Gluten free Ragi almond cake

 Gluten free baking!

Yes, from past two years I have made many gluten free cakes, cookies, pasta and I feel content with the dessert options that are there even with gluten free flours. My recipe today is with Ragi flour. This flour has a beautiful dark red color, and it practically turns blackish red on cooking/baking. It has a different take on taste buds, but I personally like it. These gluten free cakes are on the heavier side than the usual refined flour cakes but if combined with other flours like gluten free oatmeal or rice flour than it is quite plausible.

I read somewhere that having multigrain flour or mixing a few flours together is not really helpful for our gut as every flour has different timings for digesting and have different nutritional value. Thus, mixing different flours can cause trouble for our system to digest them separately. 

Also, these millet flours are high in fiber and carbohydrates thus they keep you full for a long time, which is an additional advantage of eating these flours as you don't snack in between your major meals. Thus, is helpful for those planning to loose weight in a healthy way.

In today's recipe I have just used plain ragi flour with no other flour and have combined it with almonds which is my favorite nut after raisins, so I am using almonds here to add a crunch. 

INGREDIENTS

3 cups Ragi flour

2 cups dark brown sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1tsp baking soda

1tsp almond essence

Handful of chopped almonds

4 tbsp Ghee or melted butter

milk/water as required to make the batter

METHOD

1. Grease a cake tin with ghee and keep aside. Pre hear the oven at 190-degree Celsius.

2. In a bowl add the melted butter and sugar and beat using a hand whisker. Once it is all combined and light in color add the almond essence and lightly mix.

3. Sift in the ragi flour, baking powder and baking soda. Add water as required to make a cake batter. it should not be runny. It should be as thick as melted Nutella.

4. Pour the batter in the greased tin and decorate it with chopped almonds.

5. Bake for 35-40 minutes at 180-degree Celsius. Allow it to cool once done and then take it out of the tin. Enjoy it warm with a cup of tea/coffee.

P.S. You can replace half tin condensed milk instead of sugar or you can add curd also in the ingredients - 3 tbsp of curd and reduce the amount of water/milk. A combination of both condensed milk and curd will help make the cake lighter.