Cathlin cooks... but mostly bakes!

MOVED

2011-05-06T01:31:00.001-04:00

SUP. So I managed the move! More details over at cathlinargbakes.tumblr.com!

Moving...?

2011-05-04T03:35:00.002-04:00

I hope, anyway.

I've been chillin' on Tumblr for a while now, doing some other things that have failed - whatever. I found a script to move Blogger posts to Tumblr and I'm hoping that it'll be back up and running soon, so I can move my content over. Then I'm hoping I can revive this blog a bit, because I really truly miss it!

I'll post an address for you to find me, if you're still interested, once I get things back up and running!

I'm sorry I've been so absent, but I hope some of you will stick around to see what's next. :)

Perfect Vanilla Cupcakes

2010-06-01T13:16:00.000-04:00

It's been a long long time. I didn't intend to be away from this blog for so long. But I had the end of my undergraduate classes, exams, we moved, I've been looking for apartments in Vancouver, I've been keeping up my photography blog which can be quite a task, and I just haven't really been baking much, not least of all because I moved all my baking stuff home. I'm finally here though to talk about my birthday cupcakes… even though my birthday was now over two months ago.

Like most cakes, you begin with the dry ingredients.

And then mix together the wet ingredients, along with the sugar...

and beat it up.

Add the eggs...

and beat it up again, until it becomes fluffy and pale yellow.

Then add some vanilla and mix it gently.

The other liquid this recipe calls for is buttermilk, but you can achieve the same effect as buttermilk by mixing milk with vinegar, which is what I did here. And so you have three bowls of different ingredients.

Add half of each type of wet ingredients and mix.

Mix in the remaining wet ingredients and whisk to smooth out any very large unmixed bits.

Now, of course I forgot to take a photo, but either pour the batter into a greased and floured cake tin, or line a muffin tin with papers and scoop the batter into each cup.

After baking for 15-20 minutes (sorry, I know I made notes on this, but I can't find them!), they come out smelling delicious and looking beautifully golden.

You can frost or decorate them however you want. I chose to make a chocolate and a strawberry buttercream and pipe them together onto the cupcakes.

These are the bessst vanilla cupcakes I've ever found a recipe for. I also used this as a cake once, if you'll remember Anders' 23rd birthday track cake. It's such a tasty, perfect recipe - not dense, not too sweet, soft, and just… delicious! Definitely give it a try next time you're in the market for a vanilla cake!

Recipe
Vanilla Cake

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk, plain yoghurt, or sour cream

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and lightly flour a 9x9/9x13 cake pan. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside. In a large bowl, beat together melted butter and sugar until completely combined. Add eggs and beat until mixture is smooth and light. Stir in vanilla extract. Add flour mixture in two additions, alternating with buttermilk. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 30-35 minutes (cake) or 15-20 minutes (cupcakes), until cake is barely golden and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out with only a few loose crumbs.

Guten Appetit!

Black Beans and Rice

2010-03-26T18:51:00.003-04:00

I know I said I'd be back to post about my birthday cupcakes, but I actually have this delicious black bean and rice dish banked, and if I don't post about it now, I know I'll forget and it will never happen. But don't worry! The cupcakes are coming! And you're not losing anything by getting this post first. In fact you're gaining because this dish is delicioussss! And really quick and simple! It's also versatile.
The first thing you need to do is cook up some rice. One cup (dry) to be exact. I didn't take a photo of rice cooking, though, for what I feel are obvious reasons. It's boring. It's self-explanitory.

The real fun starts with what I call the "dressing." In a large bowl you combine olive oil, lime (or lemon) juice, chili powder, ground cumin, turmeric, crushed garlic, salt, pepper and a can of green chilies. We use mild chilies because we don't like spicy food that much, but you can use any kind of green chilies, depending on how spicy you like your food!

Add in some chopped green onions and tomato...

and a can of black beans (rinsed thoroughly first, of course!).

Give it a good stir and wait for your rice to finish.

Then throw your rice in (we like basmati), mix it up well, again, and serve!

It's really that simple. Now, you may be wondering how you serve this dish. Well, as I said, it's versatile! The recipe is originally a wrap filling. Whip up some guacamole and your own tortillas, if you're feeling ambitious, chop up some lettuce and cheese and you've got yourself some delicious and healthy wraps. I've also baked this, with cheese on top! I've also stuffed peppers with it and baked them in the oven! But normally, we just eat it as a side dish with some form of protein (meat for Anders, vegetarian hot dogs for me, usually), and some cooked vegetables! It's really very tasty and when you can use it for so many things, you can't really go wrong! It keeps well in the fridge and makes a great quick snack as leftovers.

