The Rest of Jacki's Cooking Adventures and Recipes

Lion and Tiger Cake

2010-04-13T12:06:00.003-03:00

I've been making a few cakes lately for BF's work. As a result, I had some fondant kicking around, so since BF's birthday was last Sunday I decided to make him a cake!

It was supposed to be tiny. After all, there are only two of us and since we haven't lived here very long we don't have a lot of friends here and didn't throw a party.

So I used my smallest pan, a 6" round and made three layers. When I asked BF what flavour he wanted, the only answer I got was "fruit", so I made a basic yellow cake with a little almond extract and threw in loads of blueberries. I cooked up a strawberry sauce on the stove and used that to fill between the layers. As I was assembling it, I felt like I was playing with an easy bake oven because the layers were so small.

I frosted the cake with vanilla-almond buttercream, and covered the whole thing with a thin layer of marshmallow fondant. I learned that the taller the cake, the tougher it is to cover with fondant because the edges wrinkle more the further down you go. I didn't manage to get it perfectly smooth, but it was fine for just the two of us.

The lion and the tiger are made of fondant as well. This was my first attempt at making figures out of fondant and I think they turned out pretty cute! They were about three inches long and two inches tall. I made them ahead of time so they would have time to dry, but when I tried to link their tails together when I set them on the cake, the tiger's tail broke off! So I had to redo it, but it turned out good in the end.

I just did a basic bead border out of buttercream at the the bottom. See how much better I matched the icing colour to the fondant this time?

For how small it was supposed to be, it still made way too much. BF and I each had a slice, he took half of what was left to his work and it fed his whole team! And there's still half left in the fridge.

The flavours came out amazing, the cake was super moist, so I'm really happy with it! I think I'm getting better at making cakes!

PacMan Cookies

2010-03-22T10:27:00.004-03:00

I know I haven't posted in quite a long time, but I made some cookies this weekend that I thought were too cute not to post.

Somehow it came to my attention that when flipped upside down, a tulip cookie cutter looks just like a PacMan ghost.

And once I had this information, I couldn't get it out of my head. I had no good reason to bake cookies, but for some reason I couldn't resist. So here they are:
They're just basic sugar cookies with royal icing. The sugar cookie recipe is from allrecipes here and the royal icing recipe is posted here. I used a Wilton tulip cutter for the ghosts (about 1.5") and a circle cutter for PacMan. I had a tiny little triangle cutter that I used to cut out his mouth, but a knife would work just as well. And the dots were made with a tiny circle cutter.

It took two batches of royal icing. I divided it into half cup portions and coloured one red, one orange, one yellow, one blue and one the lightest purple I could do (because the ghost is almost white in the game) and I left one bowl white. Each of these I diluted with water slightly to make them runny enough that I could just dip the cookies in. Then I took another 1/4 cup of white and coloured another 1/4 cup black in a stiffer consistency to pipe the eyes. I piped the whites of the eyes with a #5 tip and the blacks with a #3 tip.

I'm thrilled with how cute they turned out. And of course a batch of cookies makes more than eight little one inch cookies. So I made some more!

264 cookies. Or as BF says, 256 bits plus a byte.

I'm not sure why I felt the need to individually pack them neatly into bags, I think it's because I want to make sure that anyone who eats them gets a complete set so they can play with them first! BF is going to bring some to work and so am I, but I haven't figured out what to do with the rest of them yet.

A Taste Trippin' Party!

2009-08-14T10:46:00.002-03:00

Last night I went to a taste trippin' party at the Drake hotel in Toronto (I'm living in the city now).

This is something I have wanted to do for at least a year. I was so excited! At a taste trippin' party you eat something called a Miracle Berry. It has a funny effect on your tongue that makes it so that everything sour tastes sweet for the next hour. I've been dying to know if it really works.

So BF and I headed over and were each presented with a berry in a shot glass and a sheet of instructions.
You put the berry in your mouth, remove the skin and pulp and let the seed rest on your tongue for two minutes. Spit it out, and two minutes later you're ready to go!

They had all kinds of foods to try. There were lemons, limes, oranges, sour soothers, pickles, cheeses, brussel sprouts, mustards and apple cider vinegar to drink. This had better work!

The lemons and limes tasted just like candy! I was amazed! The flavour of the limes was indistinguishable from sweetened limeade. The oranges were so sweet that I actually didn't care for them. BF normally has no tolerance for sour food so he was pretty excited too.

Next I tried one of the pickles and a creamy cheese. I was disappointed to find that the restaurant had provided us with sweet gherkins and feta cheese, I wanted something with bite! Later I found out that they were in fact very, very sour pickles and sharp goat cheese, it was just that under the influence of the miracle berry, I honestly couldn't tell!

There was a gruyere cheese that tasted normal, the berry didn't seem to affect it. The sour soothers just tasted like regular candy, say Swedish berries. The mustards were intensified in flavour. I could barely eat them they were so strong! The brussel sprouts were delicious! They just tasted like yummy raw vegetable with none of the bitterness that makes uncooked brussel sprouts generally so unpalatable. And the vinegar had such a pleasant taste, unlike anything I've ever tasted before. John couldn't get enough of it.

The experience lasted about 20 or 25 minutes before it started to wear off. It lingered for about an hour after that, so the lemon wedges went from tasting like sweet candy to tasting like sour candy to tasting like sour lemons.

Afterwards we walked down the street to a bar for some drinks. They all tasted funny because of the berry. I had a cosmo and all I could taste was the vodka at first because the berry took away all of the bite of the lime and the cranberry. BF's beer was sweet and delicious and without the bitter aftertaste. As time went on though and the berry wore of I realized it was actually a really well made cosmo and I actually didn't like BF's beer after all.

It was a really cool experience, I think everyone should try it at least once. Although we had the actually berries, you can also order the berry in tablet form, I know ThinkGeek carries it here.

Wilton Course 3 - Final Cake

2009-05-27T12:47:00.004-03:00

Last night I finished up Wilton Course 3 at Michael's. Check out my cake!I'm so glad I took this class because making this cake has taught me so much! I learned that I actually like making cakes. I always thought that I would infinitely prefer cupcakes but as it turns out, cake decorating lets you use some different skill sets that I find both fun and challenging. I also learned how much work goes into a tiered cake. I put about 15 hours into making this. I am much more appreciative now when I see a really beautiful cake because I can better understand what it takes to put something like that together.

And I'm pretty sure I learned some technical skills in there somewhere too.

On to the cake!

I went with lemon cake and almond buttercream frosting. I used a cake mix (eep!) for this since it was just a practice cake. I use two vanilla mixes and substitued the juice from three lemons for part of the water. I also grated the rind of the lemons and threw that in. It turned out yummy, lemony and not at all tart. Next time I might use one more lemon because I like some tartness. The bottom tier is two stacked 10" round cakes and the top is two 6" stacked cakes. One cake mix was exactly enough to make a 6" inch cake and a 10" cake so it worked out pretty well. I didn't make any fancy fillings, I just put buttercream between the layers.

I leveled the cakes, did a buttercream crumb coat, let that chill for a bit in the fridge and then did a thicker coat of the buttercream. Next I covered them in homemade marshmallow fondant.

With the leftover fondant, I punch out some tiny flowers and stuck them on the cake randomly with a bit of water.

The roses were all done in advance. My sister came over and we sat around making roses all day since she was making the same cake except that her flowers were yellow. It took about 8.5 hours for me to finish all of my roses. There are 20 large roses, 11 medium roses, and 8 little rosebuds and 40 leaves. I ended up having 5 roses left that I didn't use though. The Wilton method of making fondant roses is just to make a small cone of fondant, stick it on a tooth pick and then use a 5-petal flower cutter to cut out three flowers which you then stab through the toothpick and wrap the petals around the center cone. There are some great tutorials on youtube that can show you how to do this.

Next came the hard part: transporting the cake to class. I put the 10" cake on a 12" cakeboard that I made from cardboard and aluminum foil, and the the 6" cake on a 6"cakeboard (since it sits on a plastic tray when the cake is done) and held them on a large board in my lap, trying not to let them slide around when we went over a bump.

In retrospect, I probably didn't need to actually go to the class because I knew how to assemble the rest of the cake on my own and it was even tougher to get it home, but I guess it's good that I went because I got to see everyone else's cakes and pick up my certificate.

In class, the first thing I did was pipe the border along the bottom of both tiers. You start with a #18 shell border, followed by a #86 ruffle and then a #16 shell border along the top of the ruffle. Then I stacked the tiers using pillars that push straight through the bottom tier so that they can support the weight of the top tier (the parts came in the course kit).

