I could not wait for someone to request this pairing as a commissioned cake, and it finally happened! A friend recalled the chocolate hazelnut cupcakes I had made earlier this year (because sharing cupcakes during tough times is always a good thing) and asked it I could make it as a giant birthday cake. Answer: of course. So here it is in all its glory: four layers of the most heavenly, moist, cloud-like hazelnut cake (made with heaps of finely ground, freshly-roasted hazelnuts because that’s truly the only way to eat these perfumed little beauties), enrobed in the silkiest chocolate hazelnut buttercream, topped with dark chocolate ganache, and then decorated…
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Gluten Free Angel Food Cake with Berries and Cream
Anyone else remember the little filled-in-donut shortcakes they sold in American grocery stories, stacked amid clamshells of summer strawberries and spray cans of whipped cream? Thinking back, I don’t think they were actually angel food cake, but I always sort of thought they were, and a personal angel food cake blew my mind. Angel food cake has always been a favorite. But a favorite in the sense that I’ve only actually eaten it a handful of times and always considered it too ethereal, hard to make, and special to ever consider having for every birthday, holiday, or weekend. Which, I now realize, was a HUGE mistake. Because I LOVE angel…
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Gluten Free Chocolate Coffee Walnut Layer Cake
Walnuts are the ones that are always left out. They don’t have a whole pie dedicated to them at Thanksgiving, they don’t supply millions of school children (and children at heart) with America’s favorite sandwich, they don’t even make milk (apparently even cashews do now!)! But they are one of my favorite nuts. Arguably the most delicate nut, buttery, with a light crunch and a hint of bitterness that rounds out any treat. I used to add them to my morning bowl of yogurt and berries every day, and still have a strong affinity for their papery skins and carefully-folded contours. So, when we visited friends in Paso Robles a…
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Gluten Free Halloween Cake
It was a dark and stormy night…and I was creeping through the kitchen to bake up a spooky fright! Well… maybe not a fright, but definitely this gluten free Halloween cake! If you couldn’t already tell, Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve, or Samhain is my favorite holiday. It combines some of my favorite things: dressing up, spooky/Gothic aesthetic, and chocolate of course! Now, this lovely holiday has evolved over the years into what it is today, but it originated with the Pagan celebration of Samhain (pronounced Saw-wen). It was the Pagan’s end of the year celebration before the start of the new darker part of the year on November 1st. It…
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Mini Gluten Free Red Velvet Bundt Cakes with Cream Cheese Glaze
Happy almost Halloween!! It’s definitely a different feel this year, stuck inside and terrified of something we can’t see or touch but that is all-too-real. Not quite the Halloween scare we were all hoping for – though I heard that some car washes have transformed themselves into drive-through haunted houses if you’re craving even more scariness this weekend! In all seriousness, though, there are tons of people who wake up every day afraid for their life, whether that be because of COVID (wear a mask, it’s really not that hard), or because of the color of their skin. STILL. In 2020. In the wealthiest nation in the world and also…
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Gluten Free Neapolitan Pound Cake with Neapolitan Glaze
There’s something delightful about the Neapolitan trio: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry smushed together into perfect bands of ice cream or cake or candy, layers of those three most classic (at least here) flavors that you never have to choose from again. I remember only ever eating one flavor out of the tub of Neapolitan ice cream as a kid, which, looking back, seems like such a bummer because the three flavors together really are perfectly, simplistically lovely. But hey! A tub of Neapolitan meant whatever mood you were in, whether it was straight forward vanilla, silky chocolate, or summery strawberry, you were covered. After a quick bit of “research” (one…
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Gluten Free Spiced Mandarin Orange Pound Cake with Spiced Blood Orange Tea
I’m not a fan of orange-flavored desserts. But here’s an orange (more specifically, mandarin) pound cake! Contradiction: absolutely. Successful baking venture: also absolutely. Chocolate orange is, in my book, one of the highest offenders, which I know is a wildly unpopular opinion. I used to love those chocolate oranges that we got as gifts on Christmas morning or Christmas eve and smash on the table until they splintered into a dozen perfectly-molded chocolate orange segments, melting on our tongues. Years and years of these, and probably some unfavorable experience with an overly-sweet orange cake over did it for the orange stuff and I retreated to safer spaces of lemon, lime,…
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Gluten Free Cranberry Bundt Cake with Cranberry Glaze
I remember being shocked and awed when I learned how cranberries were harvested. The mental image of a bunch of people in waders sloshing around in an artificial bog with millions of cranberries floating around was delightful – undoubtedly a lot more time consuming and tricky than I’m making it out to be but what a way to gather bucket loads (boatloads, if you will) of these deep crimson gems. Cranberries are strange, if you think about it. An entire bag of them weighs less than anything else you can pick up in the produce section, and they hard and dry until you toss them in with sugar and water…
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Mini Gluten Free Banana Nut Loaves
When I was little, I remember trailing our shopping cart through Costco, delighted every time we passed (and stopped at) a sample table – getting to savor a bite of sausage or a cracker or a tiny cup of smoothie made with an on-sale blender. But the best part of those shopping trips were the muffins. If you’ve ever had a Costco muffin, you most likely have a similar nostalgia around these larger-than-life bakery flats. Because they were huge! At the time of first eating them, they may even have been bigger than my face – a muffin that, when cut into quarters, would more resemble a normal, homemade-sized muffin.…
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Gluten Free Chocolate Mousse Cake
Chocolate mousse. That lighter-than-air, seemingly miraculous dessert that’s the stuff of high-end restaurants and single-serve custard cups of sublime chocolatey goodness. I’d always balked at the idea of making it at home – intimidated by the technique or what I thought I needed to do to make it. But there are many ways to make a mousse! (feels like that should be a saying…) and this one is gosh darn easy as pie (or cake). In times of isolation and social distancing, tracking those “safe” friends/folks in your bubble and making plans to get gussied up and cook a fancy meal add a bit more excitement to the COVID life.…
