This was the cakes to end all cakes. Every year, my sister and I would enter things into the Jackson county fair. Yes, it does sound like we just stepped out of a mid-20th-century Rogers and Hammerstein musical, but honestly these were some of the most exciting parts of summers in Southern Oregon! There were loads of categories too, which meant you could enter photographs, canned goods, home-sewn dresses, paintings, drawings, and baked goods all at once and vie for county-fair fame by coming out with one of those multi-colored, frilled, glorious objects: the GRAND PRIZE ribbon. The first price ribbon wasn’t too bad either but the grand prize, or…
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Gluten Free Strawberry Lemonade Layer Cake
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is! Earlier this year, in June, we were commissioned to make a big birthday cake for a friend and we came up with the ultimate summer combo: strawberry and lemon cake layers, wrapped in more silky strawberry and lemon buttercream – the strawberry lemonade cake! We were subsequently commissioned by another friend who had tasted the cake at the June birthday, to make it again for their other friend’s birthday. And now, months later and solidly out of summer, one of my longest friends decided the cake she wanted for her November birthday was, you guessed it, the epitome of summer, the strawberry…
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Gluten Free Chocolate Hazelnut Layer Cake
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 Gingerbread House
Some of my fondest holiday memories involve taking a hammer to a month-old, stale-as-all-get-out gingerbread house and watching chunks of dry gingerbread, rock-hard gum drops, and royal icing fly in every direction across the kitchen floor. If you’re also reminiscing about the utter destruction of something so beautiful and yet so inedible, this is a post for you. After years (a decade?) hiatus, we decided that we should make a gingerbread house this year. Being older and oh-so wiser, we figured we should construct an epic house, from our own template, with homemade gluten free gingerbread that we carefully piece together with hot caramel instead of the takes-forever-to-set royal icing.…
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Gluten Free Decorated Gingerbread Cookies
These may some of the most iconic cookies known to children across the Christmas-celebrating world. From finger-painted gingerbread people at age three, to a one-legged gingerbread fellow in Shrek, decorated gingerbread cookies hold nostalgia and holiday cliche in the perfectly-spiced, cookie-cutter package. So it seemed only appropriate that this year, of all years, we go back to our deepest, nearly-forgotten family traditions and make a truck load of gingerbread cookies and spend an entire evening decorating them and turning the kitchen table into a royal icing Jackson Pollock. This was actually our first time making homemade gingerbread dough in recent memory, so we totally underestimated how many gingerbread cookies could…
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Gluten Free Banana Pudding with Nilla Wafers
For this gluten free banana pudding with nilla wafers 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 BRAND NEW banana 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…
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Gluten Free Toasted Coconut Custard Pie
Custard pie has been one of my absolute favorite Thanksgiving dessert table treats since I can remember. To give you a bit of background – my mother hails from Alabama (moved to Oregon when she was in 8th grade), so we continue to ride the long coattails of southern cuisine, from pecan to karo to custard pies, to green jello salads (I had a MIND-blowingly-good one when we visited family outside of Montgomery when I was five and still think about it *sigh*), to hush puppies and family-secret barbecue sauce. Custard pie is arguably one of the simplest ones on that list, but it’s just so dang good! Now, after…
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Gluten Free Bourbon Balls
Thank goodness for Instagram, or I wouldn’t have even thought to make these delightfully indulgent holiday goodies last week! Calgary Glutenfree, another top-notch gluten free blogger, mentioned that their favorite way to use bourbon in baking was bourbon balls, and that sparked a full-fledged recipe hunt for how to make our own! I’d heard of these southern delicacies before but had regrettably never tried them, and after perusing various recipes, determined that I had everything I needed to make them right then and there. So I did. And I’m not disappointed with the result – quite the opposite! Now, apparently, the original bourbon ball was created by Ruth Hanly Booe…
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Gluten Free Cranberry Apple Pie with a Flaky Crust
Gluten free pie crust has been my nemesis for 16 long years. Either it’s a soggy bottom, or too tough, or too mealy and damp, never flaky, never buttery, I mean come on, it turned into a half-ass attempt to carry the actually-good part of any pie: the filling! I would reluctantly pull out my food processor and do what I’d always done and come out with the same dry, crumbly crust that I would (if we’re being honest) throw away after scooping off spoonfuls of custard or pecan or karo. Crisps were a much better match: tons of fruit, tons of spiced, nutty, crumbly (because it was supposed to…
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Gluten Free Parsnip and Ginger Tart
Parsnips are far and beyond one of the most over-looked root veggies when it comes to sweet dishes (anything, really, or maybe we just haven’t gotten the memo), and they’re AWESOME. They look like white carrots, and taste similar, with less bitterness and more sweetness which makes us wonder… why did carrot cake overtake parsnip cake as one of the top 5 most common cake flavors in the US? It’s a mystery to us, so we’re making it our mini-mission to find great and wonderful reasons to start picking up these colorless carrot cousins more often on your grocery runs. And they’re just as good on the savory side! We…
