My Nostalgic Gluten Free Angel Cake

My gluten free Angel Cake is a triple layered fluffy genoise sponge, flavoured with vanilla, raspberry and lemon and topped with buttercream.
I REALLY recommend making this – don’t be put off by the fancy genoise bit. It makes the most beautiful, lightest sponge I have ever eaten. Genuinely.

Clearly, I’d missed the genoise episode on the Bake Off and had never even heard of it until a month or so ago. So what is it? Its actually super easy but very different. It uses plain flour rather than self-raising – the secret in the fluffy, airy, sponginess is just the eggs!! You whip them up, add flour and sugar and taaa dahhhh.

Ingredients
(1) Plain Flour – you can’t use self-raising, you need gluten free plain flour!! I use FREEE by Doves Farm
(2) Caster Sugar – stick to caster sugar!! Given the lightness of the sponge, you can’t swap this for another type of sugar
(3) Icing Sugar – again, no alternative for this im afraid!
(4) Eggs – I go for the best quality, medium eggs but it will work with small/large too.
(5) Spread – I personally like using a spread like Flora (naturally dairy free) as it makes a lovely light sponge. Another alternative that works is Stork in a tub. I’m told it does work with proper butter but I think its lighter with spread
(6) Food Colouring/Flavouring – you can leave either out and just have a plain vanilla sponge or change up the flavours and colours (orange works well for example!)


My Top Tips for Gluten Free Angel Cake Perfection
(1) PREPARE 1 LAYER AT A TIME
I would usually recommend making the cake mix, dividing into 3 and adding food colourings/flavouring to each bowl. For this recipe, I wouldn’t recommend that because adding that extra step of splitting up the cake mix means you could risk losing some of that lovely air you’ve whipped into your cake!
(2) FOLDING
Here’s a really good recipe to show you how to fold in the flour and butter…
This recipe is different from mine but skip to 2 mins 40 to see how he folds the flour into his mix.
Ready for the Recipe??? Read this first
This is going to look like a LOT of steps but honestly, its just because I’ve included 10001 tips…
NUMBER 1: the pictures above make A HUGE angel cake. I’d doubled the recipe below (ie. per layer: 2 eggs, 20g of spread and 70g of sugar/flour) but its a bit unnecessary so I make it with half of that now (ie. 1 egg).
If you do want to make the supersized version like the pics, follow all of the same instructions including whisking time, just add 2 mins to the cooking time.
NUMBER 2: there are two options for the buttercream in the middle of the layers 1: Italian meringue and 2: traditional icing. For number 1, you will need a candy thermometer.

Gluten Free Angel Cake
Ingredients
Vanilla Layer
- 1 Medium Egg
- 10 grams spread
- 35 grams gluten free plain flour
- 35 grams caster sugar
Raspberry Layer
- 1 Medium Egg
- 10 grams spread
- 35 grams gluten free plain flour
- 35 grams caster sugar
- 1/2 a Capful of raspberry flavouring and tiny bit of pink food colouring
Lemon Layer
- 1 Medium Egg
- 10 grams spread
- 35 grams gluten free plain flour
- 35 grams caster sugar
- 1/2 a Capful of lemon flavouring and tiny bit of yellow food colouring
Italian Meringue Buttercream *need a candy thermometer*
- 1 egg white
- 100 grams caster sugar
- 85 grams spread
Alternative to the Buttercream
- 200 grams icing sugar
Topping
- 100 grams of icing sugar
Instructions
- Pre-heat your oven to 175oC.
- Line a 2lb loaf tin with baking paper.
Vanilla Layer
- Place the spread into a pan on a low heat, until its fully melted. Set aside to cool.
- Place the eggs and sugar into a mixing bowl.
- Add about 1 inch of water to a saucepan. Bring to a simmer. Once the water is simmering, place the mixing bowl ontop of the saucepan. >Make sure the base of the mixing bowl doesn't touch the water otherwise it'll cook and scramble the eggs!
- Whisk the egg and sugar together whilst on the pan for exactly 20 seconds.>The idea is to melt the sugar. You can use a hand whisk or an electric whisk at this point, whatever feels easiest to use whilst over the cooker.
- Remove the bowl from the pan and place it on the worktop. Whisk until its thick and airy. When you lift your whisk, it should form ribbon patterns in the mixture, which will hold their shape for around 3-5 seconds.>I always find it a little scary to judge when its at the perfect consistency, so its helpful to time it. It takes 4 mins with an electric whisk on full speed to get the consistency I'm looking for.
- Sift the flour over the egg mixture and FOLD in with a spatula/large spoon. >Don't use the whisk as you'll lose all that lovely air!! >There's a great video for how to do this, I've added it in the "tips" section of the blog post above. My tip: if you lean your bowl to one side (like the pic) and repeat the folding action, you can see if there's any sneaky flour that is still sitting at the bottom of the bowl.
- Pour the melted butter into the bowl and repeat the folding action until its fully incorporated.>Tip: lean the bowl to the side again.
- Gently pour the mixture into your loaf tin and place into the oven for 13 mins. >To test if its cooked, press the lightly on the top of the cake and it should spring back 🙂
- Remove from the oven, lift the cake out of the loaf tin, remove the baking paper and leave to cool on a cooling rack. >This is one of very few cakes that can instantly be removed from the baking tin as soon as its been taken out of the oven
Lemon & Raspberry Layer
- Repeat the steps above for the lemon and raspberry layer. Add the flavourings after step 5 (ie. whisk up the egg & sugar and then whisk in the flavourings & colourings using the electric whisk to ensure even spread of flavouring/colouring – its much easier than folding in at the end).
Italian Meringue Buttercream *need a candy thermometer*
- Add 3 tbsp of water and the caster sugar to a saucepan. Turn to a very low heat and keep stirring the mixture until the sugar has melted >You can tell when the sugar has melted by placing a spoon into the mix. When you lift out the spoon, there shouldn't be any visible grains of sugar visible.
- At that point, leaving the pan on the heat, whisk the egg white until they reach soft peaks.
- Increase the heat of the sugar/water solution so it starts to boil. Leave (don't stir) until it reaches 120°C/250°F on your cooking/candy thermometer.
- Slowly pour the sugar solution into the egg white, whisking at high speed constantly. >Try to avoid pouring the hot sugar onto the sides of the bowl as it will instantly cool and get stuck there.
- Add 1 tbsp of butter/spread to the mixture and whisk in. Repeat for the rest of the butter.
- Place into the fridge/freezer to chill and firm up. >Ideally, leave it for at least 15 mins in the freezer.
Alternative
- Mix the icing sugar with a tiny dash of water until really thick.
Construction
- Once all 3 layers of cake are completely cool, layer them with the icing and stack them up!
- You can then either (1) dust the top with icing sugar or (2) combine a little icing sugar with water and drizzle over the top. Then, make a small amount of pink icing sugar and drizzle in lines over the top of the white (along the short sides). Drag a toothpick lengthways (opposite direction to your pink lines) along the cake to create the feathering .
Want some more baking recipes? Head over my Baking Section for loads of ideas!
Or looking for my regular vanilla sponge, here’s my favourite Gluten Free Victoria Sponge!
2 Comments
Helan
5th January 2021 at 4:49 am
Thanks For Sharing this Amazing Recipe. My Family Loved It. I will be sharing this Recipe with my Friends. Hope They will like it.
George
21st January 2021 at 11:04 am
Really nice recipe. Thanks for sharing.