Now, before I move on to the recipe, I wanted to give myself a little shameless plug. I'm starting a very long photography project tomorrow, and while I don't know how many people actually read this blog regularly, I thought I'd plug it here, in case anyone who does read it is interested! There's nothing up there, now. My first post will appear at 12AM, eastern time. Thanks!

Recipe
Black Beans and Rice

1 cup dry rice, cooked
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lime (or lemon) juice
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 medium clove garlic, crushed
salt and pepper to taste
1 can (114 ml) (mild) green chilies
1 cup tomato, chopped
6 green onions, diced
1 can (540 ml) black beans, drained and well rinsed

Cook rice and set aside. Meanwhile, in a large bowl combine the remaining ingredients. Add cooked rice and mix well. Serve as a side dish, baked with cheese on top, or stuffed in peppers.

Guten Appetit!

Cake Mix Cookies

2010-03-13T00:10:00.001-05:00

I am fo' realz back, only ten days after my last post. BAM. And I have these really easy and tasty cookies to share. All you need is a box of cake mix (any flavour), vegetable oil, eggs, chocolate chips and some oats, if you want. A bowl is probably good, too.

Start simple: beat some eggs.

Throw your cake mix and some oats, if you want them, into a bowl.

toss in the eggs, oil and chocolate chips.

Stiiiir it up, little darlin'.

I missed taking a photo of this but scoop the batter into about 2-tablespoon-sized balls and put them on a baking tray. Then bake them.

They will look and smell delicious when they come out of the oven.

These were the last three cookies left... about 36 hours after I had baked them.

Recipe

Cake Mix Cookies
1 boxed cake mix (any flavour)
¾ cup rolled oats (optional)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
½ cup oil
¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350°F. In a large bowl combine all ingredients, mixing well. Spoon batter in about 2-tablespoon-sized balls and place on a baking tray. Bake in preheated oven for 10-12 minutes. Cool briefly on trays before removing to wire rack to cool completely.

Guten Appetit!

Anders' 23rd birthday cake and a tasty version of Wilton's buttercream frosting

2010-03-03T15:59:00.003-05:00

I have no excuses for how long I've left this blog, except to say that, while I love cooking and baking, I haven't been feeling the urge to do it that often recently. Also, I've been trying to get back into shape after hardly being able to exercise at all for about four months, and eating homemade baked goods doesn't fit into that plan very seamlessly.
Nevertheless, I am here to report on the birthday cake I made for Anders this year! The photo above is just a teaser...

OK... so I really wanted to document this whole process with photos, but there were a couple factors involved in my failure to do that. 1) I was a nervous WRECK because I was, with the help of some friends and the cooperation of the entire cross-country/distance track team, planning and trying desperately to pull off a surprise party for Anders, so I was really busy, and 2) I'm out of practice so I just... forgot. See, I finally found this amazing recipe for a classic vanilla, yellow cake, which I used, and I wanted so badly to share it with everyone. And I will! My birthday is two weeks from tomorrow, and I'm planning on making cupcakes with this recipe for my classes (because I'm 22 going on 7 apparently), so I will post it then! I promise!

So what is this post all about then, if not a super awesome recipe for yellow cake? Well, this year was the first time I ever tried to do anything fun with Anders' birthday cake. I decided to make a 9x13 sheet cake and FROST A TRACK ONTO IT.

BAM.

Anders' birthday tends to fall right around the middle of indoor track season for Canadian universities, and most (if not all) of our friends are runners, so I thought it was appropriate. I went out and bought the pan specically for it. I also bought Wilton frosting tip #233 to make real-looking grass AROUND the track. Want to see a detail photo of that?

BAM.

It was a lot of fun to do! The only problem was that I kept melting the frosting in my hands, which is why you can see spots where the frosting is just a big blob on the cake... See, I had to keep a desk lamp out in the kitchen so I could see my colours properly and make sure they were mixing correctly. Plus my hands were flippin' hot from being so nervous. It wasn't a great combination. But everyone was really impressed and even though when I look at the photos now I think "it looks like a 12 year-old frosted that cake..." I'm pleased with how it turned out and how happy Anders was with it, and how much everyone at the party liked it.

