Anyone else remember getting giant tubs of cheap Neapolitan ice cream at the grocery store as a kid? Some were definitely better than others, and half the time I’m pretty sure I just scooped through the chocolate layer, leaving the less exciting vanilla to the right. But it was glorious – simply having the choice of not one, not two, but THREE ice cream flavors in one bucket? Incredible. And a good strawberry ice cream can’t be beat – the ones with threads of real strawberries throughout, heightened by the heaps of pink dye that made this seem like the perfect summer treat. Bowls or cones, whatever you chose, were…
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Gluten Free Piña Colada Cupcakes
The best piña colada I’ve ever had was also the most difficult to get to. Difficult in a good way – just lots of legs of transportation involved. It was also the best because I got to enjoy it on a tiny beach alongside my younger, taller, sister, Kendra, the other half of Sisters Sans Gluten. We started taking “Sister Trips” every year after our first trip together for Kendra’s 21st birthday, when we both flew down to LA, stayed in our first solo AirBnB, and spent the weekend in Universal Studios (Harry Potter world), around farmers markets and old bookstores and dining halls in downtown LA, and generally being…
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Gluten Free Monster Cookies
These were, perhaps, the trickiest cookies I’ve made to date. I had a grand plan for creating some kind of “kitchen sink” gluten free cookie with pretzels and chips and chocolate chunks and, my favorite, chocolate/candy-covered sunflower seeds. I’d been planning to make these darn cookies for over a month, tinkering with the recipe idea on paper and waiting for ingredients to arrive, when I finally got the chance to make them this weekend. I optimistically tossed in all of the add-ins and, like most of my other cookie recipes, I chilled the dough in the fridge before baking. In the midst of an already-busy baking weekend, I missed my…
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Gluten Free Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes
It’s officially winter in San Francisco again – or, as we call it, “summer.” We seem to exist in a perpetual state of fog, sudden breezes that make a wool coat sound like a great idea in July, and brief, spotty, but glorious moments of sun and blue sky. In the midst of everything else going on this year, it’s key to take a moment to appreciate those sun-soaked moments, and then to plan for your next cozy night in in August with heaps of blankets and a good Netflix show (Dark, and Dear White People are fantastic). For those cooler days, these gluten free Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes give…
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Gluten Free Oatmeal Cream Pies
In fifth grade, my teacher had a system of points you could accumulate for helping other students or cleaning up the classroom or doing generally nice things for the other 10 year olds packed into the first-floor learning space. At first, she would give you small pieces of paper that noted that you had “done a good dee” or something like that, but then, she leveled up the playing field and gave away Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies (this was only a year before the celiac diagnosis). Now, if you’ve never had the pleasure of biting into the unbelievably softy, slightly chewy, deeply sweet and molasses-y thin sandwich cookies that…
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Gluten Free Glazed Fruit Financiers
Grown up tea parties are the best. Something so simple but so out of the ordinary (at least here in the States it is – we’re jealous of the normalcy high tea and tea in general enjoy across the pond). High tea is particularly fun because of the veritable tower of treats that usually accompanies a good cream tea or pot of other varieties of hot beverage. We’ve gotten lucky enough to sample gluten free high teas on three continents now – here in the US, around London of course, and one of the best ones yet was at the Belmond Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town, South Africa. If…
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Gluten Free Fig and Rosemary Honey Cupcakes
Late summer droops like the slopes of so many purple, green, and yellow figs. I remember reading a book in 6th grade (11 years old) about a young boy in ancient Egypt who embarked on a terrifying adventure through a Pharaoh-dictated city, trying to find and then hide (I think?) a golden vase. Besides the very heat that radiated off the pages that described day after day in the desert, the one thing that stuck bizarrely in my mind from that book was a phrase about figs and how they were the fruit of the divine – something so sweet and sumptuous they were only good enough for the gods.…
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Gluten Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Mud Cookies
These cookies are for Hope. You know those friends who, even after years of losing track of each other, you fall back into friendship with so easily it’s like coming home? Hope is one of those friends. We hadn’t even seen each other since high school, back when we were both feeling a bit stuck in a rut in tiny Oregon towns, finding our outlet in community theater productions (I think we met on the set of West Side Story, so many years ago) and figuring out who we were. Fast forward nearly ten years and after watching her lay a foundation in actually writing, singing, and producing her own…
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Gluten Free Guava Cheesecake Cupcakes
These gorgeously-pink fairy tale cupcakes are 100% in existence because of a dear friend who, when asked what new cupcake flavors she’d like to see us make, gave us this winning combo: guava cheesecake. What’s not to love? Guava? fantastic. Cheesecake? also fantastic. Cupcakes? awesome. Guava has a light flavor that seems to wrap itself around the cheesecake swirl in a dreamy summer flourish, making us wish we weren’t stuck in smoky San Francisco and instead out somewhere more-frequently sunny and preferably with a swimmable body of water. Thanks Clarissa for championing these incredible cupcakes that are a new favorite. And if you’re lamenting not being able to make these…
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Gluten Free Raspberry Vanilla Bean Layer Cake
Over thirty fires have cropped up across California in the past five days, due to late summer heat waves, high winds, and unexpected lightning and thunder storms. Situated in down-town San Francisco, we’re usually safely far from the path of any wildfires, and only have to worry about smoke-tinged air cloaking the peninsula, blown across the state. But this time they’re even closer to home. There’s a strange cognitive dissonance when fire season starts – while admiring the nectarine-orange sunrises and movie-filter sunsets we’re worried about friends and family around the state and wary of the flash-fire devastation that tore so many from their homes in years past. If our…
