There are tons of good gluten-free cake recipes on-line. Most of them call for several kinds of flour in addition to xantham gum and other modifiers. Gluten-free Girl has a good variety of recipes: http://glutenfreegirl.com/category/recipes/cakes/
I find that if I'm making a birthday cake for someone who is not eating gluten (my boyfriend) I will either buy the most mainstream mix I can find (betty crocker makes chocolate and vanilla gluten-free cake mixes) as these taste as much like a "real" cake as one can get, or at least as much like a cake that a 5 year old would love. Or I make a cheesecake, substituting an appropriately flavored gluten-free cookie for the graham crackers in the crust. I can recommend the icebox lemon cheesecake that was on Cook's Country recently (I'm not sure if it's available on their website currently, but there are a lot of blogs with mildly modified versions), but only if you have a stand mixer.
There's also always the flourless chocolate cake, something that I adore eating, but have never quite gotten right when making myself (I suspect my oven is the culprit).
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I find that if I'm making a birthday cake for someone who is not eating gluten (my boyfriend) I will either buy the most mainstream mix I can find (betty crocker makes chocolate and vanilla gluten-free cake mixes) as these taste as much like a "real" cake as one can get, or at least as much like a cake that a 5 year old would love. Or I make a cheesecake, substituting an appropriately flavored gluten-free cookie for the graham crackers in the crust. I can recommend the icebox lemon cheesecake that was on Cook's Country recently (I'm not sure if it's available on their website currently, but there are a lot of blogs with mildly modified versions), but only if you have a stand mixer.
There's also always the flourless chocolate cake, something that I adore eating, but have never quite gotten right when making myself (I suspect my oven is the culprit).