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…
-
-
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…
-
Gluten Free Chocolate Mousse Cake
Chocolate mousse. That lighter-than-air, seemingly miraculous dessert that’s the stuff of high-end restaurants and single-serve custard cups of sublime chocolatey goodness. I’d always balked at the idea of making it at home – intimidated by the technique or what I thought I needed to do to make it. But there are many ways to make a mousse! (feels like that should be a saying…) and this one is gosh darn easy as pie (or cake). In times of isolation and social distancing, tracking those “safe” friends/folks in your bubble and making plans to get gussied up and cook a fancy meal add a bit more excitement to the COVID life.…
-
Gluten Free Vanilla Lavender Trans Pride Layer Cake
The great thing about baking, and any food really, is that it can carry messages. We’ve gotten the chance to bake for movements and missions that are so much bigger than ourselves this year, and that chance is worth so much. This cake is another one of those chances: Trans rights are human rights, end of story. Aside from the fact that some of our longest, most wonderful friends are trans women, men, and people, every human being deserves the right to express themselves and be who they are meant to be in the most honest, real way they can, and it’s not any of our place to “correct” them…
-
Gluten Free Chocolate Raspberry Birthday Cake
In Harry Potter, Professor Lupin gives Harry, Hermione, and Ron chocolate after the first bizarre and harrowing encounter with dementors, and you’ve got to hand it to him, he knows how to cure a case of the willies. For any anti-chocolaters out there, apologies in advance for this post, but you’re probably not reading it anyway after seeing the gargantuan photo of an ALL CHOCOLATE cake, so, oh well. My sister and I have always loved chocolate. When we were little, we’d frequently have chocolate ice cream rings around our mouths, or would choose the flourless chocolate cake (often times the only gluten free dessert option but we’re not complaining),…
-
Gluten Free Neapolitan Cupcakes
Anyone else remember getting giant tubs of cheap Neapolitan ice cream at the grocery store as a kid? Some were definitely better than others, and half the time I’m pretty sure I just scooped through the chocolate layer, leaving the less exciting vanilla to the right. But it was glorious – simply having the choice of not one, not two, but THREE ice cream flavors in one bucket? Incredible. And a good strawberry ice cream can’t be beat – the ones with threads of real strawberries throughout, heightened by the heaps of pink dye that made this seem like the perfect summer treat. Bowls or cones, whatever you chose, were…
-
Gluten Free Raspberry Vanilla Bean Layer Cake
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…
-
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…
-
Gluten Free Mexican Chocolate Cake
Chocolate may be able to stand on its own two legs just fine without any flavorings, but you’ve got to hand it to the Olmec, Aztecs, and Mayans for unlocking not only the fact that chocolate is, well, great, but producing the first fermented chocolate drinks and adding in complimentary notes like cinnamon, nutmeg, and chili. According to the good ol’ wikipedia, the Olmec were the first to turn the strangely-fruity cocoa beans (surrounded by a white fleshy pulp – which actually tastes great) into alcoholic drinks (good idea, Olmec) as early as 1750 BCE (a hell of a long time ago) around present-day Veracruz, Mexico. From that pivotal moment…