Also, if you look at it from an artsy angle and kind of unfocus the one end (as if you're a camera lens.........) it looks way better.

BAM.

Seriously, though. I'm sorry I was away for so long. I made cookies a couple of days ago so I'll post those soon, and I promise I'll make delicious cupcakes and post about those too in the next couple of weeks. So there are a few things to look forward to in the near future!

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I used the Wilton buttercream frosting recipe to frost this cake. I've posted about this recipe before, and you can find that here. But here's the thing: that recipe, as it is, is disgusting. So here's how I ACTUALLY make my version of the Wilton buttercream frosting.

Recipe

Buttercream Frosting

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 tablespoons milk or water
4 cups confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon meringue powder
pinch of salt (optional)

Cream together butter, vanilla, milk/water and salt if using (it's good to dissolve the salt in the liquid, otherwise it might dissolve later in your frosting and mess up the colours). Add confectioners' sugar 1 cup at a time, mixing well at medium speed after each addition. Add the meringue powder with one of the cups of sugar, and continue mixing on medium speed until all ingredients have been thoroughly mixed together. Mix for an additional minute or so, until creamy.

This recipe makes about three cups of stiff consistency frosting. Wilton has three consistencies they use in class and it's actually pretty useful to know them and what they're used for.
Stiff consistency is used for things like flowers with upright petals, like the Wilton rose or sweet peas.
Medium consistency is used for stars (with the star tips), figure piping, borders (like the shell border) and flowers with petals that lie flat. To make medium consistency frosting, add one teaspoon of water for each cup of stiff frosting, or one tablespoon if you want to make the full recipe medium consistency.
Thin consistency is used for writing, making vines, leaves and frosting the cake. To make thin consistency frosting, add two teaspoons of water for each cup of stiff frosting, or two tablespoons for the full recipe.

Guten Appetit!

Canadian Thanksgiving... over a month late

2009-11-23T16:22:00.001-05:00

I'm sorry it's been so long. This semester has been riddled with bad luck accompanied by stress. First I found a member of my family is very ill, then I fell off a horse and injured my tail bone and hip, then I pinched my sciatic nerve as a result of limping from the injured hip, as soon as that got better I rolled my ankle really badly and sprained it, and that only really started getting better a few weeks ago, and last week I had the worst cold I've had in years which kept me in bed for days straight. And through all that I either haven't felt like or haven't been able to bake or cook much out of the ordinary, day-to-day sustenance.
But Anders and I did make a small Thanksgiving dinner together and I took photos. We had been at my cousin's wedding the day before and neither of us were able to spend Thanksgiving day with out families, so we made a small dinner together. Now, Canadian Thanksgiving was over a month ago, but since American Thanksgiving is coming up, I thought I'd finally post about it!

Here's what our little table looked like. Delicious!

This is Anders' plate, complete with turkey (I don't eat meat).

I didn't really use recipes for any of this. For the turkey breast, I made a rub with softened butter, salt, pepper, and poultry seasoning. Then I rubbed it all over the breast and under the skin. I put a large piece of onion in the small "cavity" created by the ribs on the underside of the breast and put it in the oven for about an hour.
For the dressing we tore up rye bread, tossed it with celery, onions, salt, pepper, poultry seasoning and olive oil. Neither Anders nor I like mushy stuffing cooked inside the bird (especially me... since I don't eat meat), so we baked it in a dish until it got crispy and tasssty.
Steamed vegetables and a mashed potatoes are pretty straightforward, so I don't think I need to explain that, right? The only thing I will say is that for mashed potatoes, Yukon Golds are GREAT. I also find that it works best to mash the potatoes with a masher first, then add in milk and (lots of) butter and whip the whole thing with a mixer. It makes for very smooth and tasty mashed potatoes!

The dinner was really great, except that the turkey was apparently pretty disappointing. I didn't have any, so I wouldn't know, but Anders didn't like it much. I got the breast from a butcher nearby, but I should have known better, because Anders has never really cared for any of the meat I've gotten there. Everything else was delicious though, and we were so happy to be able to have a small Thanksgiving dinner when we couldn't be with our families.

Anyway, I'm hoping to be able to do more baking soon - I've missed it a lot, especially since I haven't been able to do any of my other normal activities like horseback riding and running. And with Christmas coming up, I should have an excellent reason to do so!

