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 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 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 Browned Butter Blueberry Cupcakes
Food can be a small, or a big, comfort. There’s something about warm bread or flavors of childhood favorites or family recipes that envelope us in something akin to a culinary hug – holding us in the realm of blurry nostalgia or in a space where no harm can befall us. There are so many families hurting right now – from the effects of police brutality or the unrelenting COVID or other loss, or just day to day struggles. To any and all of you who are hurting now, we send our support and love, and hope that tomorrow feels a little lighter, or holds you a bit tighter than…
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Gluten Free Lemon Poppyseed Drizzle Cake with Lemon Glaze
After more than my share of work travel over the past few weeks, it’s been lovely to be in one timezone and one season for more than five days, and this one, the home one, has spring juuuuust about poking through the San Francisco fog. In a minor celebration of the single ray of sunshine that dared trouble Carl (if you’re from out of town/country, SF named its fog…), I decided that lemon was the word and poppyseeds might as well tag along. This fantastic combo isn’t new, but boy is the fluffiness and moistness (sorry) of this delightful gluten free lemon poppyseed drizzle cake making it’s debut on the…
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Gluten Free Raspberry Glazed Shortbread Cookies
That special day is right around the corner, and no matter who or what you spend it with (a partner, a puppy, a good book, or just yourself!), you most certainly deserve something packed with punchy raspberry notes and crumbling with browned butter and sugar. And in that spirit, here are probably the cutest cookies I’ve made thus far. I’ve never been a big sugar cookie person, and definitely not a glazed sugar cookie person, though I’ll admire the handiwork of a good glazer any day. Despite what I deemed a lackluster appeal of these simple cookies, they’re absolutely worth having in your repertoire and are sometimes the perfect pick…
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15 Essential Baking Tools Every Baker Needs
Honestly, you can do quite a bit of damage with a fork and a cereal bowl when it comes to baking – the cake will still be a cake, just maybe one you wouldn’t laud on the British Baking Show anytime soon. You also have hands, which, as it turns out, are awesome tools not just for typing up that next blog post or grabbing handfuls of the free cookies at the company happy hour before the office manager notices; they work extremely well with bowls of batter and kneading butter into flour and all of that fun baking-related stuff. Never underestimate what you already have. So, if it’s imperative…
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Pumpkin Swiss Roll
Tis the season for all things orange! And get ready for the onslaught of pumpkin recipes (which have undoubtedly already inundated your Instagram feeds, we’re a bit late on our side). Pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies or cakes or muffins have an enduring comfort to them that other baked goods may fall short on. The warmth of the color, quite simply, lends itself to cozy evenings and afternoons or time curled up on the couch next to a fire after a brisk walk down the street to crunch leaves and admire the brilliantly-hued trees. What I would love after such a walk, is to come inside and be met with a…
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Lemon Poppyseed Shortbread
Shortbread always used to puzzle me – as a kid it seemed far more exciting to go for something richly chocolate or raspberry or creamy, not a dry square of short bread (what a name!) with no added flavor. Who in their right mind would choose such a thing over a brownie? Very very recently, upon the discovery of incredibly good butter (once you taste it you can’t go back), I reneged on my avoidance campaign of the crumbly British dessert and jumped on the shortbread train. This was particularly helpful as well because shortbread is remarkably easy to make gluten free. Many recipes, Scottish shortbread specifically, even add in…
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Gluten Free Matcha Swirl Pound Cake with Matcha Glaze
Swirls are the name of the game, especially so in this gluten free matcha swirl pound cake. If you’re a fan of the earthy-sweet verdant powder, then you’ll be a big fan of this easier-than-it-looks cake. If you’re not, then forego the green addition and keep it simple with a pound cake bundt cake, or toss in a powder you have more affinity for (say, blitzed up freeze dried raspberries or strawberries?). Up to you – this is a fool-proof pound cake recipe by our very own Kendra Farber, so use it as your buttery, sugar-heavy foundation for whatever flavor pairing gets you saying “thank goodness” at the end of…
