Let Us All Eat {Gluten-Free} Cake: A Cookbook Review

Can you tell I have cookbooks on the brain? I’m back with a review for a new gluten-free baking book, Let Us All Eat Cake by Catherine Ruehle. Catherine is a successful pastry chef and cookbook author who was hit with rheumatoid arthritis and decided to turn to food to help her heal. Food is medicine, right?! (When done right, at least.)

What I love about Let Us All Eat Cake is Catherine narrows her all-purpose gluten-free flour mixes to two: a “white” flour and a whole grain blend. None of the flours in her mix are hard to find (think white rice flour, tapioca starch and potato starch for her standard blend). I only wish she had included weights as well as measurements for her recipes, because gluten-free flours vary in weight, and since I’m hardly an experienced baker (that’s an understatement!), I like the no-errors method of weighing my ingredients.

But that’s a small quibble in the face of what, for me, is gluten-free cake paradise. A lemon layer cake.

Lemon layer cake! This is beyond my favorite cake in the world, let me tell you. And Catherine’s cake amazes. A triple lemon cake that slathers lemon curd between the cake layers before toping with a lemony, creamy, buttery lemon buttercream frosting.

Friends, I’m in lemon cake heaven over here!

The cookbook itself, published by one of my favorites, Ten-Speed Press, is divided into seven sections:

• Breakfast, Snack & Coffee Cakes
• Layer Cakes
• Cupcakes
• Plates Slices & Little Cakes
• Decorate Special-Occasion Cakes (including a Halloween Fright Night Mummy Cake)
• Essential Frostings
• Tips, Tricks & Decorating Techniques

For someone like me, who last baked a cake from scratch in the mid-‘80’s in my mother’s avocado-green kitchen, a Hersey and mayonnaise cake that EVERYONE in my family (or at least me) still talk about – well, this book’s a game-changer. I feel like Catherine is there holding my hand and telling me, “Honey, just make these cakes, it’s all going to be all right. You can do it!”

Next up is a chocolate layer cake for my husband’s birthday, then the peppermint layer cake for Christmas. And then? Who knows? But at least I’ll know what I’m doing thanks to Let Us All Eat Cake.

Disclosure: this post contains affiliate links meaning I may receive compensation if you use those links. I received a complimentary copy of Let Us All Eat Cake from Blogging with Books for review; all opinions are my own.