The next step was to attach the roses. I found this to be the toughest part. I basically just set the roses on the cake and rearranged them until I found an arrangement that I was happy with before I actually started attaching them. The ones on top of the cake are attached with buttercream while the ones along the sides are attached with toothpicks since the buttercream isn't strong enough to hold them. I stuck the leaves in along the sides and in between the roses to fill any gaps. The very last step was to pipe little dots in the center of the little white flowers using a #3 tip.

Here is a picture of the top of the cake so you can see a little bit more detail. Overall, I'm happy with my cake, but if I was doing it again, there are some things I would do differently.

I would stack three cakes for each tier instead of 2
I would made a separate batch of white icing using shortening instead of butter for the ruffle border so that it matched better.
I would try to get the petals on the roses thinner.

After flipping through the book for Course 4, I've decided that there isn't enough new information there to make it worth taking course. I bought the course kit (50% off with a coupon) and I will pick up the book as well and work through the exercises, but since there are no pretty final cakes to be made in that class, I'm not going to bother.

All in all, I definitely recommend the Wilton courses at Michaels. I learned so much by making the cakes that I did and it's renewed my interest in decorative work with different forms of sugar. And for under $30 per course, you can't really beat the price.

So I've got this huge cake now and no event to take it to. I think BF is going to end up taking it to work. Hopefully they enjoy it! I also have a whole lot of fondant left over so I think I may use it in some cupcakes this weekend. We'll see!

Wilton Course 3 - My first fondant covered cake!

2009-05-13T14:26:00.002-03:00

Some of you might remember that my sister and I were taking Wilton cake decorating courses at Michael's late last year. Well, one month off of classes turned into several, but this month we finally got it together and went back for course 3. This class covers fondant covered cakes, fondant roses, some new types of royal icing flowers (morning glories, poinsettias, Easter lilies and petunias) and constructing 2-tiered cakes.

So far it's been a blast! Last night we made fondant covered cakes. This was my first time covering a cake with fondant. The closest thing I had ever done previously was to cover some fruit cakes with marzipan at Christmas. Of course with marzipan, the buttercream goes on top, so it hides any spots where you might have messed up a bit. With fondant, the buttercream goes underneath, so it's important for the fondant to be smooth and beautiful. I think for my first try, my cake turned out great! Here it is:

The cake itself is a 2-layer 9" square. I usually just use a cake mix for class. This time I used a devil's food mix and added 1/2 cup of Nutella to the batter. Next time I think I would add closer to a cup since it didn't come out as nutty as I would have liked. Next I put a mixture of 50/50 vanilla buttercream and Nutella in between the layers and frosted the cake with the rest of the vanilla buttercream.

The truth is that I don't much care for Wilton brand prepackaged fondant, and in my experience most people don't, so I decided to give homemade marshmallow fondant a try. I used a recipe that seems to be floating all over the internet, so I'm not sure who to credit it to. Here it is:

Recipe: Marshmallow Fondant

Ingredients
16 oz (454 gram) bag plain small marshmallows
2 Tbsp water
shortening, for greasing bowls
1-2 tsp flavoring
2 lb confectioner’s sugar minus 1 cup
pinch of salt

Grease a microwave safe bowl, a spoon, the dough hook, and the bowl of your stand mixer with shortening.

Place the marshmallows and water in the greased microwave-safe bowl and microwave for 60 seconds. Stir with the greased spoon. If all the marshmallows have not melted, microwave for 30 seconds more. Stir in flavoring and water.

Place confectioner’s sugar and salt in the stand mixer bowl, and make a well in the center. Pour in the marshmallow mix and turn the mixer on to the lowest setting. When it sounds strained, increase the mixer speed up one setting. Turn off the mixer once all sugar has been incorporated. If the fondant is sticky, add the reserved confectioner’s sugar 1/4 cup at a time.

Turn fondant out onto plastic wrap. Rub a bit of shortening on the outside of the ball. Wrap in plastic wrap, place in a ziploc bag, and let rest for at least 2-3 hours. Keep unused portions covered when not using. If the fondant becomes stiff, place in microwave for 20 seconds at a time until pliable.

Roll out on a greased mat/fondant circle to the desired thickness.

Verdict: This stuff is delicious. Much better than Wilton in terms of flavour. I did find it quite a bit tougher to roll out however, and had a hard time getting it as thin as I would have liked. It was definitely worth the effort though, given how much better it tastes.

Once the cake was covered, the rest was a breeze. I just cut out two pink ribbons (1 1/2" wide) and then the pieces for the bow (we had templates for that ). The flowers were punched out of white fondant with a cutter and I rolled the little pink centers by hand before finding out that you can just use your #12 tip as a cutter for these. All of the decorations were 'glued' together using some clear vanilla and a paintbrush. The bottom border is piped buttercream using a #5 tip.
I didn't think I would enjoy eating a fondant covered cake, but I actually really like the marshmallow fondant, and there's enough buttercream going on under there that the cake is still nice and moist. Making this cake has completely changed my mind about fondant, I can't wait to make more of these!

Lamb Stew Recipe

2009-02-19T14:09:00.002-04:00

I love lamb. It's not something that we ate in my house when I was growing up, so it wasn't until university that I tried lamb and I have been hooked ever since. I cook it pretty much every chance I get.

My other new love this winter has been the slow cooker. I've been making all kinds of soft, melt in your mouth meats in the forms of roasts, soups and stews. So it was only a matter of time before I learned how to make a delicious lamb stew. And here's the recipe so that you can make it too!!

I actually ended up making this on the stove rather than the slow cooker, but you could do it in the slow cooker as well. I managed to get some really fresh, wonderful, stewing lamb from my local butcher, and because of it's strong flavour, the stew needed very little seasoning compared to a beef stew for example.

It was a little on the expensive side to make. I spent about $22 ($15 for the meat, $3 for beef broth, the rest for veggies) but it made enough to feed BF and I for three days so I'm still well within my $60 a week food budget goal with this recipe. And it turned out incredibly rich and hearty and delicious. It's truly a wonderful comfort food. The recipe is one that I've adapted from allrecipes.com for Irish lamb stew.

Recipe: Lamb Stew

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp canola oil
1.5 lbs stewing lamb, cut into bite sized chunks
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 large onions, chopped
1/2 cup water
3 cups beef stock
2 teaspoons white sugar
4 carrots, sliced
3 potatoes, cut into bite sized dice
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 bay leaves
¾ cup red wine

Put lamb, salt, pepper, and flour in large mixing bowl. Toss to coat meat evenly. Heat oil in a frying pan over medium heat and brown the lamb.

Place lamb into stock pot. Add the garlic and yellow onion to the frying pan and saute till onion begins to become golden. Deglaze frying pan with 1/2 cup water and add the garlic-onion mixture to the stock pot with the beef stock and sugar. Cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours.
Add carrots, potatoes, thyme, bay leaves, and wine to pot. Reduce heat, and simmer covered for 30 minutes until vegetables are tender.

Surprise Cookies Recipe

2009-02-05T16:05:00.002-04:00

Usually when I need my baking fix, I make whatever I like and send anything we can't eat into work with BF. For the longest time, that meant cupcakes every week. He's moved to a different department though so for now, big, beautiful cupcakes aren't really appropriate for him to bring in.

To sneak around that, I've started making more discreet snack packs. Rather than big, ostentatious foil trays with neat rows of colourful cupcakes, I've switched to decadent cookies and squares that can be stacked in tupperware containers and hidden in plastic bags (Don't worry, I still make cupcakes every chance I get! This is just random midweek baking we're talking about).

When I saw this recipe by Martha Stewart for Surprise Cookies, I knew they would be perfect. Like cupcakes, they are big, cakey and coated in frosting and each one has soft, gooey marshmallow hidden inside. As far as cookies go, this is the closest thing to a cupcake I've ever seen.

This is a fabulous recipe, I definitely recommend it. Despite their plain appearance, these didn't last long! Luckily, I made a double batch.
Recipe: Surprise Cookies

Ingredients

For the Cookies

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cups cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup whole milk
1 tsp vanilla
About 15 marshmallows, halved crosswise

For the Frosting

3 cups icing sugar
6 Tbsp butter, softened
1/4 cup plus 1 1/2 tsp cocoa
1/4 tsp vanilla

Make cookies: Preheat the oven to 375. Sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt into a medium bowl; set aside. Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, about three minutes. Mix in egg, milk and vanilla and mix for an additional minute. Mix in flour miture, 1/2 cup at a time until combined.

Using a 1 3/4" ice cream scoop, drop dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper, spacing 2" apart. Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until firm, 8 to 10 minutes.

Immediately press a marshmallow half onto the top of each cookie. Return to the oven and bake until marshmallows begin to melt, about 2 minutes more. Let cool completely on sheets on wire racks.

Make the frosting: Put icing sugar in a medium bowl, set aside. Melt butter with the cocoa in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally. Add butter mixture to the icing sugar. Whisk in milk and vanilla.

