Over thirty fires have cropped up across California in the past five days, due to late summer heat waves, high winds, and unexpected lightning and thunder storms. Situated in down-town San Francisco, we’re usually safely far from the path of any wildfires, and only have to worry about smoke-tinged air cloaking the peninsula, blown across the state. But this time they’re even closer to home. There’s a strange cognitive dissonance when fire season starts – while admiring the nectarine-orange sunrises and movie-filter sunsets we’re worried about friends and family around the state and wary of the flash-fire devastation that tore so many from their homes in years past. If our…
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Gluten Free Pomegranate Cupcakes
A pomegranate is a challenge. Certainly if you’ve grown up cracking them open perfectly in Iran or Turkey or Israel, you’ll scoff at the absolute mess most of us in California make when we try to hack into the intricately-marbled honeycomb of garnet beads. The thin, gorgeously-cardinal skin poses both a hefty protection for the fruit inside and an impossibly-flimsy match for any kitchen knife. After years of trying, and looking up tips for getting into the tricky bulb without turning the kitchen into a bloodbath, I think I’ve got some sort of system down. Slicing a neat little square into the top and carefully peeling back the casing until…
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Gluten Free Banana Chocolate Chip Cupcakes
Anyone else remember the old Bananas in Pajamas routine? I have a vague memory of the “Bananas, in pyjamas, are coming down the stairs…” theme song and the animated intro, but after looking it up just now to refresh my memory, it seems I completely missed the actual show. Human-sized teddy bears and bananas have every-day adventures in brightly-lit homes and sunny backyards. The episode I happened upon was “Pink Spots,” a rather timely short about one of the teddy bears coming down with a case of, you guessed it, pink spots. Alarmingly, neither teddy bear was wearing a mask, and even after proclaiming “you must be sick, Morgan!” the…
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Gluten Free Chocolate Hazelnut (Nutella) Cupcakes
I have many more thoughts on hazelnuts now than I did three years ago. Despite growing up in Oregon, a region that proudly proclaimed this fragrant tree product its official state nut in 1989, I had little dealings with hazelnuts until I was about 17 and tried one of my all-time favorite ice creams at Zoey’s in downtown Ashland – the “Oregon Trail” (dark chocolate swirled with roasted hazelnuts and marionberry jam). My relationship to hazelnuts grew when, in college, I’d often scoop whole spoonfuls out of Costco-sized Nutella jars sitting temptingly in the dorm dining hall. But as many food relationships do when you become an “adult,” mine with…
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Gluten Free Cookies n’ Cream Cupcakes
Anyone else remember the scene from Lindsay Lohan’s “Parent Trap” when one of the double-Lindsays says she loves Oreos and peanut butter? I just realized that, after 15+ years of thinking about this seemingly-brilliant choco-pb combination, I STILL have not tried it…so these gluten free cookies and cream cupcakes are a half-way point. For those of you chocolate + peanut butter lovers – check out our other heavy duty Reeses-inspired cupcakes here. Cookies and cream has been a saving grace in the gluten free ice cream world since I can remember (so has peanut butter and chocolate but hey). When I was first diagnosed, I was also lactose intolerant (a…
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Gluten Free Peaches and Cream Cupcakes
Fruit trees are simply the best. Food, on trees! Easily accessible (usually), and bursting with ripe globes of peach or plum or cherry in the summer. Of course there are so many other arboreal foods, but I’m talking about temperate orchards of stone fruit or apples or pears, the kind with literal low-hanging fruit and that pepper the valleys of southern Oregon each summer. Picking peaches in late July or early August was like a holiday for us kids. I remember what I think was the first year we brought home our haul – dusty from the dry, hot orchard haze, covered in a fine peach fuzz ourselves, and warm…
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Gluten Free Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes
I have a close relationship with peanut butter. In second and third grade, I packed my own lunch. Both of my parents grew up with the necessity to make most things themselves – their parents were broke students and young parents, trying to make ends meet by donating blood, as my Grandpa John did, and betting the other guys at the Red Cross that he could fill the pouch faster than they could (he won most of the time). When my parents were, as their parents had been, broke, raising two kids and post-dating checks at the grocery store so that they wouldn’t be cashed until after payday, they taught…
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Gluten Free Pistachio Raspberry Rose Cake
Happy mid-week treat time to everyone! A huge thanks to everyone who is fighting the good fight and having tough discussions with family, friends, and with themselves (especially us white folks). One thing we value at Sisters Sans Gluten, in addition to awesome gluten free baked goods, is a responsibility to always self-examine ourselves – life long, not just when you’re in college or when you befriend someone who’s BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Person of Color), but every day. We all hold within ourselves built up prejudices based on family teaching, religious teaching, or even one-off experiences that we let shape our ideology too much. So, every morning, it’s on us…
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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 Strawberry Hibiscus Cupcakes
Doing what you love and contributing to something bigger than yourself is always a good mix. This post, and these cupcakes, are part of a bigger thank you to chef and pastry chef, Rob Rubba, and Paola Velez, for organizing what has become a worldwide coalition of #BakersAgainstRacism. If you haven’t heard of this yet, check it out here! It was started in early June by the two aforementioned professionals in the baking space, in hopes of gathering other bakers across the country to participate in a virtual bake sale, from which fundraised dollars would go to any number of foundations and organizations in need of support to continue the…
