Gluten-Free Vanilla Cupcakes Recipe

Gluten-free wheat-free vanilla cupcakes. Let's celebrate.

SWEET.

The world is my oyster. No. Wait. I don't even like oysters. All that prying and shucking. All that shimmying. All that clinging, gelatinous muscle. You can have my share. Take it. Please.

I much prefer a cupcake.

No slimy abductor to deal with. No quasi-fishy liquor. Just tender, soft sweetness in exactly the right portion. Not too big. Not too heavy. Not too much.

Just right.

Texture, frankly, can be an issue for me. Size is another issue (portions bigger than my head? A serious turn off). And taste, well, that goes without saying (you know how I loathe bean flour).

Have you read Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight: What to Do If You Are Sensory Defensive in an Overstimulating World? 

If I was a storybook character I would inhabit The Princess and the Pea.

Except that it would have to be The Gluten-Free Casein-Free Princess and the Pea (which by the way, I may also be allergic to; the pea, that is). While others around me appear to sail without pause through the onslaught of sensory stimuli and proteins that is life in the twenty-first century, I have been blessed (and I use the term ironically) with the uncanny aptitude of hearing, smelling, feeling every little particle and nano nuance packed into our molecular frenzy of unstable equilibrium. I can sleep on a stack of twenty foam topped mattresses but if there is a single lonely hint of pea beneath, I am sure to sense it.

And it will keep me up all night.

And give me schpilkis.

Which brings me back to cupcakes.

For those of us with acute sensory awareness (what some might dub just chill the f**k out disease) a cupcake is a small and rather lovely gift. When done right, a cupcake is tender and not too chewy, not too crumbly, mealy, or assertive. It's not abrasive in its flavor or flaccidly dull. It's not too clean skinny-chic or too over-the-top use a bucket of butter ya'll sweet.

It doesn't stuff you till you're stupid.

And it doesn't demand attention. It's not a diva. It's not competitive, you see. A simple cupcake is perfectly happy to be just what it is even if it won't garner food awards or get its own TV show and cookware line. A cupcake is very postmodern zen and unapologetic. It is what it is. You can take or leave it.

The cupcake doesn't care.

Because a cupcake well done is simply perfection.



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Gluten-Free Vanilla Cornbread Recipe

A wedge of vanilla cornbread. Gluten-free yum.

Playing Dress Up.

This is not your average weeknight cornbread. You know, the one you toss together from a gluten-free mix to serve with a bowl of white chicken chili as you catch up with Mad Men season four. Nope. This tender cake-like cornbread is a pinch more elegant. A gently sweet treat you might serve at high tea with a gaggle of girlfriends (or low tea, depending upon the company you keep). Picture fresh cut flowers on the table, stemmed glasses filled with dewy fresh berries, a pot of Earl Grey tea or organic chamomile buds steeping beneath a cozy.

This is the sort of cornbread that begs to be served with style. That longs to be gussied up. The kind of cornbread you eat with a fork.

A cornbread that secretly dreams of being cake.

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