gluten-free brown-butter spice cake recipe

It’s just the very beginning of pumpkin season here in New Zealand, and I know I’m jumping the gun a little on this autumn/winter flavoured cake. I tend to cook and eat with the seasons, but as we still have three homegrown crown pumpkins from last year that desperately need using up, I went for it anyway. Pumpkins are so easy to grow and if you’re lucky, plants will just grow up out of your compost pile! That’s what happened with ours this year, out of Brother Ben’s compost pile he made back when I first started blogging, so they have had an extra good start to life. It’s a pity we won’t be around to eat the ones growing on the plants at the moment, but with Brother Ben renting our house while we are in Perth I know that they won’t go to waste. And they’ll be like payment for all the hard work Ben put into our compost pile in the first place 🙂 This one below is going to be a beauty.

• 115g (1/2 cup) butter, plus extra for greasing
• 1 tablespoon coconut oil 
• 1/2 cup (60g) brown rice flour, plus extra for the cake tin
• 1/3 cup (40g) quinoa flour
• 1/4 cup (40g) potato starch (known as potato flour in NZ), or use tapioca flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• a pinch of fine grain sea salt
• 3/4 cup (150g) light muscovado sugar or regular brown sugar, plus 1 ½ Tablespoons for the topping

• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup (130g) well-pureed roasted pumpkin*
• 1/4 cup (60ml) rice milk
• 1/3 cup (30g) lightly toasted sliced almonds

Melt the butter in a small pot over medium heat until it smells delicious and nutty, like shortbread biscuits. Between 8-10 minutes. Go slowly, and turn down if you notice the butter solids starting to colour too much or too quickly. Remove from the heat, add the coconut oil, give it all a little swirl and set aside to cool slightly while you prepare the rest of the cake ingredients.

Preheat the oven to 180 C/350 F. Butter and flour (use extra rice flour) a 22cm/8 ½ inch ring tin. Sift the brown rice flour, quinoa flour, potato starch, baking soda, cinnamon, garam masala and salt into a medium bowl. Add the sugar and using a whisk, thoroughly combine all the ingredients. Breaking any large lumps of sugar up as you go.

In a smaller bowl whisk the eggs, pumpkin puree and rice milk together, then add the cooled butter mixture. Combine with the dry ingredients and most of the sliced almonds. Mix to form a smooth batter. Pour into prepared cake tin. Sprinkle with 1 1/2 Tablespoons of sugar and remaining almonds. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool in the tin.

* To make the roasted pumpkin puree: Roast chunks of peeled and seeded pumpkin with a touch of vegetable oil at 190 C/375 F until cooked through. Puree with a stick blender until smooth.