Here in the rural mountain town of Big Bear Lake, California, you would think our local bakeries could manage to stay out of controversy. You have one job, small-town bakeries: make me fatter so I feel morally obligated to hike ten miles tomorrow. Sell me a croissant. Hand me a cookie. Charge me nine dollars for something involving organic blueberries and locally sourced butter. This should not be complicated. And yet somehow along the way, our local bakery owners have more opinions than the ladies of The View.
Small-Town Bakery Drama Is Why I Need a No Bake Coconut Ice Cream Cake
For the last few years, Big Bear Lake, California, bakery drama has periodically erupted across social media, usually because someone decided that baked goods full of carbs and real sugar were not controversial enough on their own. I’m sure this trend was started by a gluten-free vegan influencer.
Around the time of the 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, one local bakery became the center of an online firestorm after political comments attributed to its ownership started circulating around town. And listen, I don’t care who you vote for. Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, write in your Labradoodle—I truly do not care. But wishing violence or death on another human being because you hate their politics? We have officially wandered very far away from the cupcake counter.
I think no matter who you voted for, we can all agree these dog poo bags are hilarious.
Which brings us to this week’s episode of As the Locally Grown Gooseberry Pie Crust Crumbles.
During one of my innocent sessions of online doomscrolling—you know, when you pick up your phone to check tomorrow’s weather and forty-five minutes later you know which Big Bear resident hasn’t returned their neighbor’s cordless electric snow shovel since 2024—I stumbled straight into another bakery battle.
This time, the social-media uproar involved Pickles Pie Shop here in Big Bear Lake. A Yelp reviewer complained about some of the restaurant’s décor, specifically bumper stickers and signs containing adult language and messages. Her basic point seemed pretty straightforward: she thought the restaurant was supposed to be family-friendly and didn’t particularly want her young children reading things like “F*** Trump” or “Food Makes Me Horny” while eating dessert.
Fair enough. That’s Yelp. People complain about everything. Somewhere on Yelp right now, a woman named Susan from Sherman Oaks is deducting a star from Yosemite because there were “too many rocks.”
But then screenshots started circulating showing a response attributed to the business calling the reviewer a “pedo-lover.”
Wait. WHAT?
How exactly did we get from, “I’d rather my little kids not read profanity while they’re eating lunch,” to, “Clearly you support pedophiles”? There are approximately seventeen missing plot points between those two statements.
Then I watched a social-media video featuring the owner of Pickles Pie Shop, sporting what appeared to be roughly nine facial piercings, tattoos across the face and neck, and an overall aesthetic that felt considerably more Mayor of Kingstown than quaint little mountain-town pie shop. And again, decorate yourself however you want. Tattoo your forehead with the entire Declaration of Independence if that’s your journey. But combined with this absolutely nuclear response to a pretty ordinary Yelp complaint, I found myself wondering: Is this still small-town Big Bear Lake, or have I somehow wandered into Compton with high-elevation pies?
Because this escalated FAST.
Did we skip three seasons? Was there a deleted episode? Did Netflix cancel the important middle portion of the storyline where “please don’t display profanity around my kids” somehow became “pedo-lover”? I need somebody to release the director’s cut, because apparently I missed a tremendous amount of character development.
Because that escalated faster than an argument over the last Costco rotisserie chicken.
And suddenly this small-town bakery bitching was basically my entire social-media feed. People were arguing. People were choosing sides. Karens in Lululemon Leggings, who probably haven’t eaten pie since the Reagan administration, suddenly had VERY STRONG OPINIONS about pie-shop décor.
Meanwhile, I don’t even like pie. So I am basically Switzerland in this conflict, if Switzerland hated pie and was standing off to the side sipping on an iced latte and wondering why everybody couldn’t just eat their dessert and calm the fuck down.
I do, however, understand the argument that young kids don’t necessarily need to be immersed in every miserable adult argument we’ve invented for ourselves. Politics. Profanity. Weed smoke. Vape clouds containing Lord knows what. Angry bumper stickers plastered across vehicles. Adults screaming at each other online because one person voted for somebody the other person hates.
