My First Hockey Puck

Every gluten-free, vegan, allergy-friendly and diabetic-friendly baking website I have visited has warned those new to world of alternative baking that there will be failures. No ifs, ands or buts about it. There will be failures.

This is my first foray into trying to make a lower GI version of a red velvet cupcake. I intended to start small and just play around with the sugar/sweetener and so I simply used rapadura sugar instead of white sugar. Admittedly, I am not completely certain that the sugar sub was the reason for the failure, but it was the only unusual thing I did (unless I followed the recipe wrong, which is a possibility. I will let you know when I try them again).


I was trying to make a red velvet cake for a workmate's birthday. While these tasted amazing, the texture was dense like a dry but fudge brownie. After trying one iced and then without, the texture grew on me but by that stage I had decided to throw them out and start again. D wasn't a fan of the texture and didn't think I should be inflicting anything I was less than happy with on my new work colleagues, as I've only been at this job for two months and only started sharing food last week.

This cake was also my first red velvet cake that was actually red!!! I've had disappointing results previously so I probably was a little enthusiastic with the food colouring. I don't mind, I love the colour.


I have just realised that these cupcakes would have been perfect to make into cake balls. They still had a fair bit of moisture in them (their dryness came from their density and weight) and wouldn't have needed much icing at all to bind them together. I must remember that the next time I make a hockey puck.


Look at the icing. It's almost a cross between a cream cheese icing and a buttercream that I've never tried before. The original recipe's picture has the cake topped with this glorious light and fluffy cloud. I first thought it was whipped cream, but it wasn't. Mine was very light as well and it really needed to be refrigerated before it could be piped. It was still too soft when I pulled it out an hour or so later, so luckily I hadn't iced any cakes apart from my taste test. The icing is in the fridge waiting for the next attempt.