Spread about 1 Tbsp of frosting on top of each cookie to cover marshmallow. Let stand until set, about 10 minutes.

Have I mentioned how much I love frosting on cookies? Love, love love it!

Thai Vegetable and Noodle Soup Recipe and Some Thoughts on Meal Planning

2009-02-04T14:20:00.005-04:00

I'm totally into meal planning these days.

BF and I have been trying to cut back on the restaurants. I'm a little embarassed to admit that for a while we were eating out an average of three nights a week + Sunday brunch with an average meal costing around $60. At the same time, produce in the fridge would go bad because we weren't cooking at home.

One of my new years resolutions was that this needed to stop. First I looked at why it was happening and came up with two reasons:

We love delicious food made from fresh ingredients and refuse to settle for processed convenience foods.
When we were hungry we found it easier to go to a restaurant than to think about what we were going to make and then cook. i.e, lazy and disorganized.

So I got organized!!

The new routine is that every Sunday, I plan out our meals for the following week. I look at what we already have for groceries and make a list of everything we need and then on Sunday afternoon we pick up the groceries.

Now, each day I have a plan. Knowing exactly what I want to make and knowing that I have all of the ingredients makes it really easy for me to get motivated to start cooking. And knowing that if I go to a restaurant rather than make dinner means that the ingredients allotted for that night don't get used up and will probably end up going bad is a good motivator to keep us from going out.

Here's a quick run down of how I plan out my meals:

At the top of a piece of a paper, I write out the names of the days of the week.

Throughout the week, if I stumble upon any recipes I want to try out, I write them under one of the days, ensuring that each day has no more than one main source of protein and one source of carbs. I also try to have at least two veggies in each meal and usually a dessert because that's my favorite part!

On Sunday I pull out my recipe books and start filling in the gaps. I try to include meals from at least three different ethnicities (My favorites are Japanese, Italian and Thai, but BF likes me to include Indian as well) and one "meat and potatoes" meal. If there are still gaps after all of that, I look to see what carbs are missing (I usually try to use rice, sweet potato and whole wheat pasta each week and use white potatoes, breads or Asian noodles if I still need more ideas), and what proteins are missing (Beef, pork, lamb, eggs, chicken, tofu, fish) and look up recipes specifically containing those ingredients. For any remaining veggie gaps in the menu, I buy whatever is on sale that week.

With all of the dinners planned, it's easy to just make the lunches from leftovers and any extra fruits,veggies and meat we have on hand. For breakfasts, I stock a box of cereal, a carton of eggs, a block of cheddar cheese and some frozen blueberries for pancakes. I make a lot of breakfast carbs from scratch, like pancakes, waffles or crepes. If I do everything right, I won't have to buy any more food for the whole week, not even to pick up a carton of milk.

It's a little complicated to explain, but it's really easy and intuitive to do in practice. I've been doing this for three weeks now and it's made a huge difference in how we eat. Trying new recipes every night means that I have been learning so much about different cooking techniques and flavour combinations which I have found to be very rewarding. We eat a very balanced diet with nutrients coming from all different kinds of sources. The cost savings have been huge, we're now spending about $70/week to feed the both of us (and BF has a big appetite) and we've greatly reduced the amount of food we end up throwing out because we no longer buy groceries we don't need. Also, I think BF appreciates being able to come home and eat in about 25 minutes and then get on with the evening rather than taking an hour and a half to go to a restaurant and eat.

And the food has been awesome! I have been making all kinds of things from scratch using fresh ingredients, like soups, homemade pasta and lots of different sauces. I'm really having a lot of fun with this.

I wanted to share a recipe for a Thai curry soup that I made last night. It is loaded with noodles and vegetables, so I just paired it with some baked chicken thighs for a well rounded meal. The recipe comes from a cookbook that my Mom gave me for Christmas, entitled simply "Thai Cooking".

Recipe: Thai Vegetable and Noodle Soup

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp vegetable or peanut oil
1 onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, chopped finely
1 large carrot, cut into thin sticks
1 zucchini, cut into thin sticks
4oz/115gm broccoli, cut into florets
1 3/4 pints / 1 litre / 4 cups vegetable stock
14fl oz / 400ml / 1 3/4 cups coconut milk
3-4 Tbsp Thai soy sauce
2 Tbsp Thai red curry paste
4oz / 110g wide rice noodles
4oz / 115g / 3/4 cup mung or soy bean sprouts
4 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

Heat the oil in a wok or large skillet and stir-fry the onion and garlic for 2-3 minutes. Add the carrot, zucchini and broccoli and stir-fry for 3-4 minuts,until just tender.Pour in the stock and coconut milk and bring to a boil. Add the soy sauce, curry paste, and noodles, and let simmer for 2-3 minutes, until the noodles have swelled. Stir in the bean sprouts and cilantro and serve immediately.

It's pictured in a bento here if you would like to see it.

The Greatest Pulled Pork Recipe of All Time

2009-02-02T12:47:00.004-04:00

Seriously.

Thanks to a recipe shared with me by some online friends, I now make the greatest pulled pork in existence.

This recipe is easy as punch. Just throw it in the slow cooker and wait. It uses one of the cheapest cuts of meat I've ever seen and turns it into pure deliciousness. Last time I made it, I think I paid $10 for 5 lbs of solid meat.

If you have a slow cooker, you definitely should try it out. If you don't have one, it's actually worth purchasing one just to make pulled pork in my opinion. Make this whenever you have a big group of guys to serve (for example, while watching the 'big game') and serve it on kaiser rolls with some barbecue sauce and little cheddar cheese. They will love you forever. For real.

Recipe: Pulled Pork

Ingredients:

2 Onions, sliced thin
2 Tbs brown sugar
1 Tbs paprika
2 tsp salt
½ tsp black pepper
1 (4-6 lb) boneless pork butt or shoulder
¾ cup cider vinegar
4 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 ½ tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 ½ tsp sugar
½ tsp dry mustard
½ tsp garlic salt
¼ tsp cayenne pepper

Place onions in crock-pot. Combine brown sugar, paprika, salt and pepper;
rub over roast. Place roast on top of onions.

Combine vinegar, Worcestershire, red pepper flakes, sugar, mustard, garlic
salt and cayenne; stir to mix well. Drizzle about 1/3 of vinegar mixture
over roast. Cover and refrigerate remaining vinegar mixture.
Cover crock-pot; cook on low 12-14 hours. Drizzle about 1/3 of reserved
vinegar mixture over roast during last ½ hour of cooking.

Remove meat and onions; drain. Chop or shred meat and onions. Serve with
remaining vinegar mixture

Sorry for the lack of pictures. I made some this past Saturday and it quite literally disappeared before I had a chance to take any pictures. I did manage to hoard a little bit though to put in the bento lunch I made today, which you can check out here.

Apologies

2009-01-29T15:17:00.002-04:00

Ever have something that you're supposed to do, but then you don't get around to doing it? And then maybe there's other parts of it that subsequently don't get done because you need to do the first part first? And then eventually you get so far behind that to take care of the whole big mess of things that didn't get done seems like an awful lot of work so you put it off even longer?
Okay, so that's what happened with this blog.

It started with the Christmas baking. I did so much in so little time that I got behind on my blog posts. And then I didn't want to post anything else because I hadn't finished my Christmas baking posts yet. So I've been having all sorts of cooking adventures and I've even taken the occasional photo, but the blog posts never got done.

But, this is a new year! Today is the day I get caught up. I have been cooking up a storm this month. Below, you'll see some of the posts I've been meaning to do, starting with the end of my series of Christmas posts. Over the next few days, I'll be getting caught up on the rest of the posts.

I do apologize that I don't have photos for all of them, I got so far behind that I slacked on the pictures for a while.

Happy 2009 everyone!

Holiday Baking Part 7: Gift Baskets

2009-01-29T14:52:00.003-04:00

I can't always think of the perfect gift for someone.

There are those who I love, but sadly I don't spend enough time with to know their current interests so that I can figure out the perfect present.

I don't believe in regifting or giving someone something I'm not sure whether they will use, and I don't believe that simply spending money shows how much you care. But I also don't want to be viewed as stingy, and I do believe in giving something from the heart.

So the happy medium that I have come up with for these instances is to lovingly put together a basket of baked goodies, and include a gift card for a place that I'm sure the recipient will either enjoy or be able to find something useful. I think it shows the honest truth which is that although I don't know them as well as perhaps I should, I still care about them enough to make something from the heart, but also want to allow them to choose their own gift because they know better than I do what would make them happy.

These gift baskets are one of the main reasons I do so much baking at Christmas. I think it's fun to have a lot of variety!

