I want to know more about how you bake at home. I think this will help both of us because 1) I can answer questions you may have, and 2) I can then develop and write my recipes with those concerns in mind. Back in 2021, when easygayoven was just a side gig, I surveyed the small amount of folks who watched my Instagram Stories about this and I learned a lot about people’s baking preferences, pain points and/or pet peeves. In my next email I might include a new, updated survey updated for 2025. Doesn’t that sound fun? Filling out a survey??

So, as a starting point, I’d love to hear from you. You can answer this question in an email, DM, or just leaving a comment below:

What are your biggest frustrations with baking right now?

Leave a comment

Oh, and one last thing: Are you in the easygayoven chat? We’re all talking about you in there.

Join Eric King’s subscriber chat

Available in the Substack app and on web

Join chat

EGO Recommends

📱 Social Media: TikTok’s “Gay Martha Stewart”
As he mentions at the start of each video, Alexander Widener left his design marketing job in NYC to build a antique shop and guest cottage in coastal Maine. (Now, I would take umbrage with the self-imposed title and say that my good judy Dan Pelosi is the closest thing we have to gay Martha Stewart, but I digress.) If you love chinoiserie or wallpaper or chinois wallpaper, you need to follow him as he shows off his fabulously appointed apartment and new house, as well as explaining the design principles and history behind them.

@alexander_widenerThe unexpected story of your favorite blue & white fabric, Toile de Jouy. #toiledejouy #toile #designhistory #interiordesign

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

📰 Article: “What No One Tells You About Writing a Cookbook” by Zaynab Issa
Occasionally (VERY OCCASIONALLY) someone will ask me about when or if I’m going to write a cookbook. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot, and heard about some from cookbook authors or people in the biz. I really appreciated Zaynab’s clear-eyed but still sentimental accounting of a process and an industry that are both pretty opaque to the general public, and plagued with misconceptions. Her transparency definitely helped clarify my view on the subject a bit — I’m just not sure in which way yet. And even if you have no intentions of writing a book, it’s a fascinating read.

🎧 Music: I Don’t Know How But They Found Me, Jensen McRae
I liked a song or two off of McRae’s 2022 album but once the singles started rolling out for her sophomore offering, I became a big fan. Despite looking back on relationship turmoil and trauma with older-and-wiser clarity, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me still manages to keep its head above water and find moments of cheekiness, compassion, and even hope. A range of dispositions on the album is complimented by the singer-songwriter’s uber-versatile vocals: a deep register that flips into a flitty Joni Mitchell head voice on “I Don’t Do Drugs”, then a growly, throaty belt on “Tuesday". Other standouts: “Massachusetts”, “Let Me Be Wrong”, “The Rearranger”.

This Week’s Recipe

This recipe started as more of a rhubarb over a creamy custard base situation. Then I thought it might be fun to introduce the peanut butter situation with a no-bake cheesecake filling. Then I decided, actually, the sour rhubarb would fight too much with the peanut butter and strawberries would work better. So maybe in the next week I’ll use that rhubarb wasting away in my fridge to develop what I originally wanted.

This final iteration just makes sense: Salty pretzel crumb crust. The easiest, no-bake, creamy peanut butter filling. Fresh strawberries sitting in a pool of fresh strawberry jello. It’s like strawberry pretzel salad and peanut butter pie quashed their beef, got in the studio together, and produced the best collab remix of all time. This would also be delicious using the pretzel shortbread crust from a similar recipe of mine: watermelon-strawberry jello bars.

I recommend finding the best berries you can as we are relying on their flavor—no store-bought packets here. (No shade to store-bought packets.) To create a fresher tasting jello, we’re not cooking the strawberry topping per se — just blitzing up some strawberries and heating up the puree just enough for setting it with gelatin. I like to think this preserves some of their aroma as opposed to boiling them like a pie filling, for example.

A note on pretzels: I prefer darker-colored pretzels like the ones from Snyder’s of Hanover or Utz. They’re crispier and easier to crush finely in comparison to the ones from Whole Foods which suck. In my experience, pretzels are some of the tougher snacks to break down for crumb crusts. I tried both crushing by hand and pulverizing with a food processor. Sadly, the food processor created either very fine powder and big chunks, which is not ideal. For that reason, I’d crush the pretzels in a large zipper bag with a rolling pin. Fine, even crumbs are key to achieving an even crust that’s easy to press into the pan and holds together when sliced, so if you think you’re done crushing, crush some more.

Strawberry Peanut Butter Pie

Makes one 9-inch pie, about 8-10 servings

Ingredients