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 Almond Pancakes with Candied Sweet Potatoes and Maple Butter
These pancakes are hands down the fluffiest gluten free pancakes I have EVER made. And let me tell you, I’ve made about a million gluten free pancakes. Flash back to 6th grade when I was first diagnosed with Celiac and my mom accomplished the daunting task of 1) scouring the grocery story for anything and everything gluten free (and asking the “natural foods” section stocker to go buy a bunch of new products when she couldn’t find anything decent), 2) coming up with creative, non-gluten-containing recipes for literally everything, and 3) making me gluten free food EVERY DAY. Hats off to mom, everyone. Fast forward a year to 7th grade,…
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Gluten Free Peanut Butter Monster Cookies
Happy election day, USofA! Today is a stressful day for millions of Americans – those especially whose rights, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (and love) are teetering on the edge of oblivion. We have already voted, in two different states – Kendra in Oregon and me in California. Ballots cast into the great pit of representative democracy (heads up, the US has never been a true, cut and clean direct democracy, for better or for worse). We voted on behalf of so many who aren’t eligible but who support every detail of the running of this country nonetheless and deserve our support in kind. We voted on…
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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 Chocolate Peanut Butter Tart
I’ve already waxed poetic about my love of chocolate and peanut butter and peanut butter and chocolate and any elaborate combination of the two, so I’ll spare you the same spiel here (if you’re into it, you can read ALL of it here on our chocolate peanut butter mud cookies or on these chocolate peanut butter cupcakes). Instead, I’ll just give you the ooey gooey fudgey details of this gluten free chocolate peanut butter tart, my new pride and joy of the weekend (it can be yours too if you follow the recipe below). I’ve seen so many elegantly-simple chocolate tarts on Instagram (our number one app for consuming egregious…
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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 Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Buttercream
Pumpkin desserts are one of those American things that seem to boggle people in other countries who haven’t grown up eating them every October, November, and December. I’ve probably told this story before on here but when my dad was in his early 20s and traveling through Europe, staying with Servas (an awesome international network of hosts + travelers!) families and picking up odd jobs to fund his next step, he stayed with a family in Sweden who had (not surprisingly) never tried an American pumpkin pie. So, being the guest that loves cultural exchange (as both of my parents are), my dad went searching through markets and grocery stores…
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Gluten Free Hi Hat Cupcakes
Halloween was always one of my favorite holidays. My sister and I were VERY into dress up (especially Renaissance and other time-period costumes) growing up – we even had a dress up closet that consisted of giant bins of fanciful dresses and capes and scarves and wigs and suspenders with which to enrobe ourselves for various make believe games and mock-plays. Stepping into the outerwear of some other character not only allowed us to feed our wild imaginations, but also to inspect various aspects of ourselves. We would heighten our silliness or breathe life into our anger or ambition and create characters flooded with those magnified bits of our own…