This year I was wicked coordinated. I found these wonderful boxes with a snowflake print and a roll of matching wrapping paper. They were two piece boxes meant to hold a bottle of wine. I took each box and split it into its two halves and lined each half with wrapping paper (attached with a glue gun)

I really liked the shape of these boxes because they hold a tonne (last year I used tins and they didn't hold as much as I would have liked) and I could arrange everything in neat rows.
Here are the contents from left to write (top row first): Shortbread stars with yellow sprinkles, lebkuchen, pineapple Christmas cake (each slice individually wrapped), a container of lemon curd (I picked these up at the dollar store because they matched so well and had cute snowmen on them), and empty tart shells placed in a snowflake muffin cup. In the second row there are snowballs placed in silver candy cups, snowflake sugar cookies, apricot and hazelnut thumbprints and a couple of peanut butter balls placed in candy cups.

Recipes for everything except the shortbreads can be found below.

I wrapped the boxes with clear cellophane with blue snowflakes and tied it with a thick piece of silver elastic. I found little blue gift card boxes at Carlton cards which I punched a hole in the corner and attached to the elastic. The finishing touch was a silver name tag on each box.

I'm really happy with how these turned out!

One quick note about freshness: I figured out ahead of time how many baskets I would be making and subsequently froze the appropriate amount of goodies as soon as they were made. I thawed them out on the morning of Christmas Eve, assembled the baskets and gave them to their recipients on Christmas Eve afternoon. This was to ensure that everything was fresh since the cellophane around the box is not air tight.

Holiday Baking Part 6: Lemon Cheese Tarts

2009-01-29T14:36:00.003-04:00

This recipe is one that my Dad has been making every Christmas for as long as I can remember. It consists of pastry tart shells and a lemon curd filling that are stored separately, with the filling spooned into the shell right before serving. I loved these as a kid because if Mom wasn't looking, I could over fill the tart shell and maybe grab one more little spoonful of filling just to eat off the spoon.

As for why they're called lemon cheese tarts when they have no cheese in them, I'm not sure. I assume it's because the creamy texture of the lemon curd is reminscent of the consistency of a soft cheese.

Also, I will be perfectly honest and tell you that this is the one place in my holiday baking that I take a shortcut. I buy frozen tart shells. Don't tell anyone, okay? These are so popular that I always make a double batch.

Recipe: Lemon Cheese Tarts

Ingredients:

-Premade tart shells (homemade or frozen)
-3 eggs less one white
-1 cup sugar
-2 Tbsp butter
-Juice and rind from one lemon

Melt the butter and place in a double boiler. Add remaining ingredients to the double boiler and cook, stirring continuously, until thickened. Allow to cool before pouring into shells. Store in the refrigerator and spoon into shells as required.

Note about the recipe: This is definitely a taste-as-you-go recipe. Some people will prefer to use more or less lemon juice, depending on whether you like a sweet tart or a tart tart!

Holiday Baking Part 5: Snowball and Peanut Butter Ball Recipes

2009-01-29T12:51:00.004-04:00

So many cookies and cakes! Baking tends to involve lots of flour based desserts, so I try to throw in a couple every year that are just pure, straight sweetness. These rich little bites are completely flour free!

The first are my own invention, and I call them snowballs. It's a really simple concept, but I've never seen it done anywhere else, so if you have let me know. These beauties burst with cherry when you bite into them. They're really rich and delicious. Secondly, I've included a recipe for peanut butter balls, a personal favorite of mine, that is from allrecipes.com. You can never go wrong with peanut butter and chocolate!

Recipe: Snowballs

Ingredients:

2 packages of marzipan (it comes in tubes)
1 jar of marischino cherries
White chocolate for melting/dipping (I use Wilton melting wafers)
1/2 cup shredded coconut

Drain cherries.

For each snowball, tear off a small piece of marzipan and roll it into a ball about 3/4" in diameter. Flatten the ball of marzipan on an icing sugar dusted surface with a rolling pin until it is about 1/4" thin. It should look like a thick dumpling wrapper. Place a cherry in the center of the marzipan and wrap the edges of the marzipan upwards to completely enclose the cherry. Press seams together firmly (If they're not sticking well, moisten slightly with a little water). Roll the marzipan wrapped cherry between your palms to smooth out the surface and round out the ball. Each ball should be just under an inch in diameter.

Once all of the cherries have been wrapped in marzipan, melt the chocolate over a double boiler. Dip each wrapped cherry in the melted chocolate and allow excess to run off. Place on wax paper and sprinkle a little coconut on top. Allow the finished snowballs to harden at room temperature (If you cool them in the fridge, they sweat).

Recipe: Peanut Butter Balls

Ingredients:

2 cups creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup butter
3 cups icing sugar
3 cups Rice Krispies
3 cups semisweet chocolate chips or melting wafers

Melt peanut butter and butter in saucepan, over low heat. In large bowl, mix Rice Krispies and icing sugar well. Pour melted peanut butter and butter over cereal and sugar and blend together thoroughly.

Form into 1 inch or smaller balls, spread on cookie sheets, chill till firm in refrigerator (over night is okay).

Melt chocolate in double boiler and keep melted while working with balls. Dip peanut butter balls in the melted chocolate and place on a wax paper covered cookie sheet. Optional: Sprinkle with ground peanuts.

Recipe makes about a hundred.

For a picture of both of these recipes, please see the above post on Christmas gift baskets.

Holiday Baking Part 4: Apricot and Hazelnut Thumbprint Cookie Recipe

2009-01-29T12:19:00.006-04:00

I have my staple recipes that I make every Christmas. Some of them are family traditions and some are my own personal tradition. This year I felt like I needed an extra cookie in my baking.

I already had the heavy big cookies, light and fluffy shortbreads and decorative sugar cookies, so I decided that the next cookie should have fruit and nuts. I like fruit and nuts in Christmas baking because it reminds me of my ancestors who couldn't buy passionfruits or lychees or even grapes in December like I can. I've always felt that Christmas is a time for tradition, so it's a good time to remember your ancestors as well. Dried fruits and nuts were a treat to them, so I try to respect that in my holiday baking. Christmas is one of the few times in the year where I incorporate these ingredients into desserts.

This year I borrowed a recipe from Martha Stewart for hazelnut thumbprints which I've adapted a little bit. They turned out fluffy and delicious and were quite pretty, so I wanted to share the recipe with you. I will definitely make them next year.

Note about the recipe: Refrigerating the dough takes a long time and it makes the dough more difficult to work with, so it's tempting to skip it, but try to resist! If you don't refrigerate the dough, the cookies will not hold their shape as well while baking so they may not turn out round or the space in the top for the jam may end up bigger than intended so you end up having to use too much jam to fill the cookie.

Recipe: Apricot and Hazelnut Thumbprints

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp sugar
1 large egg, separated, each part lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup flour
1/8 tsp salt
3/4 cup ground hazelnuts (or filberts)
a jar of apricot jam

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Dry roast hazelnut by placing in a dry frying pan over medium heat and stirring continuously until nuts become aromatic and turn a nice toasted brown colour. Remove from heat and place in a small bowl.

Cream together butter and 1/3 cup of sugar at medium speed until pale and fluffy (3 to 5 minutes). Add egg yolk and vanilla and cream for an additional minute.

Reduce speed to low and add flour and salt. Mix just until combined. Refrigerate for 2 hours.

Add remaining sugar to the bowl with the hazelnuts and mix. Roll dough into 1" balls, dip in the egg white and then roll in the nut mixture until completely covered. Space one inch apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Press down the center of each ball with your thumb. Bake for ten minutes.

Press down the centers of each cookie a second time using the tip of the handle of a wooden spoon or rolling pin. Return to the oven and bake until golden brown, 6 to 8 minutes.

Let cool for a few minutes on the cookie sheet and then remove to wire racks to finish cooling. Fill each center with jam.

For a picture of these cookies, please see the above post on Christmas gift baskets.

Holiday Baking Part 3: Pineapple Christmas Cake (white fruit cake) Recipe

2009-01-29T11:46:00.009-04:00

It wouldn't be Christmas at my mom's house without the Christmas cake.

My mother makes this every single year. She got the recipe from Nannie, who also made it every year. A few years ago, I started making it and this year, my sister made one for the first time.

I know what you're thinking. How can my family possibly need 4 identical cakes? Especially given that these are fairly big cakes. I use my Wilton 10" fluted angel food cake pan and it is filled almost to the brim and weighs several pounds.

I promise you, none of it goes to waste. It's that good. It's actually one of the first things to disappear out of the huge assortment of desserts we put together. This isn't your typical fruit cake (although I made one of those this year as well). The chunks of fruit are big and juicy, the cake is moist and fluffy and there are no nuts or dried fruits/raisins/currants. Also, understand that I fear and loath glaceed fruit as much as anyone. But somehow, it turns out delicious in this cake. You just have to trust me on this one!

