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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Gluten Free Ube Angel Food Cake
Ube got me through one of the weirdest days of 2020. Now, I know what you’re thinking: what day WASN’T a weird day in 2020. Touché. But the 9th of September 2020 was a particularly bad day. The 8th of September, a fire started at the north end of Ashland, Oregon, where Kendra (the other half of SSG), my parents, my grandmother, dear friends, and a few aunts and uncles and cousins all live, and tore through most of the Rogue Valley like, you guessed it, wildfire, demolishing thousands of homes in its path. From 10am to 10pm that day, I was getting Twitter updates to track the fire’s spread,…
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Gluten Free Pineapple Cake
This is a brand new cake for me – thanks to special requests from colleagues for socially-distant birthdays for family members! I’ve always been a fan of pineapple upside down cake – the caramelized slices of fruit saturating the rest of the cake with deep summer sweetness. So this cake peaked my interest, and after a lot of recipe research, I landed on this creation: a sponge similar to an angel food or chiffon cake, with LOTS of eggs (not just egg whites!), not too much sugar, and cooled upside down to preserve the lightness of the risen layers. The secret addition (not so secret anymore)? Powdered freeze dried pineapple…
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Gluten Free Angel Food Cake with Berries and Cream
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…
