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Whisk, Whip, and Wow

Fran Costigan - Whisk, Whip, and Wow

This event was on Tuesday, August 05, 2025 at 1:00 pm Pacific, 4:00 pm Eastern

Get ready to elevate your plant-based dessert skills with none other than Chef Fran Costigan, the acclaimed Director of Vegan Pastry at Rouxbe! Join us for an exciting live session o… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

How do I adjust my recipe for a Gluten and dairy free pineapple upside down cake?

— Suzette Kenya Morales

Answer:

I can't really give you a recipe here for that, but I will tell you that there are a lot of good gluten-free recipes out in the world today. Uh, in this course we have my chocolate cake, which is called the chocolate Cake to live for. And we have a gluten-free version. We have a vanilla cupcake and we have a gluten-free version. Now it's, I see a lot of recipes and I imagine that those of you who bake do as well where the recipe writer or developer or author will just say, use half a cup of AP flour, half a cup of whole wheat pastry flour, or an equal amount of gluten-free flour. I find that very rarely works. To make something gluten-free that tastes delicious, takes a little bit more tweaking. So I have some flowers to show you. This one is Bob's red mail. It's called one-to-one baking Flour. It is complete meaning that it has some xantham gum in it. Xantham or gorg gum are necessary when you're doing a gluten-free cake to hold it together 'cause there's no gluten, right? Um, I am the, I find this to be the most successful. I like Bob's products anyway. And what I really like about this one is the ingredient list to me is clean. So I'm gonna read it to you, sweet white rice flour, whole grain, brown rice, flour, potato starch, whole grain sorghum, tapioca, and zant anthem. I like this and I find it's successful. I do find with gluten-free cakes, um, I need a little extra liquid. And whereas with all of the cake, all my cake recipes say, once you've made the batter, get that cake right into the oven so that the leavening, the baking powder, baking soda vinegar, which are, that's our triumvirate for getting cakes to rise with that eggs doesn't die. So it stays active with gluten-free cakes. I prefer to leave the batter to mingle for a while, to absorb for a bit. So yes. Now I also have, because I'm always testing, this is from King Arthur, which is another good company that I trust, and this is their one to one, or I think it's called cup for cup. The ingredients are rice flour, whole grain, brown rice flour, sorghum, tapioca, starch, potatoes, starch, cellulose, vitamin and mineral blend, reduced iron and xantham and cellulose scum. So that ingredient list is a bit busier for me, and I have found that my baked, my gluten-free baked goods taste better to me when I make the bobs. Now that said, I was doing a demo at the American Vegan Center right here in Philadelphia, and I made my gluten-free mini brownie bites that everyone likes. And I understand that they don't taste gluten-free at all. I mean, look, I'm all about, I don't wanna taste gluten for, I don't want someone to taste something and then say, oh, I can tell it's gluten-free or I can tell it's vegan. But I made some with the King Arthur flower, some with the Bobs, and I was surprised to hear, I would say two thirds of the people preferred the Bobs one third preferred the King Arthur. So some of that is flavor in terms of your dairy free adjustment. You can use any good plant milk with a nice amount of fat to make a cake.
Fran Costigan

Fran Costigan

Director of Vegan Pastry

FranCostigan.com