Chocolate cake is a forever cake. It’s indulgent, smooth, melts you into a puddle of cozy comfort food bliss, and is usually pretty easy to make so barrier to entry is pretty low. I know we have lots of different chocolate cakes on our blog, but this one is one I’m particularly proud of: a gluten free dark chocolate earl grey cake – filled with earl grey pastry cream, dark chocolate buttercream, and an earl grey chocolate ganache (SWOON). It bloomed out of a pure creative chance: two leftover chocolate cake layers and an afternoon free to just play! Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE planning and designing new cakes…
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Ultra Pink Gluten Free Strawberry Angel Food Cake
Any high school musical theater folks out there? Or musical theater folks in general? I was BIG into musical theater in high school – and still am, though I’m just a fan off the stage instead of on it. Those moments before the curtain rose, or each time you waited in the wings for an entrance, or mimed dance moves back stage to get out all of that nervous energy were the ultimate thrill. And every time that curtain came up or you walked onto the stage you were entirely free of yourself – you were living this totally fantastically new life of Cecily Cardew or Plate number 5 or…
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Giant Gluten Free Banana Nut Muffins
Anyone else have those fond childhood memories of staring wide-eyed at tray upon tray of muffins bigger than your FACE at Costco? Well, even if not, I’m sure you could conjure up images of unimaginably large muffins, in varying flavors (the chocolate chocolate ones were always the biggest pull as a kid, though it was only for a special treat that we got those ones), usually sliced into quarters to mix and match or to actually be a reasonable sized-snack. Our mom used to run two separate girl scout troops for each of us growing up (still unclear how she managed both, plus working, plus finances, plus just being a…
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Gluten Free Raspberry Chocolate Layer Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Buttercream
Is there anything better than a slice of gloriously-rich chocolate cake. Rhetorical, of course. This one was a particular stunner: four layers of the fluffiest, most decadent gluten free chocolate cake layers you’ll ever eat, filled with chocolate cream cheese buttercream (YES you heard that right – cream cheese frosting in CHOCOLATE? yes), raspberry puree + preserves, and bright raspberry whipped cream, and enrobed in more chocolate cream cheese buttercream, a rich chocolate ganache drip, and topped with gorgeous fresh flowers and raspberries. Just go ahead and let out that sigh of relief that it’s ALL GLUTEN FREE and serve yourself a second or third piece. One of the best…
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Gluten Free Almond Shortbread with White Chocolate
One of the best holidays as kids was Easter – the easter baskets, decorating real eggs, filling plastic ones with all the chocolates, marshmallow peeps, jelly beans, and other goodies we could get our hands on, and then the actual day-of – conducting the most elaborate hides and hunts of all of the easter goods in our backyard. When we were really little, we’d go to our friend Nathan’s house out in the hills above Ashland, where he and his family would host a massive egg hunt every year in the forests, tumbled trees, creek, and hillsides surrounding their home. We’d dress up in spring florals, do our hair, wear…
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Gluten Free Chocolate Caramel Pecan Tart
Currently looking for a boatload of friends who want to share this MASSIVE bottle of gorgeously rich 10 yo Tawny Port while indulging with a slice of this gluten free chocolate caramel and pecan tart because WOW I need to eat some real food and not just this glorious combo all day. But hey, it’s a heck of a way to start a Friday! This is our second collab with a brilliant wine-expert friend in Vienna, Austria, Iker Berasaluce (check out his Instagram here!!) pairing incredible wines with incredible gluten free desserts, and it does not disappoint. The first collab we did was bright, fresh, very citrusy, and AMAZING. Props…
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Gluten Free Lemon Cake Parfaits
For these gluten free lemon cake parfaits we are giving a huge shout out to Simply Delish for this recipe inspiration! Full disclosure – we joined the Simply Delish affiliate program which essentially entails them sending us a box of their gluten/dairy-free pudding and jel boxed mixes every few months, and us coming up with recipes that involve those boxed mixes as an ingredient every month, so you’ll see a few other Simply Delish-inspired recipes on here once in a while! This one uses their classic Vanilla Instant Pudding boxed mix and if you’re into it, use our specific link here to go check out their products, and use our 10% discount code SSGPUDDING to get…
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Gluten Free Raspberry White Chocolate Amaretto Cake
This is one of my favorite cakes I’ve ever made – inspired by the absolutely glorious-looking raspberry, white chocolate, and almond cake by Baker by Nature – though tweaked to be gluten free, a bit less sweet, heavy on the white chocolate (full-on whipped ganache instead of a white chocolate buttercream), with lots of fresh raspberries with the raspberry jam, fresh whipped cream and extra almond buttercream to boot – and toasted almonds to add a final touch! I highly recommend checking out the initial recipe-inspiration linked above, but if you’re looking for a less sweet, lots-of-white-chocolate, extra fillings, gluten free version, this is the recipe for you! The almond/amaretto…
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Gluten Free Spumoni Cupcakes
Alright, who else has had spumoni ice cream before? I have this magical, hazy memory of getting it once (maybe I got it every time we went – who knows at this point) at Antonio’s – one of the three restaurants in “downtown” Eagle Point where we grew up. Eagle Point was a town of 5,000 when we moved there in 1998, though as a 5 year old the sense that it was the town the size of a pinhead didn’t really register (and Kendra was 2 so she definitely didn’t have a clue at the time). The downtown consisted of one street. Not like a city street that stretches…
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Gluten Free Yuzu Tart with Swiss Meringue and Sweet Sauternes Wine
Here’s to friends far away – and to reconnecting with folks you meet years later to collaborate on awesome projects that blend two perfectly-balanced passions: wine and dessert! This whole post starts back in the summer of 2019 (remember those days? no masks, hugs, handshakes, and seeing people’s smiles?) when we visited one of my best friends in Vienna, where she’s living her best life. She happens to have a marvelous rooftop terrace just above her apartment where we organized a late-summer dinner paired with incredible wine, and we met her downstairs neighbors, Iker and his boyfriend Felix. And Iker happens to be not only an incredible academic (just a…
