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 Coconut Lime Lamingtons
These insanely delicate, perfectly-sized cubes of coconut cake, filled with homemade lime curd and coated in silky white chocolate and more desiccated coconut are a gorgeous blend of treats from two very different countries! Lamingtons, as we all know (maybe), are a classic Aussie treat, especially around Australia Day, which is fast-approaching! (January 26th, everyone, get your “g’days” and bbqs ready!). The coconut + lime combo harkens back to one of THE best drinks (non-alcoholic, though very easily the opposite!) I’ve ever had in my life: the creamiest, dreamiest limonada de coco in Colombia. I was with the ever-impressive Laura Jimenez – a former colleague and dear friend – in…
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Gluten Free Vietnamese Pandan Honeycomb Cake – Bánh Bò Nướng
This cake is one of my new favorites, and has me asking “why have we never been to Vietnam?!” because there are so many naturally gluten free desserts that are absolute dream boats of buttery, gorgeous, flavors and textures. Let’s back up. My dear friend and former roomie, Leslie Nguyen-Okwu (who happens to be an incredible journalist, speech writer, and all around amazing human – check her out here) sent me a recipe for Vietnamese Pandan Honeycomb Cake ages ago because it’s one of her favorites (her mother is Vietnamese and her grandmother still makes this occasionally) and because, lo and behold, it only requires tapioca starch which, as you…
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Gluten Free Strawberry Layer Cake with Cream Cheese Buttercream
There’s something about cream cheese frosting. For all of you lactose/dairy-free folk out there, I feel your pain – as a weird and twisted side effect of Celiac disease, I also lost the ability to digest lactose for years before and after diagnosis, so I’m quiiiiite familiar with the array of nut, rice, and soy mylks and cheeses out there, and Kendra, the younger taller sister of Sisters Sans Gluten, is still dairy free to this day! (she makes a mean dairy free cheesecake too). This cake, however, is definitely heavy on the dairy. Gotta love swoops of silky, slightly-tangy cream cheese buttercream wrapped around summery strawberry cake layers, billowy…
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Kendra’s Gluten Free Velvet Spice Cake
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 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…
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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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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…
