You’ve shopped your favorite queer-owned fashion brands, donated to Black trans nonprofits (we love For the Gworls, The Okra Project and the Black Trans Advocacy Coalition) and shipped your best friend Magnolia Bakery’s Pride banana pudding to benefit StartOut, a nonprofit dedicated to helping LGBTQ+ founders launch and grow businesses. Keep the celebration of Pride going all month long (and well beyond) with these rainbow-inspired recipes. Each one features an ingredient you can buy from a queer-owned business, furthering your support.
20 Rainbow Food Recipes We’re Making for Pride Month and Beyond
1. Rainbow Waffle Cake
Cake batter waffles meet the simplest vanilla icing. Make it à la mode to take things to the next level.
Serve with: Hill Country honey and vanilla bean ice cream from queer-owned Lick Honest Ice Creams in Austin, TX.
2. Rainbow Vegetable Skewers
Fire up the grill for eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers and any other vegetables that catch your eye. Stick to one veggie per skewer, so they cook evenly at the same rate.
Use: Aranya pepper from Diaspora Co., founded by Sana Javeri Kadri, a queer woman from Mumbai, India. Diaspora Co. sources equitable, single-origin spices directly from farmers and works towards decolonizing the spice trade.
3. Rainbow Heirloom Tomato Bruschetta
The prettiest app around only takes 15 minutes to make. All that’s missing is a sunny patio and a glass of vino.
Use: Swap ricotta for clabbered cottage cheese from Cowgirl Creamery in San Francisco, CA, cofounded by two queer women.
4. Rainbow Sangria
Apples and oranges? Yawn. Try kiwi, blackberries, clementines and pomegranate seeds on for size instead.
Use: Before Sunrise sparkling wine from Burlington, Vermont’s ZAFA Wines, owned by Black queer winemaker Krista Scruggs.
5. Cake Batter Dip
The secret to your kids’ newest obsession? Boxed confetti cake mix.
Use: Vanilla Sprinkle Snack Cake Mix from Baked, a queer-owned bakery in NYC.
6. Rainbow Vegetable Sandwich
Sink your teeth into cucumber, arugula, red bell pepper, radishes, purple cabbage and every produce color under the sun. The veggies are held between layers of herbed cream cheese.
Serve with: Sis Got Tea’s loose leaf tea. This online business was started by a Black queer woman, Arielle Clark.
7. Rainbow Antipasto Pasta Salad
This side has it all, from artichoke hearts to diced salami to pepperoncini. The tangy Italian vinaigrette will be your newest barbecue mainstay.
Use: Organic Arbequina and Picual extra virgin olive oil from The Gay Farmer, based in London, UK.
8. Rainbow Smoothie
Bring on the layering. Separate whatever frozen fruits you have on hand by color, blend and pour. Ta-da.
Serve with: Breakfast bars from Billy’s Bakery, founded by transwoman Lauren Reece. Shipping to Brooklyn and Manhattan only.
9. Cake Batter Waffles
Breakfast hasn’t looked this fun since…well, ever. Top with vanilla whipped cream or keep it classic with lots of butter and syrup.
Serve with: A cup of Peruvian dark roast from Queer Coffee, a lesbian-owned company. Queer Coffee donates $2 to Campaign for Southern Equality for every bag sold.
10. Rainbow Cake Batter Ice Pops
Rainbow sprinkles just make everything better.
Use: Instead of making your own homemade custard, use ice cream from San Leandro, CA’s KoolFi Creamery, owned by a queer Indian immigrant couple. There are lots of vegan options too. Shipping to select areas of California only.
11. Rainbow Veggie Flatbread Pizza
Store-bought naan makes for the easiest pizza crust ever. Don’t be shy with the mozzarella.
Use: City Saucery’s Ugly Tomato Sauce, a queer-owned NYC brand that uses overripe, bruised or strangely shaped produce.
12. Rainbow Fruit Salad Bagels
Meet your kids’ new favorite breakfast. They’ll have so much fun decorating they won’t even realize how much fruit they’re eating.
Use: The Baz Bagel Baking Kit from Baz Bagels in NYC. The queer-owned shop will ship you bagel flour, malt, yeast and three different toppings to make your own bagels, plus a few other goodies.
13. Rainbow Grilled Cheese
Transform any shredded white cheese into ooey-gooey prisms of deliciousness. All it takes is a few drops of food coloring.
Serve with: Gary Farrell Vineyards & Winery’s 2016 Durell Vineyard Chardonnay. This luxury California vineyard is home to Theresa Heredia, a queer winemaker.
14. Protein-packed Rainbow Cottage Cheese Breakfast Bowls
Stay full and energized all morning with fresh fruit, granola and chia seeds. We’ll take ours with shredded coconut, please.
Serve with: Coconut chai loose-leaf tea from queer-owned Paru Tea Bar based in San Diego, California.
15. Funfetti Cake Batter Blondies
Don’t get us wrong: Sprinkle-coated cookies will never go out of style. But they’ll have to take a backseat to these soft, chewy cake-mix blondies.
Serve with: B’Cause Blend from Equator Coffees in California. Currently, the queer-owned company will donate some of the proceeds to the Young Women's Freedom Center.
16. Colorful Peanut Noodle Jar
Here, buckwheat soba noodles are paired with spiralized veggies for a refreshing 30-minute lunch you'll never grow tired of. Feel free to use pre-spiralized cucumbers, carrots or zucchini to save time.
Use: Salty Peanut peanut butter from The PB Love Company, an artisanal purveyor of stone-ground nut butters based in Colorado. PB Love uses quality ingredients like local honey, organic extra virgin coconut oil and organic blackstrap molasses.
17. Sheet-pan Chicken And Rainbow Vegetables
Meet your new weeknight go-to. Whip up the two-ingredient marinade, brush it onto the bird, assemble it on the baking sheet with your veggies and it's ready to pop in the oven.
Use: Use homegrown Rossa di Milano onions by planting Truelove Seeds in your garden. The seed company sells rare, open-pollinated vegetable, herb and flower seeds grown by more than 20 small-scale farmers dedicated to sustainable agriculture practices.
18. Fruicuterie Board
Sorry, prosciutto—you'll have to sit this one out. This charcuterie board stars cheese and all the fresh fruit you can imagine, from kiwis to cherries to peaches.
Use: Cheese from Rogue Creamery, a queer-owned Oregon business that's been around for nearly a century. They have a ton of cheddar to choose from, but their most famous cheese is the Rogue River Blue, the first American cheese to ever be named World Champion at the World Cheese Awards.
19. Rainbow Collard Wraps With Peanut Butter Dipping Sauce
These refreshing handhelds are destined for your next picnic, since they're such a breeze to transport. Even better, they can be assembled up to two days ahead and stored in the fridge—don't worry, they won't get soggy.
Use: For an extra kick of heat, add a few dashes of Shaquanda's Hot Pepper Sauce to the PB dip. Created by drag queen and entrepreneur Andre Springer, the hot sauce is a unique blend of habanero pepper, vinegar, ginger and horseradish.
20. 3-ingredient Ice Cream
Rainbow sprinkles are our default mix-in, but pretty much anything will taste good in this simple vanilla ice cream. Think pretzels, brownie chunks, caramel, potato chips or chopped summer berries.
Use: Crumbled cookies from Wunderkeks, a queer-owned bakery in Austin, Texas. (We're partial to the sprinkle-filled strawberry cotton candy variety.)
For even more great recipes, check out our first cookbook, Only the Good Stuff.