Let The GF, WF, DF & V’s Eat Cake! –Hale & Hearty (A Personal Flop but I Have Hope)

I have been drooling over the Hale & Hearty home-bake mixes lately. I was impressed with their pastas and am quite attracted to all of the packaging (the pictures on the boxes look yum!). The only problem is that we were never a family that bought cake mixes and somehow I have a preconceived notion that any cake that comes premixed in a box is ‘bad’ for you… If we are completely honest here I think that the truth is that cake in general is a bit of a sugar-fest luxury and when you’re talking about a Hale & Hearty food allergy-friendly ‘free from’ cake mix then the balance is a little more favourable!

Our Hale & Hearty cake mix of choice was the Classic Vanilla Sponge Mix.My Mom and I were trying to make a food allergy friendly birthday cake for my sister and this mix is:

- Gluten free
- Wheat free
- Soya free
- GMO free
- Potato free
- Dairy free adaptable
- Egg free adaptable
- Vegan adaptable
- Organic

I was delighted with how many ‘free from’ dietary requirements that the mix met and adapting the cake into Dairy free would be no problem at all in my opinion (just substitute dairy free margarine for the butter which usually works a treat) but I must admit that the Vegan recipe seemed to be a little bit of a stretch and unfortunately that was the one we had to use due to my current egg free existence.

The regular recipe asked for four eggs and 175g butter whereas the vegan recipe only needed 150g margarine and instead of eggs asked for 150ml water, soya milk or rice milk. We opted for our usual rice milk.
Although the cake tasted good it was quite dense. The dairy free ‘butter icing’ & jam filling I made just squished right out when we tried to cut it and the top layer kept sliding around on top!

All of this of course was not helped by the fact that I attempted to make a somewhat runny royal icing with the view to pouring it over top and letting it aesthetically dribble down the edges but, despite my Mother telling me over and over again, I still managed to make the icing far too runny so it actually poured right off of the cake and onto the plate. In a desperate act of covering up my head-strong mistake I keep spooning up the fallen icing and putting it back on top so the outcome was a saturated top layer which was far sweeter than intended (note: the cake was already dense before the icing soaked in but you can imagine the outcome!).

Obviously I haven’t tried the regular recipe but I do have high hopes for it. I believe that the addition of the eggs would really help the density of the cake and make it close to what was ‘intended’. The flavour is quite nice even without the eggs and the mess of icing and despite the shocking appearance of our cake we were still quite happy to gobble it up.

The cake mix is about €3.50 and the full ingredients are: wholemeal rice flour, corn flour, raw cane sugar, baking powder (raising agent: sodium bicarbonate, cream of tartar, cornflour), carob bean gum, pure bourbon vanilla, sea salt.

Nutritional Information per 100g:
Energy 1562kJ/368kcal
Protein 2.7g
Carbohydrate 87.1g
of which sugars 31.6g
Fat 1.0g
of which saturates 0.2g
monosaturates 0.2g
polysaturates 0.3g
Fibre 1.2g
Sodium 0.4g

Other Hale & Hearty Mixes:
- 4 Grain Pancake Mix
- Whoelgrain Crumble Mix
- Quick & Easy Falafel Mix
- Multi-Seed Bread Mix
- Classic Chocolate Cake Mix
- Rich Chocolate Brownie Mix
- Savoury Veggie Fritter Mix

Web: www.halenhearty.co.uk