s been on cardamom — heaven knows why — and so I rode my bike down to Penzey’s (near my home, how lucky can a girl get?) and bought some green pods to open, crush, and make into a cake.

After experimenting with one of my favorite GF cake recipes, a variation on Gluten Free Girl’s variation on Joy The Baker’s Vegan Chocolate Cake, I came up with this recipe which I find delicious!

The rose frosting is a nice accompaniment to the sturdy cardamom flavor, they stand up to each other, and also complement each other. I used jasmine tea in my cake, but you can use any tea you like, the flavor isn’t that noticeable.

Slice of Cake
Slice of Cake

Cake Ingredients


  • 350 grams GF Flour
    (made of following flours, or your favorite combination)
    150 gr potato flour
    100 gr sweet rice flour
    100 gr oatmeal flour
  • 1 ¼ Tsp salt
  • 2 ½ Tsp baking soda
  • 1-½ Cup white sugar
  • 12 Green cardamom pods,
    seeds removed & ground into fine powder

  • 1 Tsp vanilla
  • 3 large eggs, at room temperature
  • 1-¼ Cup sour cream or yogurt
  • 1-¼ Cup vegetable oil
  • 
1 Cup hot jasmine tea
    (1C water to ⅓ C jasmine tea leaves, strain & use only hot tea in recipe)

Rose Frosting Ingredients


  • 3 Cup Confectioner’s Sugar
  • 1 Cup Butter
  • 1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
  • 2 Tsp Rose Water Flavor
  • 1 Tsp cream

Preparing to Bake

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 10″ bundt pan with a neutral-tasting vegetable oil, then flour lightly with GF baking mix of flours used in cake. Pour 1 cup of boiling water over ⅓ C jasmine tea leaves to make a strong tea.

Finished Cake
Finished Cake

Flavoring the Sugar

Stir the cardamom powder and vanilla into the sugar and allow to set for 15 minutes.
Combine dry ingredients
Whisk together the flours, salt and baking soda, set aside.

Make the Batter
Cream sugar and eggs together until well combined. Add the sour cream and oil, stirring well. Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. If you’re using a stand mixer here, let it run for a while. Remember — you don’t have to worry about activating the gluten and thus making the cake tough!

Make sure the dry ingredients are fully incorporated into the wet ingredients. You shouldn’t see any hint of flour. Add the tea and stir until smooth. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Baking the Cake

Bake the cake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean and the top of the cake has an athletic jiggle to it, about 45 to 60 minutes. Remove the cake pan from the oven and allow it to cool for at least 20 minutes. Carefully invert the bundt pan onto a wire rack and tap the bottom of the pan. The cake should slide out easily. Allow the cake to cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes.

Rose Frosting

In a mixer, cream sugar & butter until well blended then mix another 3 minutes at high speed. Add vanilla, rose water & cream, mix for another minute. Add more cream if necessary for desired consistency.

Spread the frosting over the completely cooled cake.

If desired, you can slice the cake into layers and add frosting between the layers before covering the outside of the cake.

Place in refrigerator to set, this makes it easier to slice evenly.

If you’d like a pdf of this recipe, click here.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)

10 thoughts on “Cake for my Birthday!”

  1. AliceM says:
    September 3, 2013 at 8:35 pm

    Happy Birthday, Annie! It’s my birthday, too. I hope your day was terrific.

    Reply
  2. Debra says:
    September 4, 2013 at 8:23 am

    Happy birthday Annie! And many more.

    Reply
  3. Karen says:
    September 4, 2013 at 12:28 pm

    Happy Birthday!
    My heavens, that looks delicious. My husband is GF, and I’m always looking for new things to try. Somehow I missed this one on the GF girl site. Thank you for sharing it.

    Reply
  4. Sue says:
    September 4, 2013 at 3:10 pm

    Happy Birthday Annie, & thanks for the recipe!

    Reply
  5. Marjorie says:
    September 4, 2013 at 3:20 pm

    Have a great day! The cake looks yummy – enjoy!

    Reply
  6. JustGail says:
    September 4, 2013 at 4:42 pm

    Happy Birthday! rather I hope it was a great birthday…that cake sounds tasty. I’ve never had anything with rose flavor…does it taste like roses smell? A Penzey’s in biking distance – that would be dangerous to my finances I think.

    Reply
  7. Sue says:
    September 5, 2013 at 9:48 pm

    You are lucky to have a Penzey’s in your neighbourhood! We have to drive half an hour to reach one. I love their green cardamom and have been known to stand in the store for several minutes just taking long deep sniffs from the cardamom sample jar.

    I hopped over from Not So Granny after seeing your comment there about designer fees – so true. I am only getting started in crochet design but have already realised that I’ll never get rich doing it. (The amount of hours put into even a simple pattern is astonishing.)

    Happy birthday, and the cake looks wonderful. Half my family has celiac so anything GF catches my eye. 🙂

    P.S. I too like “historic-ish books with lots of clothing descriptions”. 🙂

    Reply
  8. Fiamma says:
    September 8, 2013 at 7:58 pm

    Happy Birthday! That cake looks divine!

    Reply
  9. s.e. says:
    September 10, 2013 at 1:24 pm

    Happy Birthday a few days late. That cake does look delicious. My ds#3 has the same birthday as you:) He was in tunisia for work on his birthday. I hope that cake tasted as good as it looks. My birthday is also this month but I’m a couple of years older:)

    Reply
  10. Katherine says:
    September 10, 2013 at 5:19 pm

    My husband has fibro and going GF has helped him. Have you tried Guaifenesin? It’s helped him and others we know a lot. Just discovered your blog after picking up the needles again, after a long absence! Really enjoying it.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Sue Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Knit With Me?

Buy Split Cable Wimple Pattern Now Via Paypal for $5.00

Be a NUN - or just look like one! In all honesty, the pattern is NOT well reviewed (there's only one 2-star review...) but it's always been one of my favorites.

Search This Blog

Previous Posts

  • New Chemo
  • Color Me…
  • Detour
  • Anti Climax
  • Cancer Dancer
  • Hope
  • Catching Up
  • New Wheels!
  • Two Weeks At Home

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets
©2021 Annie's Recovery & Knitting Blog | Built using WordPress and Responsive Blogily theme by Superb
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.