So I will share with you our secret family recipe, and just hope that anyone I know who reads this will come visit me at Christmas anyway, even though they'll now be able to make their own Christmas cake.

Recipe: Pineapple Christmas Cake

Ingredients

3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond extract
3 eggs
3 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 19oz can crushed pineapple (drain and reserve liquid)
1/2lb glazed pineapple, cut into 1" pieces
1 1/2 lb glazed cherries
2 Tbsp cornstarch

Note about ingredients: I usually use yellow pineapple pieces along with green and red cherries to make my cake colourful and pretty.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and line a 10" angel food pan with wax paper (I use this pan).

Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy (3 to 5 minutes). Add extracts and mix until combined. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition.

In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients. Gradually add to the creamed mixture, mixing well after each addition, and alternating with the reserved pineapple juice when the consistency gets too dry (I usually end up using about 3/4 of the juice in total). Add crushed pineapple and mix until combined.

In a separate bowl, combine cornstarch and drained glazed fruit. Fold into the cake batter. Pour batter into the prepared pan and bake for about two hours. Cool in the pan for about ten minutes and then remove to a cooling rack. Remove wax paper from cake when it has completely cooled.

To see a picture of a piece of this cake, see the post above about Christmas gift baskets.

Holiday Baking Part 2 - Lebkuchen (Big Cookies)

2008-12-11T22:59:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I made beautiful cookies.

Today I made ugly ones!
These cookies have been made in my family at Christmas time for at least four generations. My great grandmother taught my nana how to make them. My nana taught my father how to make them and my father taught me. We have other traditional foods that we make at Christmas, but these are my favorite, so every year I take an afternoon to bake and think about my great grandmother whom I was lucky to have many years with. She moved to Canada from Denmark when she was young, in the 1920's I believe, and lived on a farm in New Brunswick with my great grandfather for the rest of her life.

The cookies are like rocks if you try to eat them as is. The only liquids in them are honey and smidge of lemon juice, so they will hurt your teeth if you chomp down on one. But, dip them in a hot cup of coffee or tea (4 seconds is the perfect amount of time) and they become soft and spongy. The icing melts a little and the center of the cookie is nice and chewy. Not to mention it sweetens your hot drink a little. I always like to let my tea cool for ten minutes or so before I drink it, so what better way to pass the time than with a cookie? They are a little bit spicy and a little bit sweet, one of my very favorite Christmas treats.

I wanted to share this family recipe so that hopefully some of you will add this to your Christmas baking list. Let me know if you do!

Recipe: Lebkuchen (Big Cookies)

Makes approximately 2 dozen

Ingredients

1 cup honey
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 beaten egg
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp lemon rind
1/3 cup chopped citron peel
1/3 cup almond slices
2 ½ cups flour
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp allspice
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp cloves

Bring honey to a boil, pour in a bowl and let cool.

Add sugar and remaining ingredients. Mix well and store overnight in the refrigerator.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Turn out on floured board and roll out 1/2" thick and cut into 2” circles with a circular cookie cutter or a drinking glass. The dough will be sticky, so flour the rolling pin and board frequently to prevent sticking.

Space well apart on cookie sheet. Bake 8 to 12 minutes. Be careful not to burn. Cookies are done when one or two start to brown along the bottom edge.

When completely cool, ice with almond icing and decorate with almonds and citron. Serve with coffee or tea.

For the icing, I usually make sort of a poor man's buttercream. About 1/4 cup butter, 2 1/2 cups icing sugar, 1 tsp almond extract and enough milk to make it easy to spread, all mixed together until smooth but not until fluffy. Spread a thin layer on the cookie and allow the icing to harden. By not using as much butter/shortening as with a regular buttercream, it crusts much faster which is the effect you want.

I'm not sure if the boiling honey is an old way of pasturizing it for safety, or what the purpose is exactly, but I do it anyway. At the very least, having warm honey in the dough makes it much easier to stir, but I'm not sure it's actually necessary to bring it all the way to a boil.

I made two batches so I can leave out half a dozen or so for snacking before putting the rest in the freezer until Christmas.

So far my Christmas baking is shaping up nicely!

Holiday Baking Part 1 - Snowflake Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

2008-12-10T23:08:00.003-04:00

Ok.

I waited as long as I could.

I've had the Christmas baking itch for weeks now and I haven't made anything. Finally, yesterday I decided it was close enough to start on the freezables.

It's snowing cookies!!!

Anyone who knows me knows that I go nuts for blue snowflake-y things at Christmas. I scour the stores for blue and silver wrapping paper with matching tags. I have snowflake decorations on my tree and throughout my apartment. With the exception of the decorations on my Christmas tree, my apartment is decked out in silver and blue for the holidays.

I'm going to be putting together gift baskets of baked goods for a lot of my loved ones this Christmas. I have gorgeous blue boxes with silver snowflakes that I found at Winners, and clear cellophane with blue snowflakes that I found at the dollar store, so I thought a snowflake cookie would tie it all together.

I've been wanting to make sugar cookies with royal icing for a while now, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity! I was inspired by the Wilton website to pick up one of their cookie cutters and start baking!

The cookies are plain sugar cookies, made using this recipe from allrecipes.com. The are amazing! I rolled them out to about 1/4" and they baked up light and fluffy. Perfection.

I used the royal icing recipe I learned in Wilton Course 2:

Recipe: Royal Icing

1 1/2 Tbsp meringue powder
2 cups icing sugar
2.5 Tbsp lukewarm water

Mix on low/medium speed with an electric mixer for 7 minutes. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth while working with icing because it dries out very quickly.

I separated 1/4 cup of the icing and coloured the rest with royal blue icing colour.

These took quite honestly the whole day to ice. My hands were absolutely aching by the end of it and for a while I thought I would have to split it over two days, but I stuck it out and made 40 gorgeous cookies. I am so impressed with how beautiful they turned out. I make a lot of cute foods but I think these are my favorite of anything I've ever made!

The cookies are not particularly sweet, so I find the sweetness and crunch of the icing complements the soft cookies perfectly.

To ice these babies, first I waited for the cookies to cool. Next, using a #2 tip, I piped the outline of the snowflake on each cookie in blue. I added a few teaspoons of water to the remaining blue frosting until it was of a pourable consistency, but not too thin. The trick is to add the water a teaspoon at a time and check it by pouring a spoonful of icing back into the bowl. If it melds into the rest of the icing in about 10 seconds, it's thin enough.

Next I piped the thinned blue icing inside the outlines using a #4 tip, and used a toothpick to smooth it out the edges to create the smooth blue surface. Don't worry if the surface doesn't look smooth at first. It smooths out as it dries and most of it will be covered with white anyway.

The last step is to pipe on the snowflake with the white icing after the blue had dried. I used the #2 tip for that as well and placed a silver ball in the center of each snowflake while the icing was still wet.

And that's it! Not to difficult, but very time consuming and hard on your hands.

So these guys will live in the freezer for the next two weeks and make their grand appearance at Christmas. I have at least two more types of cookies to make, so I will post them as I go.

Wilton Course 2 - Final Cake

2008-12-01T21:38:00.002-04:00

As I've mentioned previously, my sister and I started taking Wilton cake decorating lessons at Michael's back in October. Last week we finished Course 2 and I was really happy with how my cake turned out, so I thought I would share.

The reason I started to take these courses was because I had tried making flowers out of icing and fondant a few times and wasn't having much luck, so I figured I could use some direction. In the first class we just covered the basics, but in Course 2 we focused almost entirely on making flowers from royal icing and learned a few new borders.

Here is the top of the cake. As always, click on the picture to get a closer look.
Lots of flowers! The roses, daffodils and daisies should be easy to pick out. The orange flowers are chrysanthemums, the large yellow and purples ones are pansies, the small purple ones are violets, the large pale pink ones are primroses, the small pink ones are apple blossoms and the tiny pink ones are rose buds. All of the flowers are done with royal icing, and the cake, leaves, borders and basketweave are done with buttercream (Don't tell my instructor, but I used my own buttercream recipe instead of the Wilton one!).

BF was impressed with how I balanced out the colours and arranged the flowers. He said he bets I learned those skills from making so many bento lunches.

Here is a side picture to show a flower arrangement on the side of the cake.And here's a front picture to show the basketweave around the sides of the cake as well as one of two run-out birds made from royal icing.

The royal icing recipe we used for the course consists only of icing sugar, meringue powder and water. The result is an icing that is stiff and holds its shape well as you mold it. It then hardens into a crunchy sort of candy. Some people don't enjoy the taste I guess, but I think it's yummy. Although this is the only icing we used for the flowers, I think a stiff butter cream would also work, although it might not hold all of the minute details. It would probably have to be kept cool as well so that it would hold its shape.

