Gluten Free Recipe - GF Yellow Cupcakes

Sooooo, my GF baby's birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I was finally feeling the need to figure out how to make GF cake. At first, I had thought that I would just make a box mix for her party and buy her a special cupcake from a bakery, but somehow I ended up deciding to just figure out how to make everything myself. I do that sometimes, you know. Make things hard when they don't have to be. It gives me something to complain about later.

I got a good start from THIS recipe that has been tried, tested and approved through Allrecipes, but I couldn't just trust the recipe. I had to mess with it to try to make it better. Remember about how I like to make things hard on myself? Case in point.

It all worked out well for me, though, because I really did end up making some pretty freaking tasty cupcakes and I will now share the recipe with you so that you can mess with it and try to make it better.

1 3/4 cups GF baking blend

1/2 cup tapioca starch

1 t. salt

1 t. baking soda

2 1/2 t. baking powder

1 t. xanthan gum

3 eggs

1 1/4 cup sugar

2/3 cup mayonaise

1 cup milk

2 t. vanilla

in a special bowl, blend flours, salt, soda, powder and xanthan gum.

in mixer, beat sugar, eggs and mayo until fluffy. add milk and vanilla and mix.

add flour mixture to the mixer. mix until a little gooey. (I dare you to use the term 'mix' more in a single step)

fill muffin cups 1/2 full.

bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes.

ok, so this was kind of a fun experiment because, you know, the more you mix something with tapioca starch in it, the more stiff it gets. I made my cupcakes in 3 different batches with 3 different batter consistencies. The first batch was runny, I had to pour the batter into the liners and they came out like so...

No bad, not bad.

On the second batch, my daughter and I wanted to mix food coloring in, so some of them turned pink and the batter got a little stiffer....

They held their shape a lot better than the first batch. No sunken middles. Ready for the side by side comparison? Ready?

Now my daughter wouldn't stop stirring the third batch because she wanted to make them purple. It didn't go so well. Not only did the purple food coloring just make them look... gross, they turned into mutant, growth ridden cupcakes.

Those are them in the front, with the lumps.

So basically, I've decided that I like my batter a little gooey because it helps to make sure the cupcakes hold their fluffy shape, and that a little stirring can go a long way.

But the recipe is good. I'm telling you this. The flavor was good, the texture was good. I frosted them with some strawberry cream cheese frosting, took them to a family dinner and they got eaten by everyone.

I'm SO ready for this birthday party.