Cornbread is one of those endlessly comforting foods, and something that I realized I missed tremendously after moving to the UK. Let me tell you, after talking through favorite classic Thanksgiving foods with my new roommates, we’ve all realized how much corn we Americans eat! We just had a belated Thanksgiving + early Christmas dinner in our house here and there we had giant and normal sized cornbread muffins (normal-sized ones coming soon to the blog), AND creamed corn (perhaps my favorite side of all time). Other favorite corn things that came to mind: cornflakes, corn fritters, corn on the cob, elote, hush puppies, corn tortillas, tamales, corn salad, popcorn,…
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Gluten Free Toasted Coconut Custard Pie
Custard pie has been one of my absolute favorite Thanksgiving dessert table treats since I can remember. To give you a bit of background – my mother hails from Alabama (moved to Oregon when she was in 8th grade), so we continue to ride the long coattails of southern cuisine, from pecan to karo to custard pies, to green jello salads (I had a MIND-blowingly-good one when we visited family outside of Montgomery when I was five and still think about it *sigh*), to hush puppies and family-secret barbecue sauce. Custard pie is arguably one of the simplest ones on that list, but it’s just so dang good! Now, after…
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Gluten Free Bourbon Balls
Thank goodness for Instagram, or I wouldn’t have even thought to make these delightfully indulgent holiday goodies last week! Calgary Glutenfree, another top-notch gluten free blogger, mentioned that their favorite way to use bourbon in baking was bourbon balls, and that sparked a full-fledged recipe hunt for how to make our own! I’d heard of these southern delicacies before but had regrettably never tried them, and after perusing various recipes, determined that I had everything I needed to make them right then and there. So I did. And I’m not disappointed with the result – quite the opposite! Now, apparently, the original bourbon ball was created by Ruth Hanly Booe…
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Gluten Free Cranberry Apple Pie with a Flaky Crust
Gluten free pie crust has been my nemesis for 16 long years. Either it’s a soggy bottom, or too tough, or too mealy and damp, never flaky, never buttery, I mean come on, it turned into a half-ass attempt to carry the actually-good part of any pie: the filling! I would reluctantly pull out my food processor and do what I’d always done and come out with the same dry, crumbly crust that I would (if we’re being honest) throw away after scooping off spoonfuls of custard or pecan or karo. Crisps were a much better match: tons of fruit, tons of spiced, nutty, crumbly (because it was supposed to…
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Gluten Free Parsnip and Ginger Tart
Parsnips are far and beyond one of the most over-looked root veggies when it comes to sweet dishes (anything, really, or maybe we just haven’t gotten the memo), and they’re AWESOME. They look like white carrots, and taste similar, with less bitterness and more sweetness which makes us wonder… why did carrot cake overtake parsnip cake as one of the top 5 most common cake flavors in the US? It’s a mystery to us, so we’re making it our mini-mission to find great and wonderful reasons to start picking up these colorless carrot cousins more often on your grocery runs. And they’re just as good on the savory side! We…
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Gluten Free Cranberry Bundt Cake with Cranberry Glaze
I remember being shocked and awed when I learned how cranberries were harvested. The mental image of a bunch of people in waders sloshing around in an artificial bog with millions of cranberries floating around was delightful – undoubtedly a lot more time consuming and tricky than I’m making it out to be but what a way to gather bucket loads (boatloads, if you will) of these deep crimson gems. Cranberries are strange, if you think about it. An entire bag of them weighs less than anything else you can pick up in the produce section, and they hard and dry until you toss them in with sugar and water…
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Gluten Free Maple Hazelnut and Pear Upside Down Cake
If you’re like me, you’ve got two boxes of Harry & David’s “Fancy Gift Pears” sitting on your counter and you’ve already challenged your significant other to a competition for who can eat the most pear slices in one evening and there are still SO MANY PEARS LEFT. Thank you, mom, for these amazing pears, but what do we do with them now? We need to host a pear party. Or, look up recipes for pear desserts until inspiration strikes and you’re motivated enough to get off of the couch after work and toss this incredible cake in the oven. I promise you, it’s worth the effort. The main inspiration…
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Cranberry Apple Crisp
Crisps are those lovely fall desserts that are absolutely delicious but look less than appealing with spooned out and schlopped on a plate…so we tried our best to give this one a glamor shot and add a few accompanying goodies to make it look as appealing as it tastes. You’ll be the judge of whether or not we succeeded, but I think this one is having a pretty good hair day. It’s also amazing with a scoop of ice cream, which I know for a fact because after shooting the above and below plate of goop, I dug right in and ate the entirety of it. Two thumbs up, guys.…
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Gluten Free Pumpkin Madeleines with Pumpkin Spice Glaze
Need some fancy pants desserts to wow your out-of-town relatives tomorrow? Or just want to have a pre-Thanksgiving high tea fit for queens? We’ve got you covered with these gluten free pumpkin madeleines. And these aren’t just any gluten free pumpkin madeleines, they’ve got brown butter (a glorious ingredient I recommend putting in nearly everything), AND pumpkin spice glaze. As background for this post, I’ve actually tried making madeleines twice now with different recipes and equally disastrous outcomes. Either they were too stiff and so didn’t fit the delicate mold and just ended up looking like lumps of raspberry coal, or the batter was too thin and rose too quickly,…
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Classic Pumpkin Pie
All hail the North American fall classic, the sweet squash sensation, the origin of Starbuck’s fall drink line up and the simplest of Thanksgiving desserts: PUMPKIN PIE. How could we not include our own take on this incredible contribution to the American Culinary Tradition? Pumpkin pie is undoubtedly the sweetheart of the US and Canadian (I’m assuming) fall dessert table, maybe tied with apple pie of course. But it’ll certainly be the star of the show this Thursday when (for all of our non-US-or-Canadian followers) we’ll be tucking in for a massive feast of turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans, dozens of other side dishes, and about 8…