Overall, I'm really pleased with what I learned in this course and the value for the cost. The course itself was $21 and the course supplies kit was $40 but I had a 50% off coupon. I already had all of the rest of the decorating equipment I needed (piping bags, practice board, cake turntable, cake board) from Course 1 so it was just a matter of picking up a couple of bags of icing sugar. And now I know how to make gorgeous flowers! Course 3 isn't offered until January, so we get a month off (so I can get back to making cupcakes!!) and then we'll be back at it.

My understanding is that their are Michaels stores across North America, so I definitely recommend taking the classes if you have any interest in making pretty things with icing. It's an easy way to learn some new practical skills. Before I took the classes, piping swirls on cupcakes with a 1M tip was pretty much the extent of my cake decorating repertoire. I don't necessarily think that The Wilton Method is the be all/end all of cake decorating, but I do feel that the amount I've learned is definitely worth the 2 hours per week investment. Like anything in life though, I would suggest getting several different perspectives and choosing the method you like the best. For me that means using my own recipe for buttercream frosting and using a traditional variation on royal icing for icing run-outs rather than purchasing the Wilton Color Flow powder.

I love learning!

Carrot Cake Recipe

2008-11-30T20:50:00.002-04:00

I love to look in the sweets case at the grocery store. Little truffles, tarts and cakes all lined up, so cute. I peeked in it today while BF and I were shopping and saw some carrot cake cupcakes and absently muttered to myself "I should make a carrot cake..."

BF stopped in his tracks, looked at me and said "You can't joke about that, because I'll won't be able to help but run over and grab a bag of carrots and hope for cake."

Of course I told him to go get the carrots.

Here are some slices all ready and lined up for him to take to work tomorrow. We can't eat a 9 x 13 cake all by ourselves!

The recipe is adapted from one I found online. It is incredibly dense, moist and flavourful. One of my favorite things about making carrot cake is watching all of the ingredients going into the bowl because you put about twice as much stuff in there as you do for normal cakes, but it goes into the same size of pan.

I originally planned to make cupcakes, but after some soul searching, I realized that for me to enjoy carrot cake to its fullest potential, it should be served in cubes. So instead of piped swirls of frosting, I just made a really thick layer on the top of the cake.

Recipe: Carrot Cake

Ingredients:

4 eggs
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3 cups grated carrots

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.

In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, sugars and vanilla with an electric mixer on medium speed for three minutes.

Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir in carrots. Pour into prepared pan. Bake in the preheated oven for about an hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.

Recipe: Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

1 stick of butter (1/2 cup), room temperature
1 8 oz package cream cheese, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla
3 cups icing sugar

Cream butter and cream cheese together with an electric mixer on medium speed until fluffy, about three minutes. Add vanilla and mix. Add icing sugar and blend until consistency is uniform.

The little carrots were made by colouring 1/4 cup of the frosting orange and 1/4 cup green. The carrots were piped with Wilton tip #5 and the green parts were piped with Wilton tip #3. The rest of the frosting was exactly enough to frost the cake.

Creamy Potato and Leek (and Bacon!) Soup Recipe

2008-11-23T20:22:00.002-04:00

Twice in the past week I've been walking down a street and seen a sign outside a restaurant advertising potato and leek soup. I love potato and leek soup, but I didn't go in either time.

This morning, BF and I headed to our regular brunch haunt (Halifax Residents: Check out brunch at Luxx in Park Lane. It's Halifax's best kept secret brunch in my opinion) and sure enough, the soup of the day was potato and leek. I had my heart set on eggs benny though, and I knew that although I believed at that moment I had room for both, my eyes are generally bigger than my stomach so I should just stick with the eggs.

Lucky for me though, the restaurant was directly across the street from the grocery store, so you can guess what my next stop was.

It turned out to die for. Soooooooo good!

Here's the recipe:

Recipe: Creamy Potato and Leek Soup

Ingredients:

4 good sized new potatoes
3 cups chicken stock
1/2 lb bacon
1 bunch of leeks
1/2 cup heavy cream

Peel potatoes and cut into bite sized cubes. Bring chicken stock to a boil in a large pot and add potatoes. Boil until potatoes are cooked through.

Cut bacon into 1 inch pieces and fry over medium heat until crispy. While the bacon is cooking, remove bottoms from the leeks and cut the tops into small slices. Remove bacon from pan and drain about half of the bacon fat from the pan. Saute the leeks in the remaining bacon fat for about 8 minutes.

Once the potatoes are cooked, reserve 1/4 of the potatoes. Allow the rest of the stock and potatoes cool a little bit and then transfer to a blender and blend until smooth. Return the mixture to the pot and return the reserved potatoes to the pot. Reheat the soup over medium heat and add the bacon, leeks and cream. Mix until combined. Enjoy!

As an aside, a bowl of soup at brunch today cost $6.

To make this soup, I spent $2 on potatoes, $1 on leeks, $1.75 on bacon, about 40 cents on cream and about 25 cents on chicken bouillion for a total of about $5.40. It made 4 bowls, so that works out to $1.35 a bowl.

I love to eat at restaurants, but luckily I also love to cook because it's definitely more economical!

Squash and Raisin Muffin Recipe

2008-11-18T23:59:00.003-04:00

I enjoy when I get a request to make something. It's fun to have an opportunity to try something new that you would never have thought of on your own.

For example, I had no idea that squash and raisin muffins existed.

I sent BF with a batch of cranberry lemon muffins (sweet, familiar flavours) to share with his coworkers earlier in the week. One of his friends mentioned that he liked homemade squash and raisin muffins which BF then passed on to me. The concept sounded so foreign and counterintuitive to me (eww, squash as a breakfast) that I had to try it. The logical parts of my brain reassured me that pumpkin and sweet potato both make delicious desserts (pie, anyone?) but the instinctive parts of my brain were grossed out.

The verdict? While these are not my favorite muffins, I managed to make them fluffy, moist and nicely textured, using a recipe adapted from allrecipes.com. I actually worked to bring out the flavour of the squash by roasting it rather than boiling, and by easing up on the spices, so the end result is a fairly complex taste that I'm sure would be enjoyed by fans of squash.

As for me however, I will wait until I have leftover squash already before making these again (although that has yet to happen in my 27 years, I'm sure it has to happen eventually!) To me, these muffins weren't worth the extra time to roast the squash. I can make many other kinds of delicious muffins much quicker!
Recipe: Squash and Raisin Muffins
Makes 12 to 15 muffins

Ingredients
1 cup cooked and mashed butternut squash
1 cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup uncooked oatmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 ½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ginger
¼ tsp allspice
¼ tsp nutmeg
3/4 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
1 cup raisins
Brown sugar

To prepare squash:

First peel, seed and cube the squash. Toss with 1 Tbsp olive oil and ¼ tsp salt and bake for 30 minutes at 400 degrees, turning once, half way through.

To make muffins:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Line or grease muffin cups.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, white sugar, salt and spices.

In a medium bowl, thoroughly mix together milk, egg and butter. Stir in squash. Fold the squash mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Fold in raisins.

Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin pan, filling cups about 2/3 full. Sprinkle with brown sugar. Bake 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.

Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then remove from muffin pan and cool on a wire rack.

Chocolate Bavarois Recipe

2008-10-25T20:32:00.003-03:00

I was craving something creamy and chocolatey.

My thoughts immediately turned to chocolate mousse, but the honest truth is that I've never really been comfortable with the raw egg whites present in an authentic mousse.

Then I found this recipe for chocolate bavarois that solved all of my problems! (Well this one at least) It's light and fluffy like whipped cream, but more stable thanks to a little gelatine and definitely rich! The recipe says to use 8 oz glasses for each serving, but it is so rich I could only eat half of that at a time, so you can definitely stretch out this recipe.

*sigh* I miss BF's camera...I can't seem to take a good picture with mine...

Recipe: Chocolate Bavarois

Ingredients

200g (6 ½ oz) good quality dark chocolate
1 ½ cups milk
4 egg yolks
1/3 cup icing sugar
1 Tbsp gelatine
1 ¼ cups whipping cream

Combine the chocolate and milk in a small pan. Stir over low heat until the chocolate has melted and the milk just comes to a boil. Remove from the heat.

Beat the egg yolks and sugar until combined. Gradually add the hot chocolate milk, whisking until combined. Return to a clean pan and cook over low heat until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon. Do not allow to boil. Remove from the heat.

Put 2 tablespoons of water in a small bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin in an even layer over the surface and leave to go spongy. Stir into the hot chocolate mixture until dissolved.

Refrigerate until the mixture is cold but not set, stirring occasionally. Beat the cream until soft peaks form, then fold into the chocolate mixture in two batches. Pour into six 250 ml (8 fl oz) glasses and refrigerate for several hours or overnight, or until set.

