Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

This cake needs no frosting. It has a moist, tender crumb and looks appealing just as is. Ice cream is optional.

The Daisy Sour Cream company published an ad and recipe in the Sunday newspaper. Hallie converted it to be gluten free and decided to make 2/3 of a recipe to fill an 8" square pan instead of a full recipe for 2-8" rounds. The conversion yielded a slightly richer cake to compensate for the dryness of gluten free flour. Please note that Daisy has a recipe on their website that makes both cake and frosting, but the newspaper recipe was for the cake only. (Good thing because simple is best. The web recipe is a bit convoluted as it is written.) Still, credit goes to Daisy for a great cake that your family will never say, "It's dry. Is it gluten free?"

Moist Chocolate Cake
Amount	Measure	Ingredient
1/2	Cup	Vegetable oil (Hallie used lite flavor olive oil)
1	Large	Egg (Hallie did not use 2/3 of an egg)
1-1/3	teaspoons	Vanilla extract
1/3	Cup	Granulated sugar
2/3	Cup	Dark or light brown sugar
1-1/2	Ounces	Melt a mixture of semi-sweet and bitter-sweet chocolate chips. (Don't use unsweetened baking chocolate squares, but you could use semi-sweet squares.)
1-1/3	Cups	Gluten free flour (Hallie used this flour blend by Carol Fenster.)
1/2	Cup	Unsweetened cocoa
1/2	teaspoon	Guar gum (If you don't have guar gum, you can use xanthan gum. But guar is preferred because it is springy rather than stretchy.)
2-1/2	teaspoons	Baking soda
1/4	teaspoon	Salt (optional)
2/3	Cup	Warm water (or coffee or whatever liquid, but not citrus)
2/3	Cup	Lite sour cream

You can use your convection oven if you have one. Heat oven to 350° F.

Spread a thin coating of margarine over an 8" X 8" square pan and then dust with cocoa. If your pan is non-stick, then don't dust with flour or cocoa. (Hallie coated with oil and didn't dust at all.)
In a small bowl, whisk gluten free flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, guar gum, and salt.
In the work bowl of your stand mixer, beat vegetable oil, egg and vanilla extract for 1 minute at medium speed.
Add white and brown sugars, and beat for 1 minute.
Add melted chocolate, and beat for 1 minute.
Alternately add dry mixture and water, beginning and ending with dry. Hallie used 1/3 dry, 1/2 water, 1/3 dry, rest of water, rest of dry.
Finally, add the sour cream and blend thoroughly.
Pour the cake batter into the baking pan and bake for 30 - 35 minutes or until a stainless steel cake tester comes out clean. It might take longer or shorter depending on if your oven cooks hot or cold.
Allow to cool for 10 minutes before removing the cake from the pan. This cake came out of the oven really high, but fell a little while cooling. Don't worry about it. We also served the cake right from the pan.
If you decide to frost the cake, then allow the cake to cool completely before frosting. If you want to fancy it up but don't like frosting, use a dusting of powdered sugar.