Saving the world is a piece of cake.

Carl Sagan called little-bitty earth seen from space a “pale blue dot.” Pale Blue Tart calls dessert a climate solution we can all get behind.

When you subscribe to Pale Blue Tart, you’ll see a recipe or story appear in your inbox every other week. It might be a one-bowl chocolate cake that just happens to be plant-based, or a guide to upcycling that half-used tub of sour cream into a silly lil treat, or a story about a perennial grain called Kernza that could transform agriculture and—just as importantly—make a mean butterscotch-toffee bar.

I started Pale Blue Tart because there’s opportunity in every pudding and coffee cake to build a dessert menu that’s so biodiverse, low-carbon, and damn delicious (volcanic sherbert, anyone?) that it pulls the rest of our lagging food system along with it. You heard me: All change starts with dessert!

Free subscribers

Pale Blue Tart arrives free every other week (at least as long as this over-caffeinated freelance writer can sustain that!).

Paid subscribers

Paid subscribers (that could be you!) get original and exclusive, paid-subscriber-only recipes in the mail here and there, plus stickers. Also, my undying gratitude.

Founding members

Founding members get an adorable climate cookie box mailed to their doorstep at the holidays.

Hi, I’m Caroline

I’m a climate writer and pastry gal who earned a pastry diploma at Le Cordon Bleu Paris after spending several years as chief of staff at the climate mag Grist. My writing about climate cuisine has appeared in outlets like The Guardian, Grist, and one5c. My recipes regularly appear in Bluedot Living Magaazine, and I periodically bake climate-friendly dessert spreads for weddings and schmancy panel discussions. I created and hosted The Sustainable Baker podcast, which was the audio prelude to this newsletter.

This newsletter, in turn, is the prelude to what I hope will one day be a cookbook on climate-friendly dessert, representing recipes and ideas from bakers and pastry chefs across America. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Climate cuisine is dead on arrival without good cake. And every single one of us can bake! that! cake!

Say hi. saunders dot caroline dot m at gmail dot com

More on my work at https://www.caroline-saunders.com/.

Logo art by the fantastic Amelia K. Bates.