Congee, Tempura and Miso Soup Recipe

2008-10-23T10:53:00.004-03:00

I tried out some new recipes while making lunch yesterday, so I thought I'd share them.

Over the past few weeks, I've been working on building habits and skills to transition from making North American meals to to making Japanese/Asian inspired meals instead. My set of matching dishes is slowly being replaced by all different sizes and shapes of dishes, each carefully selected and gorgeous on its own. My fridge and cupboards have been filling up with new and foreign ingredients for me to try. My goal is to get to a point where I can throw together a gorgeous, balanced Asian style meal without giving it much thought, rather than taking the 'easy' route of making the pasta or meat and potato type meals I grew up with and are ingrained in my psyche. I want it to become second nature. But it's a lot of work getting there, building up a repetoire of recipes and understanding the versatility of ingredients so that nothing gets wasted.

For example, I bought a large piece of gobo (burdock root) to use in the soup pictured below. Of course this is a small bowl of soup, so I didn't end up using the whole thing. Rather than wasting what was left, I took it as an opportunity to experience the different textures and flavours that can be created with this vegetable. I tried kinpara gobo, gobo and carrot braised with soy sauce and mirin and really liked it. And I tried tataki gobo, gobo boiled, smashed and mixed with sesame paste (I didn't care for this one). So nothing went to waste and I learned a little more.

One habit I've been attempting to build is to make soup with every meal, in traditional Japanese style. The first step was learning to make my own dashi stock, a lightly flavoured fish broth.

Here is the recipe:

Recipe: Dashi

Ingredients
- 15 Square inches of dried kelp (kombu)
- 1/2 cup dried bonito flakes
- 4 1/4 cups of cold spring water or filtered water

Rinse kombu and place in a pot with the water. Let sit for 20 minutes.

Slowly heat the pot until you see the bubbles that it is just starting to boil.

Remove from heat. Sprinkle bonito flakes on the top of the broth. Let sit for three minutes and then strain through cheesecloth so that you are left with only the broth.

It's really quick to make so I've started to keep a pitcher of it in the fridge at all times. This allows me to make a bowl of soup very quickly at mealtime. The recipe makes about 4 cups and my soup bowls hold 3/4 cup of soup, so it doesn't get a chance to go bad, I make a new batch every couple of days.

I'd also like to mention that I don't like the taste of fish, but this broth is so light tasting and has a bit of a smokey flavour, so that when seasoned with other ingredients, I quite enjoy it. The taste is so light in fact, that when I made it the first time using tap water, the flavour of the broth was completely overpowered by the minerals in the tap water, that's why the recipe calls for spring water.

So here is the lunch I made yesterday. My apologies for the picture. I realized after I took the pictures that everything is brown! So it doesn't look very appetizing I'm sure (although it really was delicious) but perhaps you'll try some of the individual components if not the whole meal.
For the rice dish, there is a small bowl of congee, a Chinese word for rice porridge. Congee is the Chinese equivalent to chicken soup, in that it's a comfort food that is served to sick people. I am in love with this food! It's hearty, delicious, and incredibly inexpensive and simple to make. I bought a bag of congee mix called '8 Treasure Congee' that contains about 20 servings for $1.65. It's basically a mix of white rice, black rice (that's what gives it the purple-y brown colour), green and red beans, barley, peanuts, cornmeal and something called flower beans, so it has both carb and protein content. You can make it at home easily, but I find it's just as easy to buy it premixed.

The recipe is incredibly easy. Throw 1/4 cup congee mix, 2 1/2 cups water, and a small packet of beef boullion in the rice cooker and press start on the porridge setting. You may have to run it through more than once to cook up all the water (On my Sanyo rice cooker I cook it on the 'porridge' setting and then a second time on the 'normal' setting and it comes out perfect). That's it! You can add meat or veggies to it of course, but it's also delicious on its own.

On the left are some tempura sweet potato wedges. My tempura skills still need work, so I will wait to post a recipe for that. The small dish above that contains dipping sauce for the tempura, a mix of dashi, soy sauce and mirin.

Finally there is a bowl of miso soup.

To make this, first fry thin slices of gobo in a bit of sesame oil for about a minute(to prepare gobo for use, run it under cold water and scrape of any dirt with the back of a knife). Mop up any remaining sesame oil with paper towel and add 3/4 cup of dashi, 2 tsp soy sauce and 2 tsp mirin and brought to a boil.

While the dashi is heating, in your soup bowl place one green onion, sliced, and 1 1/2 tsp white miso.

Add some thin carrot slices to the boiling soup and allow to simmer for about a minute, until carrots start to soften.

Spoon a little of the soup into the soup bowl and mix with the miso so that the miso becomes soft and smooth. This is to make it mix easier with the rest of the soup. Pour the soup from the pot into the bowl and stir. Serve piping hot. Serves 1 but recipe can be easily adjusted for more servings.

Masaman Beef Curry Recipe

2008-10-17T18:13:00.006-03:00

Masaman curry is hideous. It looks like a tasteless pile of mush, completely unappetizing.

But, if you're brave enough to get a little closer to it, the smell will start to intrigue you. You'll notice a faint aroma of Indian spices like caradamom and cinnamon but there are other scents there too.

And if you work up the courage to actually taste it....you'll be surprised and delighted at how delicious such an ugly food can be.

Of all of the curries I have tried so far, masaman beef curry is by far my favorite. It is so rich and hearty and the beef is incredibly soft and tender.

Over the past month or two, I've been spending a small fortune buying masaman curry from a local restaurant. When I saw how much of my food budget it was actually taking up, I decided it was time to figure out how to make it myself.

For a first try, it turned out excellent so I thought I would share the recipe which I adapted from another website. Here it is:

Recipe: Masaman Beef Curry

Ingredients

½ large sweet potato
½ lb stewing beef
1 large white onion
¾ cup coconut milk
1 Tbsp masaman curry paste
½ cup water
1/8 tsp ground cardamom
2 bay leaves
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp tamarind pulp
1 cinnamon stick
½ tsp salt
¼ cup chopped peanuts

Directions

Peel potato and slice into chunks, approximately 1” x 1” x ½”. Slice beef into thin slices, about 1” square and 3/8” thick. Cut onion into chunks of a similar size.

Heat ½ cup coconut milk and curry paste in a medium pot over medium heat and stir. Break up the paste and mix well with coconut milk. Stir constantly to keep the mixture from sticking.

When you see the red oil bubbling up (about 5 minutes), add the beef and stir to cover the beef with curry. Add ½ cup water or enough to cover the beef.

Add the cardamom, bay leaves, sugar, tamarind, cinnamon and salt and allow to stew for ½ hour, or until beef is tender.

Add remaining coconut milk, potatoes, onion and peanuts. Let simmer for 20 minutes more to cook the vegetables. This should be a fairly dry curry, however you may need to add more water if it the liquid becomes very low while simmering.

Serve over hot long grain white rice.

Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

2008-10-07T17:48:00.004-03:00

I heard of a woman on the internet who tried fifty different chocolate chip cookie recipes to find the best one. I can't even imagine the magnitude of such an undertaking.

Of course I had to try the recipe! (although I've lost track of where the website was now)

No pictures this time because I made them at my mom's house and only brought a couple home. And they didn't last long!

These cookies are soft and chewy on the top and light and crispy on the bottom. They are absolutely perfect. The measurements are a bit strange (who uses eighths of a cup???) but just go with it :)

One change I made to the recipe: I missed the part about melting the butter so I ended up beating it until fluffy instead. I'm not sure how that would afect the end result.

Recipe: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes about three dozen.

Ingredients

2 1/8 cups bleached all-purpose flour (about 10 1/2 ounces)
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), melted and cooled slightly
1 cup brown sugar (light or dark), 7 ounces
1/2 cup granulated sugar (3 1/2 ounces)
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 - 2 cups chocolate chips or chunks (semi or bittersweet)

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Mix flour, salt, and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside.

Either by hand or with electric mixer, mix butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. Mix in egg, yolk, and vanilla. Add dry ingredients; mix until just combined. Stir in chips.

Drop by spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets, leaving about 2" between cookies.

Bake, reversing cookie sheets' positions halfway through baking, until cookies are light golden brown and outer edges start to harden yet centers are still soft and puffy, 10 to 12 minutes. (Frozen dough requires an extra 1 to 2 minutes baking time.) Cool cookies on cookie sheets. Serve or store in airtight container.

Eggs On Rice Recipe

2008-09-24T11:40:00.004-03:00

I wanted to share with you one of my favorite breakfasts to make whenever I have leftover rice after making bento. It's a spin on traditional Japanese egg on rice in bonito broth and it's a good balance of complex carbs, protein and a little bit of veggies.

