When I got to travel to Japan just after my senior year of university I was more than a bit excited to find anything and everything matcha-flavored at the corner convenience stores. Matcha is one of those love or strongly-dislike flavors that is at once earthy and light, teasingly sweet but also pleasantly savory. If you love it, then of course Japan is the place to be to indulge in both the best straight matcha you can find, and explore a whole new world of culinary delights like matcha pudding cups or matcha pastries or matcha milk bread (the latter two I definitely could not partake in but at least…
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Gluten Free German Chocolate Cupcakes
I distinctly remember scooping giant spoonfuls of Betty Crocker German Chocolate Frosting out of the plastic tub it comes in, and eating it gleefully when I was maybe eight or nine. Prying off the red plastic top to find perfectly-solidified caramel custard, pecan and coconut goop was like finding buried treasure. How I got my hands on the tub of frosting in the first place is the real question – either very impressive childhood sneaking into the kitchen and up into the baking cupboards, or maybe we all just indulged after making a cake or cupcakes or something more reasonable. Overall, this penchant for German Chocolate topping aligns with what…
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Gluten Free Banoffee Pie Cupcakes
After a year in the “real world” – post undergrad – three of my dearest friends and I were living in a 525 square foot, 2-bedroom apartment in Mountain View, figuring out what we wanted the next phase of life to be. In all honesty, I do not know how four girls managed to live in the tiniest of apartments with about as much space to move around as a shoebox. Miraculously, we all still like each other today and somehow managed to never need the one-bathroom at the same time. It was a time of cheese parties with heaps of European gems picked up at the local Milk Pail…
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Gluten Free Strawberry Rhubarb Cupcakes
There’s a photo that I love, taken in my Grandma Charlotte and Grandpa John’s front yard up in Lake Oswego near Portland, Oregon. It’s of four- or five-year-old me, wearing a short-sleeve yellow patterned dress, hair cut short into a strawberry blond bob, little arms lifted and little hands propping up two massive rhubarb stalks, complete with plate-sized floppy leaves. I’m making a face, of course, thrilled to be showing off my crazy elephant ears plucked straight from the garden – tongue out, eyes crossed, probably just about to burst into a fit of giggles. I’m not sure who took the photo but it’s a gem. It was either right…
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Gluten Free Earl Grey Lavender Cupcakes
When I was about eight or nine years old, my grandma gathered all three of us granddaughters, my cousin Sean, my little (at the time, now she towers over me) sister, and me, into the family room of her Ashland hills house and pointed through the fragile glass doors of a carefully-treasured case to the three sets of china that she had waiting for us. One for each granddaughter, differently-colored for differently-personalitied girls. Green and gold with straight-edged patterns, pale blue and silver in little floral loops, and blush-pink, full of little roses. That one was destined for Kendra, whose middle name is Rose, and who was about 4 years…
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Gluten Free Birthday Cake Funfetti Cupcakes
I’ll tell you what, this was one of the most fun recipes I’ve gotten to develop and bake – there’s something about thousands of little tiny sticks of colored sugar that just exude child-like glee (even though we never really made funfetti cake consistently for birthdays when I was a kid). And who knows, with all of the days blending together being stuck inside 24/7 it might as well be my birthday, or yours! or your cat’s! or the dude’s who lives next door! Let’s just say to heck with it all and celebrate our birthdays whenever we want, thank you very much, while we’re all stuck in this amorphous…
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Gluten Free “Nutter Butter” Cookies
Peanut butter was a close side kick growing up. In second and third grade, I packed myself two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (on whole wheat seeded bread – pre-celiac days) for lunch every day, and then in fourth and fifth grade after I walked home from school I would scoop out more peanut butter and pair it with a kid-sized handful of chocolate chips for a high-protein snack that my parents probably didn’t approve of. It was just that good. All of this led to my dad mentioning one day that I would “make myself allergic” if I kept up my over-zealous peanut butter craze, and, two years after…
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Gluten Free Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Buttercream
Anyone else always scoop finger-fulls of cream cheese frosting off the top of the carrot cake whenever it graced the desserts table at a family gathering or school district potluck or birthday party? Nah? Well then skip half of this recipe. If you did, props to you, it’s the best frosting out there (maybe, there are lots of other great ones). Carrot cake was always one of those cakes that felt homey and fancy and old fashioned and comfortable, but was sometimes a bit too cakey or spiced or drab for my taste. Which is why this version may offend some, but I promise it’s technically carrot cake (there are…
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Gluten Free Butter Pecan Cupcakes
Anyone else have deep nostalgia for summer garage sales that start early in unfolding crisp July mornings when the sun is way ahead of everyone else sleeping in on a Sunday but as a nine year old, the most profitable day of the year is about to commence? Growing up in Eagle Point, Oregon, we had great garage sales – at least one big one a year, usually in July or August, on a weekend when the summer heat pulled neighbors from their air conditioned living rooms to shout hellos across the street or meander through the maze of tarps, folding tables, and drive ways covered in memory-soaked legos, stuffed…
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Gluten Free Dark Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes
Chocolate is one of those ingredients, things, flavors, indulgences, aphrodisiacs, that just melts you at the first bite. Maybe it’s a bit of a slower melt if you’re snapping into a 90% dark chocolate bar, but it’s still a melt. Speaking of dark chocolate, that exact nearly-100%-but-not-quite used to be my favorite chocolate – it’s like eating the most decadent slab of dirt. But really, it’s incredible. Don’t just take my word for it, go grab a bar when you’re able to leave the house and stand in line at the grocery store for 45 minutes (worth it). There’s definitely some crazy amazing dark chocolate specifically in Ecuador – ever…
