Recipe: Gluten-Free Clementine Cake

On Saturday, we were supposed to go see the Cherry Blossom Festival because this weekend was the end of the peak period for the one-hundred year old trees in full bloom--(in 1902, the city of Tokyo, Japan gave Washington D.C. 3,000 cherry trees, and this year, the city is celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the trees.  Very sweet, no?)  

The trees usually start to bloom around April 4 and this year they started blooming on March 20.  We had more than a few days of very unseasonably warm weather and well, all the blossoms starting going crazy, very early!  But, as luck would have it, this past weekend, we reverted back to full-on Spring weather and it was cold, rainy, gray and cloudy...I guess like how it should be.  And because its not the most fun thing to be caught in a down pour with a 4 year old and a 7 year old, we cancelled our plans...

So, no Cherry Blossom Festival for us this year.  Sad.  

Instead of going downtown, though, we stayed home and made a cake.

And because of my recent detox/cleanse, I decided to make a gluten-free cake...why not?  We had all the ingredients; I had a recipe I wanted to tweak a bit..and we happen to have A LOT of clementines on hand...so perfect, we got to baking...and juicing...

 The cake is not even close to being healthy or good for you...

about all it can claim to be, health-wise, is gluten-free.  

But its incredibly moist, with a nice refreshing sweetness from the tangerines.  

The texture is nice and light and a slice of this cake goes quite well 

with a cup of tea on a rainy, Spring day.

You could also make this with lemon and that would be nice, too.

 Clementine Drizzle Cake

adapted from Gluten Free Baking

 by Phil Vicery

Makes: one 8-inch round cake

Preparation: 20 minutes

Baking: 30 minutes, plus cooling

For the cake

vegetable oil

1 cup sugar

4 large eggs, at room temp

2 cups brown rice flour

1 cup fine cornmeal or corn flour

1/4 cup corn starch

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup plain yogurt

1/3 cup milk

1/2 cup canola oil, scant

zest and juice of 4 clementines

For the syrup

2 clementines

6 tablespoons sugar

Powder sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Oil and 8-inch round cake pan with a removable bottom and line base with parchment paper.

Whisk the sugar and the eggs together in a food processor until thick and cream.  Sift together the flours, baking powder and corn starch and add this to the sugar and eggs.  Whisk in the milk, yogurt, oil and zest.  (reserving the juice for the syrup.)

Spoon the mixture into the prepared pan, and bake for about 30 minutes, until firm and springy in the center.  Test with a toothpick. Once baked, remove from oven and allow to cool in pan.

To make the syrup, squeeze the clementines, and using reserved juice (for total of about 1/2 cup) place in small pan with sugar and boil together for 1 minute.  

Prick the warm cake all over with a skewer while its still in the pan, then pour on the hot syrup, filling the holes.  Once cake is cool, carefully remove it from pan and place on wire rack to cool completely.

Dust with powder sugar and serve.

Enjoy!