Earlier, I wrote about weddings and dietary restrictions in the context of Chelsea’s non-vegetarian food but gluten-free wedding cake.  I wondered if it was rude in any sense to deprive my guests of gluten, because of my dietary needs.  I got over that pretty quickly, my wedding will be entirely gluten-free.

Since my wedding is a big part of my life right now, I’ve decided to introduce a new category of posts- my gluten-free wedding adventures.  My first adventure occurred over Thanksgiving Day weekend.  I took advantage of the long weekend to go to Rochester, celebrate Alex’s 25th birthday, and wedding plan.  On my list of things to do this trip was explore my dessert options.

ALex and I decided a while back that we wanted cupcakes.  The thing about wedding cake is that nobody eats it.  Even when I could eat the cake, I didn’t.   I was too busy dancing to think about grabbing a slice, a fork, a plate, and then find a seat to get my sugar fill.  So I knew from the start we didn’t want to blow our budget on something few guests enjoy.  Cupcakes are a great alternative.  They don’t require more than maybe a napkin to enjoy and they allow more flavor options.  Lastly, I think that gluten-free cupcakes would hold up better than a three tiered cake.

Rochester has two gluten-free bakeries, which is pretty remarkable considering its size.  New York City only really has two dedicated gluten-free bakeries itself (babycakes and Tu-lu’s).  Similarly, one of the Rochester gluten-free establishments is also vegan.  Since we haven’t made a decision yet on which to go with (or we haven’t told our vendors) I’m not naming names here.  We’ll call the gluten-free only bakery, GF and the gluten-free vegan bakery, GFV.

GF Bakery

This bakery wasn’t open that weekend, so Alex had to pick up the 4 cupcakes samples plus dinner rolls on Wednesday and resist the urge to devour them until I got there on Friday. He let me know on Wednesday that he had sampled the pumpkin bread and it exceeded his expectations which set my hopes pretty high.  When I arrived Friday morning starving, I decided I’d try the rolls with some cheese and meat for a European type breakfast.  The rolls were frozen, so we de-thawed them in the microwave for 20 seconds and then toasted them for 4 minutes in the oven.  They came out perfectly browned, warm, and moist.  They tasted slightly sweet and I decided that guests would just think it was corn bread, if anything other than regular rolls.

Later that day, we tried the cupcakes.  I had requested 4 flavors: carrot, lemon, chocolate, and vanilla.  I tried the carrot first and was blown away- there were shredded carrots visible in the cake and it was moist and tasty.  The frosting was a delicious cream cheese and went perfectly with it.  I then sampled the other three, and realized that it was tasting good, but not really different, flavor to flavor.  All I was getting was sweet and moist.  However, there was not a hint of xanthan gum and they weren’t crumbly.  Fine, I thought, these would make awesome cupcakes for our wedding, hoping that if we went with them, they’d be able to style them a bit better.

GFV Bakery

I was able to schedule an actual appointment with this bakery.  Frankly, I didn’t really expect to love the vegan cupcakes and had already make up my mind thinking they couldn’t be better.  Maybe it was my low expectations, but GFV really impressed me.  We tasted chocolate, vanilla, marble, carrot, and pumpkin. I first tried the carrot, then the vanilla, then the marble, the chocolate, and finally the pumpkin.  Every cupcake was unique and delicious.  The carrot was subtly sweet and very carrot-y.  The chocolate was rich tasting and slightly bitter.  The vanilla was nutty, which I found out was due to the flax seed in the batter.  I was shocked.  I like the vegan cupcakes better!  It was clear that the ingredients used were all carefully selected, organic, high quality, and sometimes fair trade.  I didn’t think I cared about all that until I did.  The one drawback was the frosting.  Although the application was a stylish- with the frosting in a cute swirl in the middle of the cake, it was hard due to the lack of dairy.  It was still tasty, just not the texture you expect.  I think I’ll get over that though, because they even said they could guarantee a nut-free batch for my peanut-allergic sister by using all new bowls, whisks and pans.   AND they have 10 cake flavors and 5 frosting flavors.  They have RED VELVET.

Can you tell I liked them?  A lot?

So, I know before I said I hadn’t made my decision.  But, I think I made my decision.  Next gluten-free adventure will be picking out the menu!