Kids have plenty of time to discover that adults are ridiculous. Let them enjoy childhood first.
I survived the 1980s, when our biggest summertime trauma was Dad wandering through the house wearing a pair of ripped underwear that looked like he had owned them since he voted for Jimmy Carter. Actually, now that I think about it, perhaps today’s children are doing fine.
Let’s wander to where the wifi is weak
Still, after approximately seventy-two hours of reading grown adults wage the Great Big Bear Pie War of 2026, I found myself thinking exactly what I always think when civilization becomes exhausting: I need to go camping. Preferably somewhere without wifi.
This is exactly why I’m looking forward to my upcoming two-week summertime camping trip through the Eastern Sierra. For two glorious weeks, I plan to disappear into the mountains, trek alpine trails, cold plunge in freezing lakes with my dog, drink something cold in the shade of our motorhome and speak to as few human beings as reasonably possible.
I call it vacation. Other people apparently call that antisocial behavior. Tomat
o, tomahto. I’ll talk to my dog every day, obviously. She has excellent opinions and has never once left a Yelp review.
I may even talk to my boyfriend. If he’s lucky.
The no-bake dessert to save your summer!
And because it’s summertime camping, I am absolutely not turning on an oven inside an RV when it’s already hot enough outside to roast a chicken on the picnic table. This is exactly where my No Bake Coconut Ice Cream Cake comes into the story. Because when society is unraveling over political bumper stickers and pie-shop Yelp reviews, sometimes the healthiest response is coconut oil, cashew butter and pretending it’s an ice cream cake.
My No Bake Coconut Ice Cream Cake is exactly the kind of summertime camping dessert I love: cold, ridiculously easy and req
uiring absolutely no oven. There is no preheating. No baking. No standing inside a hot RV wondering why you chose a hobby that occasionally resembles living inside a toaster with wheels.
Just make the cake, keep it frozen and bring it out when everyone at camp needs dessert—or when somebody starts discussing politics around the campfire and you desperately need to shove something delicious into their mouth.
Honestly, perhaps No Bake Coconut Ice Cream Cake is the answer to political division in America. Forget bipartisan legislation. Hand everybody a slice of ice cream cake.
After another week of small-town bakery drama, Yelp wars and adults behaving worse than children on social media, I’m ready for the Eastern Sierra. Give me Jeffrey pine trees. Give me deserted alpine lakes. Give me my smelly vacation dog. Give me two weeks without doom scrolling through small town “Feelings”
And, for the love of God, give me a No Bake Coconut Ice Cream Cake. The pie people can fight this one out without me.
It is totally worth taking up sacred space in our RV freezer to pack this easy ice cream cake to indulge by the campfire on our summer vacation. After any day of hiking mountain trails on vacation, you need this easy ice cream cake in your life and in your face.
The Ultimate No-Bake Camping Dessert: Cashew Butter Coconut Ice Cream Cake
Best Coconut Cake Crust
1 cup of almond flour
1/4 cup of coconut flour
3 teaspoons melted coconut oil
3 teaspoons melted salted butter
Stir this all together with a fork until you have a pie crust consistency. Press it into a small pie pan.
For the No Bake Coconut Ice Cream C
ake
1/2 cup of cashew butter
1/4 cup of honey
1 cup of whipped cream
2 teaspoons of vanilla
3/4 cup of cottage cheese
2 teaspoons of Hershey’s baking powder
To create the No Bake Coconut Ice Cream Cake, in your Ganiza Blender, combine the cottage cheese, honey, cashew butter and vanilla until smooth. Move the Ice Cream Cake batter to a mixing bowl and carefully fold in the whipped cream. Smooth this into your coconut crust. Sprinkle the Hershey’s Cocoa Powder on top. Then freeze the Ice Cream Cake for three hours.
