Open for cake + repro content
plus: the blueberry pie oreos really are that good
Dessert Things
I was going to write an entire response to that shitty article about cake in The Cut, but then I decided that was a waste of my time so I present to you my Notes app pre-writing rambling:
Anyway, here are some incredible cakes in an array of styles from bakers I admire for us to marvel at.
It is once again time for you to make my gooey butter bars.
These reviews are real! Not me from another account!
Becca’s recs
Podcast: Liberty Lost
In Evangelical homes across the United States, sex outside of marriage is a sin against God. So, when Abbi becomes pregnant at 16, her devout parents hide her away at the Liberty Godparent Home, a little-known facility for pregnant teens on the campus of Liberty University. The Home says it helps girls decide what comes next – whether that’s parenting their babies or placing them for adoption. But inside the facility, the girls hear a different message: God wants their babies to go to more “deserving” Christian couples. Some girls will find the strength to fight back. Others will have no choice but to give in. And some, like Abbi, will turn their grief into resistance – and take a stand against the system before more mothers lose their children to adoptions they never wanted.
From Wondery, host and reporter T.J. Raphael tells a startling true story of young love, coercion, and defiance – and the dangerous resurgence of maternity homes in post-Roe America.
Book: An American Girl Anthology: Finding Ourselves in the Pleasant Company Universe
An American Girl Anthology: Finding Ourselves in the Pleasant Company Universe turns American Girl dolls--and the ever-growing ecosystem surrounding them--inside out. Editors Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler and KC Hysmith, along with an expansive list of contributors across multiple disciplines and within different research areas, explore Pleasant Company (American Girl's parent corporation) and the social and cultural impact the dolls and broader American Girl universe continue to have for generations of American consumers through thoughtful and fun essays.
This collection serves as an ode to the democratizing power of the internet and the intoxicating power of nostalgia, while also looking toward the future as the eldest American Girl fans become parents themselves. It is also a critical account of the ways in which American Girl has shaped senses of self-worth and hopes for the future, securing a base of lifelong consumers, and also serves as a love letter to the kids we collectively used to be. Along the way, readers will take seriously American Girl's influence and place within larger cultural conversations. They will find essays focusing on topics as diverse as food and historical recipes in American Girl publications, the advent of "tag yourself" memes, the struggle to find authentic and long-lasting Asian American representation within the pages of the American Girl catalog, and the enduring power of The Care and Keeping of You as a resource for finding joy in our bodies.
The blueberry pie oreos are genuinely delicious (they taste like a blueberry poptart imo and I like blueberry poptarts)
Abortion things
Palmetto State Abortion Fund is raising money to cover legal fees and safe living costs for a woman in South Carolina who was charged with “desecration of a corpse” after having a miscarriage. She is currently out on bail, but faces up to 10 years in prison. For more on pregnancy criminalization check out The Rise of Pregnancy Criminalization: A Pregnancy Justice Report.
Affirmation of the week: There is absolutely nothing that you could tell me about your abortion story that would make me judge you.
Some stories for you:
And I’ll leave you with my thoughts on the Jumbotron humiliation.
Love,
Becca