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 Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Cupcakes
Now these cupcakes may have a very adult name, but they don’t have to be just for the adults! These gluten free chocolate bourbon pecan cupcakes are a Southerner’s daydream. Soft and moist chocolate cupcakes with bourbon added, so when they bake the alcohol cooks off but the bourbon flavor stays behind. I have to say, I’m not a bourbon girl myself, but these cupcakes have just the right amount of the flavor, and none of the bight! They’re topped with decadent and much too rich butter pecan buttercream frosting!Other than being sprinkled on top for decoration, the brown sugar roasted pecans are mixed with homemade caramel into this buttercream.…
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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…
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Gluten Free Caramel Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies
The macadamia nut is such a divine little bauble. What a nut! Buttery, with a slight tang and a delicate crunch that most nuts just dream of. And, unbeknownst to me (until about 10 minutes ago), they’re indigenous to Australia! Typically, when I think of these expensive, tiny, orbs, I think of neatly-packed Hawaiian Host boxes with sleeves of caramel and chocolate-enrobed salted, roasted macadamia nuts – the classic gift that numerous friends in college would bring back from Maui after winter breaks at home on the islands. But no! Like so many foods, the origin and original champion of these nuts was not the region that eventually made them…
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Gluten Free Strawberry Cupcakes
Strawberries are a fruit loved the world round. You see strawberry images on clothing and accessories; and you see strawberry flavored everything in the grocery store. But just switching from strawberry flavoring to a real, fresh strawberry? Absolutely to die for. One of my first memories of my parent’s produce garden was picking the sun-warmed strawberries and biting into them, just for them to be gone in just one quick bite. These gluten free strawberry cupcakes really bring me back to those simpler summers. For the simplest and easiest of desserts, we have to look at strawberries and cream. Now these gluten free strawberry cupcakes are filled with fresh strawberries,…
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Gluten Free Almond and White Chocolate Sprinkles Cookies
These are the happiest cookies I’ve ever made. It’s amazing how gleeful you can get tossing cookie dough into heaps of rainbow sprinkles. Sprinkles! They’re such a great invention! These cookies are an homage to the incredible Liz of Cup of Ambition – another stellar baking blog that you should absolutely check out right now. It’s not all gluten free but it’s super inspirational and has some great gluten free options! She has an awesome Sprinkles Cookies recipe over there and after staring at her photos and wishing I had one of those pockets-of-sunshine on my brief lunch break (here’s to working from home and having a “home office” right…
