actually not a gluten-free family;on the contrary, gluten is found in wheat, which happens to be the only "top eight" food my children can eat, so we enjoy consuming gluten in copious amounts and usually dipped in something liquid and full of barley. But for a brief period of time I did eliminate gluten from my kids' diets on the advice of my doctor, and it awarded me a fabulous opportunity to try out some new recipes.
Many businesses have been launched and bazillions of dollars spent in an effort to offer Gluten-free Mamas tasty, prepackaged foods comparable to those that are not gluten-free. In my experience, a handful of those foods are excellent and most are quite good, but just like with chocolate chip cookies, hot cocoa, and presumably pecan pie (I wouldn't know), they are a hundred times better when they are homemade. The same goes for gluten-free foods.
Alas, gluten-free baking is not easy as pie. It takes some practice, and some mentors, and usually considerably longer than the recipe states, since no recipe seems to account for the time spent crying and yelling at your bakeware, but maybe that's just me. Then, I discovered Kids With Food Allergies' Gluten-free Berry Cake, and I was blown away.
If you're a Gluten-free Mama who hasn't the free time to shop around for obscure ingredients like Eye of Newt but you still like to make knock-your-socks-off treats, this is the recipe for you. In fact, if you're NOT a Gluten-free Mama, you can make this, as well--you can replace the gluten-free flour with wheat flour and eliminate the xanthan gum. I have actually made both a gluten-free version and a version with wheat flour, and both were quite tasty!
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