It will surprise none of you to find out that when this pandemic started affecting the U.S., my first instinct was not to buy toilet paper or regular groceries, but instead to replenish my supplies of sugar, butter and flour. If I had to be stuck at home for two weeks (ha!), at least I’d be able to bake.
Fast forward six-ish weeks and there have been runs on everything—hand sanitizer, household cleaning supplies, toilet paper, literally everything on grocery store shelves—and most of it has bounced back a little, but I am hearing from many people that they still can’t get flour. Or if they can, it’s whole wheat or cake flour or 00—all great and useful, but not what you need to make most everyday things.
Luckily, there are plenty of recipes that don’t rely on flour at all and still bake up beautifully. Oh, and since they don’t contain flour, they’re all gluten-free. Score! Here are a dozen of my favorites from the archives.
Blueberry Baked Oatmeal
Baked oatmeal is one of those things that’s great for any occasion. This one was made while I was on vacation in Maine, but I’ve also made them for holidays, brunches, the average weekday, and—oh yeah—quarantine. It relies on old-fashioned oats for structure, and baking powder and eggs (or aquafaba or flax eggs) for lift. You can make it as sweet as you like, with whatever fruit you have on hand, and keep it vegan or use dairy milk. Whatever makes you happy.
These vegan, gluten-free cookies are my take on an Ovenly staple. They’re made from oats that have been blitzed in a food processor until good and powdery, but not fine like flour. The ingredients are stirred into a very loose batter and then refrigerated for 12-24 hours before being baked to delicious, chewy, chocolaty perfection.
More oats! But who can blame me when they’re baked with almond butter and coconut, then tossed with chocolate and crumbled over your morning yogurt?
These Flourless Snickerdoodles are one of my most popular recipes. It’s easy to see why—what’s not to love about vegan, gluten-free cookies made from cashews and coated in cinnamon-sugar? Nut butter (in this case, cashew) lends fat, flavor and structure in baking, making it a very popular option in gluten- and grain-free recipes. I’ve got two more cashew butter cookies in my archives, and a few other nut butter-based cookies too…
…like these Easy Nutella Cookies! These grain-free beauts are made with six ingredients, one of which is a whole lot of Nutella. They’ve got big chocolate hazelnut flavor in teeny, tiny packages.
I posted these four-ingredient wonders last week! Cocoa powder, confectioners sugar, salt and egg whites are all you need for a stack of these meringue-edged, brownie-centered cookies.
These glossy, crackly-topped brownies are made with cocoa powder and cornstarch instead of flour. Yesssss.
My favorite Coconut Macaroons are both flourless and egg-free, relying instead on sweetened condensed milk for texture and structure. They’re super quick and easy to make—all you need are four ingredients and about 30 minutes from start to finish.
This is *the* most popular recipe on my site. It’s made with five ingredients and none of them are flour or eggs.
Buttermilk Pie with Oatmeal Crust
Pie is probably the last thing on your mind right now, but berries and rhubarb are starting to appear in stores and if you were to nestle them in this easy, no-roll oatmeal crust and pour some buttermilk custard over the top and bake until the center is ever-so-slightly jiggly…well, it would probably be very good.
I’m back in the oat zone, y’all. These vegan oat grahams come together in a food processor and bake up perfectly crisp. Sandwich them with chocolate and toasted marshmallow for s’mores, or serve them with peanut butter and apples for a snack.
This recipe is just the tiniest twist on Molly Wizenberg’s perfect chocolate cake. Hers contains one lone tablespoon of flour, which I have swapped for cocoa. Truth be told though, the eggs do all the heavy lifting in this dense, fudgy, and supremely easy flourless chocolate cake. Make it for quarantine and then, when all of this is over, make it for…everyone.
Have you tried any of these flourless recipes, or any of the others in my archives? Let me know in the comments or on social media 💗 And be on the lookout for another flourless recipe coming your way on Wednesday!
In keeping with social distancing, baking with what I have, considering what you might have, thinking up swaps, and trying to make something Easter-appropriate, I present to you this Almond Poppy Seed Coffee Cake. It’s made with the last of a container of sour cream I found in my fridge, poppy seeds leftover from 
As far as Easter goes, this is not my norm. This cake is not 
The cake is just my usual 
I skipped the traditional coffee cake crumble here because I felt like it was competing with the poppy seeds—too much crunch, ya know? Instead, I’ve taken the easy way out and topped this sucker with sliced almonds, put it in the oven and called it a day.
As with every recipe I’m posting right now, Almond Poppy Seed Coffee Cake has plenty of room for substitutions and swaps.
I would have been content to make and eat only one 
I don’t make traditional New Year’s resolutions, but that night I absolutely resolved to make Almond Boterkoek happen on this blog. It took exactly eight weeks.
Anyway…David’s go-to Boterkoek (“bow-ter-kook”) already has a hint of almond to complement all the glorious butter, but this one…whoa. It’s super soft in the middle with crispy & buttery edges on the top and bottom, so it’s almost like biting into a piece of marzipan that is coated in a thin layer of butter cake.
Does that make it sound gross? I promise it’s anything but.
As with David’s O.G. Boterkoek, this one is no big deal to whip up. You will need to break out your mixer, but I promise that’s the fussiest part of the whole process. Well, except for the part where you have to remove a teaspoon of egg from a beaten egg, but that’s not too annoying. I even found time (30 whole seconds!) to make a crackly almond topping, which I used it to decorate the cake in a way that is much more flattering when it’s all sliced up.
Texture-wise, this dessert is fairly dense–more like a blondie than an American-style cake. This is because it contains no leaveners, therefore depending on the egg and the air that’s whipped into the butter for its minimal lift. If you want a cakier almond cake, try 
I, however, am more than content with a wedge of this buttery-edged, soft-centered almond cake (or whatever) anytime, anywhere, especially right-this-minute as I simultaneously write a blog post and watch Netflix. Yep.
I try very hard to keep things simple around here. Recipes, techniques, flavors, everything. That doesn’t mean super easy or uncomplicated—just not over-complicated. No more steps or ingredients than absolutely necessary, you know?
That said, sometimes a simple recipe like this Vanilla Bean Bundt requires several tries, each with a different technique or ingredient, all resulting in…excellent cakes. Really.
Each one began with the same basic recipe that I’ve used for my 
The cake I love the most is #1, so it’s the one I’ve posted below. The seeds of one vanilla bean are whirled into the batter, and the leftover pod is used to make a syrup that is brushed onto the baked cake before icing is poured over the top. The syrup is the element that makes all the difference here—it keeps the cake from being even the slightest bit crumbly, gives it a subtle glossiness, and makes it so that you can smell its dreamy vanilla aroma within a 6 foot radius. Yes, really!
I also like that the pods in the recipe don’t go to waste. I’ve seen other bakers suggest using empty vanilla pods to make vanilla sugar, but how much vanilla sugar does anyone actually use? You could use them to make extract, I suppose, but that takes weeks or months. This way at least one of the pods is used directly in the cake. As for the second, let me know what you do with leftover vanilla pods. I’m interested!
For those of you wondering about the cost of this whole operation, I won’t lie to you: vanilla bean anything is pricey. I buy my vanilla beans at Costco and Sahadi’s, and they run about $6 apiece. You could use two tablespoons of vanilla bean paste (1 per pod) instead, but the paste is about $35 upfront. A single jar contains enough to make this cake four times though, so it’s worth the investment. Oh, and this is a warning that the dark color of the vanilla bean paste will affect the aesthetic outcome of the cake, but only slightly. It will still be absurdly delicious, as all vanilla bean things are.
Keep it simple, y’all.
e2 bakes brooklyn 