I like this recipe because it doesn't require much additional effort on top of making bento. I start it after all of the bento food is cooked and the stove is still hot, and the breakfast cooks while I am arranging the food in the bento box. If I time it right, everything is ready at the same time and BF and I can enjoy a hot breakfast together with the lunches already packed.

Recipe: Eggs on Rice

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups hot cooked rice
2 1/2 cups vegetable broth
2 eggs
green onions, salt and pepper for garnish

Notes about ingredients: Vegetable broths vary quite a bit across different brands with some light and airy and others dense and tomato-ey. As well, some are much saltier than others. I tried numerous brands while putting this recipe together and my favorite is Knorr Simply Vegetable Broth. Any other broth would work, putting a different spin on the recipe, but for a light dish, vegetable broth or dashi is quite nice.

Experiment with different greens! I made this one with green onion because that was what I had on hand but parsley leaves work well and pea sprouts are particularily nice because of their soft crunch.

Directions:

Bring a water to a gentle boil in a deep frying pan (enough water to cover the eggs, about 2"). At the same time, put the broth in a small pot and simmer.

When the water in the frying pan is boiling, carefully slide in the eggs, one at a time. The easiest way to do this is to first crack the egg in a small bowl and section off a part of the water in the pan with a large spoon so that it is not bubbling in that small area. Then you can slide the egg into the calm water and let it cook for a few seconds before removing the spoon. This keeps the boiling water from separating the egg into shreds. Alternately, you could use an egg poacher.

Allow eggs to cook for about 3 minutes or until they reach desired doneness. While eggs are cooking, divide rice into two rice bowls. Remove cooked eggs from pan with a slotted spoon to drain the water and place one on top of the rice in each bowl. Pour half of the broth into each bowl.

Garnish with green onion. Salt and pepper to taste.

Notes about the recipe: The doneness of the eggs affect the overall texture and flavour of the dish a great deal. My favorite way to cook them is so that the whites are completely cooked and the yolks are quite runny. When I take my first bite of egg, I pierce the yolk with my spoon. It mixes with the broth and turns the broth into a delicious pale yellow eggy mixture.

BF on the other hand prefers his egg well cooked because he doesn't like the egg and broth to mix. It's very much a matter of personal taste.

As a last comment, I have to say that my biggest complaint with a traditional North American bacon/eggs/toast breakfast was that my eggs always got cold unless I ate them up right away. This dish fixes that problem because the broth keeps the egg warm throughout the duration of the meal (Plus it doesn't leave you feeling greasy and heavy afterwards).

So give this one a try some time when you have leftover rice after making bento. You can also throw in the vegetable scraps you have left over after you punch shapes out of them so that there's no waste at all!

Dora-Yaki Recipe

2008-09-23T12:53:00.002-03:00

I've been reading up on Japanese sweets and tea lately. It started with this blog and the beautiful examples of wagashi that the author shows. Wagashi refers to the sweets and confectionary served with tea in Japan, usually involving mochi and/or sweet adzuki bean paste.

I'm not yet ready to try my hand at mochi, but I found a recipe for dora-yaki that seemed simple and quick to make so I tried it out last night.

Dora-yaki is sort of a pancake sandwich. The pancakes are about 4" in diameter (although I made mine smaller, about 2.5" because they are so sweet) and are very sweet and egg-y compared to what we're used to seeing for breakfast. The filling is chunky sweet adzuki (red) bean paste.

The recipe posted below is from about.com with a few adjustments. There is also a recipe for it in Japanese Cooking - A Simple Art that I plan to try next time I make these as it looks to be a little less sugary.

Recipe: Dora-Yaki

Ingredients:

3 eggs
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
3 Tbsp water
1 cup flour, sifted
3/4 lb sweet azuki beans

Directions:
Put eggs and sugar in a bowl and whisk very well. Dissolve baking soda in water. Add the water in the egg mixture. Add sifted flour in the egg mixture gradually. Heat a skillet or hot plate and lightly oil it. Pour a scoop of the batter into the skillet and make a small pancake. Turn over when bubbles appear on the surface. Repeat this process to make 8-10 pancakes. Cool the pancakes. Divide pancakes into pairs, matching size and shape as best you can and put a 1 1/2 Tbsp red bean paste between each pair. Slice in half before serving.

Makes about five 4" dorayaki cakes or ten 2.5" cakes.

A note about the recipe: If you're used to making typical pancakes, it tempting to want to let these cook on the first side until bubbles appear and the sides of the top start to dry out. With dorayaki pancakes, do not wait for the sides to dry out or the pancake will most like burn. Be sure to flip them once the surface becomes bubbly.

Because of the moisture still present in the edges, these are a bit tougher to flip than breakfast pancakes. The easiest way I found to do this while preserving the round shape of the pancake was to slide a spatula under the pancake slightly, lifting it up enough to fit a chopstick underneath it. You can then lift the pancake with the chopstick, allowing you to slide the spatula far enough under the pancake to flip it properly.

The dora-yaki pictured here is accompanied by a cup of sencha green tea.

Sencha green tea is a slightly higher grade of tea from typical green tea (called bancha) or gen-maicha. Something to note when preparing sencha green tea is that the water should not be boiling when it is poured over the tea leaves. Instead, unplug the kettle and wait for the bubbles to stop before pouring it into the tea pot. The tea leaves should be removed after steeping for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes.

Apple Crisp Recipe

2008-09-22T08:11:00.001-03:00

Hello Fall!

When I think of Fall, I start craving anything with apples. Pies, dumplings, you name it. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll make it to the Annapolis Valley some time this fall to go apple picking. Mmmm fresh apples from trees.

So I picked up a bag of McIntosh apples yesterday and decided to make an apple crisp. While I was putting it together, first I was thinking that I wanted it to have loads of apples, so I was peeling apples for what felt like forever. But then I was thinking about how much I love the crunchy topping, so I decided to make a whole lot of topping. So really I just ended up making a tonne of everything. And it was delicious!

This is a great recipe to welcome Fall. I used slow cooking whole grain oats to give it a little more crunch because they don't get as soggy as other types of oatmeal. Also, please try to use pure maple syrup if you can. I think the synthetic kind would not turn out very good.

Enjoy!
Recipe: Apple Crisp

Ingredients

1 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 ½ cups rolled oats
1 ½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup salted butter or 1 cup unsalted butter plus a pinch of salt
1/3 cup maple syrup
3 lb bag of apples, peeled cored and sliced

Note: do not slice apples too thinly or the end result will be mushy.

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, combine flour, oatmeal, cinnamon, nutmeg and brown sugar. Cut butter into mixture until crumbly.

Place apple slices in 9” x 13” pan. Pour maple syrup over the apples and toss to coat.

Sprinkle crumb mixture over the apple slices. Bake for 50 minutes or until the apples are tender.

Cornbread Recipe

2008-09-21T21:45:00.000-03:00

BF was making chili tonight (too incredible for words) and requested some cornbread to go along . I was more than happy to oblige because he makes his chili so hot that a tiny bite of chili with a big bite of cornbread (and a sip of chocolate milk!) is the perfect amount of spicy for me.

This is not my original recipe (it's from allrecipes) but it's incredible. It turns out perfect every time.

Love it!!Recipe: Cornbread

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups cornmeal
2 1/2 cups milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a small bowl, combine cornmeal and milk; let stand for 5 minutes. Grease a 9x13 inch baking pan.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Mix in the cornmeal mixture, eggs and oil until smooth. Pour batter into prepared pan.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center of the cornbread comes out clean.

Yup, Another Blog

2008-09-21T00:02:00.000-03:00

I've been pondering starting a new blog for a couple of weeks.

Ever since I made a beautiful, delicious chicken udon soup.

It was my first attempt at making a Japanese soup and it turned out incredible. The taste of the broth was just the right mix of delicate dashi and salty soy sauce. The noodles were perfectly cooked and on top of them, the chicken, vegetables and other odds and ends were beautifully arranged. All of this was laid out in gorgeous bowls I had bought that afternoon, specifically for the purpose of udon noodle dishes.

It was a perfect meal and a perfect experience in trying a new recipe and a new cooking technique from a foreign cuisine.

At the time, I thought to myself "I should do a blog entry about this so that I don't forget about this wonderful soup and how I made it", but after giving it some thought, I decided that I didn't want my blog to lose its focus of bento lunches and cupcakes.

But now, a month later, the memory of the perfect soup is haunting me.

And I know it won't end at the soup. I have two Thai cookbooks on order from Amazon, and a head full of plans for different dishes that I want to try to make.

So I've decided to start this blog as a journal of my experiments in the kitchen unrelated to bento lunches or cupcakes. At the moment that means forays into Asian cuisine and meal planning and attempts at expanding my baking repetoire.

Life is learning!