Category: Dessert

Vegan Fig Upside-Down Skillet Cake

This cake is an upside-down cake made with figs in a cast-iron skillet, and it’s vegan. Cooking in with cast iron wasn’t on my 2016 goals list, but I’m really enjoying branching out and learning new skills, like cleaning and caring for the cast-iron collection C brought with them when we moved in together. Caramelized figs, chewy edges, and a moist crumb made this cake a hit with vegans and non-vegans alike.

Lavender-Vanilla Ice Cream

C is teaching me how to make ice cream, so we came up with this recipe together…. I feel like there should be a Fried Green Tomatoes joke here because queer romance is clearly making messy foods together in the kitchen, right?

Candy-Cap Mushroom (yes) Cookies

C is from the California part of the PNW, and their hometown is famous for candy-cap mushrooms, which are dried edible mushrooms that smell and taste as sweet as candy. (Which I guess could be a hamfisted metaphor of sorts: people don’t think those mushrooms are real, and they don’t think we’re real, either.)

Great Book Larder Bake Off: Layer Cake

Like every other food blogger and foodie friend I know, I watched The Great British Bake Off,  (or Baking Show, as it’s known in the US) this winter. I’m not a big reality cooking competition enthusiast, and the optimism and teamwork of the show were exactly what I needed. A friend told me about Book Larder‘s new event “The Great…

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’80s Business-Lady Cake

I spent a lot of my formative years using dot-matrix paper as scrap paper from my dad’s office, so the design I decided on was a dot-matrix printer image of Kate Beaton’s ’80s Businesswoman. I think I achieved effect of the roughness of the dot matrix printing and that sort of awkward homemade/Cake Wreck piping here.

Strawberry-Gooseberry Pie

I love summer in the Pacific Northwest: beer gardens, picnics at the lake, gorgeous sunsets, and, more than anything, the berries: blueberries, huckleberries, blackberries, tayberries, strawberries, raspberries, marion berries. Today we’re cooking with gooseberries!

Recipe: Rhubarb-Berry Crisp

This recipe combines rhubarb, raspberries, and blackberries with my family’s oatmeal topping and a hint of ginger. It’s a snap to throw together and perfect for those spooky proto-autumn PNW summer nights when the temperature drops and it actually rains.

Pixelated 1-Up Cake (Mario Bros.)

The weekend I made the rainbow cake for my girlfrond*, I also made a birthday cake for my friend P, who requested some Mario pixel art.

Rainbow Roll Cake with Homemade Sprinkles

Somehow in a conversation about fairy bread last year, my now-partner confessed to me that they love sprinkles. Loves them. So, with a birthday coming up during Pride Month, what would be more festive that the loudest cake ever–complete with homemade sprinkles?

Sprinklebakes’ Anatomical Heart Cake

At some point over the last summer I started collecting anatomical heart designs after I found a necklace shaped like one in the Pacific Science Center. A heart, after all, is not heart-shaped. In design, an anatomical heart is a scientific representation of an emotional metaphor. Blame Sherlock or Frankenstein MD or Hannibal for encouraging this aesthetic, but I am enjoying decorating my new place with vintage culinary and medical drawings.

Fresh Cranberry-Apple Crisp

Lately I’ve been thinking about recreating the regional food from the part of the Midwest where I grew up–goetta, Cincinnati chili, Jello salad–and, of course, the desserts from my extended family and community. In my opinion, which you all seem to trust, my mom makes the best apple crisp in the whole state of Ohio.