Until then, guten Appetit!

Zwetschgenknödel or Plum Dumplings

2009-10-21T17:58:00.001-04:00

Okay, now I really have been remiss. I've been quasi-busy with school and a bit busier than that with work. I've also been having some bad luck - I recently fell off a horse and hurt my bank and hip, that injury turned into a pinched sciatic nerve, and on Monday I rolled my ankle really badly and have a very bad sprain. But today I did a presentation in my grad level German class and I'm tired and am not planning on doing any work tonight. So here's a post about something I made a while ago. Plum dumplings. They are a traditional German dish (in German: Zwetschgenknödel) that Anders family makes every summer. They can really only be made (and enjoyed) when plums are in season. In Ontario, that means the end of August. Anders and I made them one night shortly before school started.

We began by making the dough, which is very simple - flour, eggs, butter and Quark cheese.

We mixed the ingredients together by hand until they come together into a nice soft, sticky ball. The dough had to be cooled for an hour after that.

While the dough was in the fridge, we worked on our plums... and our apricots. That's a variation Anders' family loves to do.

After washing the fruit, we cut a slit down one side and pulled out the stones. You absolutely need freestone fruit for this, or you'll just want to die.

Next, we replaced the stone with a sugar cube.

Once we'd replaced all our stones with sugar cubes and our dough was cooled, we tore off small pieces of dough and flattened them out. These we used to cover each plum or apricot.

This is trickier than it may seem. The dough is sticky, and the fruit is somewhat wet/juicy. So between the dough sticking to your hands, and the juice from the fruit making the dough wet and not sticky, covering all the fruit takes some time and patience.

To cook these bad boys, we brought a large pot of water to a boil and dropped them in. The dumplings are finished then they float to the top.

We set the finished ones in a colander to drain.

And this is the final and most important step. We each took as many dumplings as we could fit on our plates and in our stomachs, cut them into bite-size pieces and covered them with cinnamon sugar (Anders also put melted butter on his, which is traditional, but I never do it).

And there you have a delicious, traditionally German MAIN COURSE. I'm serious! No one ever believes that this is a main course dish, but it is! Which is not to say that they don't also make a delicious dessert, it's just not traditional.
I have to apologise for not posting this sooner, as plums are definitely out of season in most places (although it is spring in the southern hemisphere...). But it's something to look forward to through the long winter months ahead of us.

Recipe

Zwetschgenknödel or Plum Dumplings

350 grammes flour
1-2 eggs
40 grammes butter
250 grammes Quark

Pinch of salt
50 prune plums
50 sugar cubes
Bowl of sugar
Cinnamon

×××

Mix and knead flower, eggs, butter and Quark thoroughly until smooth. If sticky, use more flour. Cool ball of dough in refrigerator for 1 hour. Meanwhile, wash and dry the plums. Slit plums along one side and replace stones with sugar cubes. When the dough is cool, form it into a thick roll. Cut off small pieces, and knead into flat thin wraps. Wrap each plum in dough.
Drop dumplings into slightly salted boiling water. Simmer for about 10 minutes or until dumplings rise to the surface. Remove gently and place into colander to let the water run off. Serve in a large warm bowl with cinnamon sugar and melted butter on the side.

Guten Appetit!

Final Wilton Cake and Truly, Truly, Truly Outrageous Chocolate Cookies

2009-09-18T22:22:00.003-04:00

I've been remiss. Well, actually I haven't, I've just been busy. I got a job, the boyfriend moved back in, I started my last year of university (fiiiinally), I started my job, etc. But I've been doing some things in the kitchen and today I'm going to share a chocolate cookie recipe, right after I show you my final cake from the Wilton course.

Oooh, aaah!!
It's not amazing or anything, and my icing wasn't quite stiff enough, so the roses were a little tough to make. Also, I'm really bad at shell borders. Also, the stems of my roses are wiggly. Whatever. The cake itself was very tasty. I adapted my chocolate cake recipe to make it white chocolate, and once I've worked out some kinks in the recipe, I'll be sure to post it!

But here's the recipe for today. Another kind of outrageous chocolate cookie! More outrageous than the last ones, I promise!! These ones are ACTUALLY truly, truly, truly outrageous!

I'll be honest - I did take photos of the whole process for these cookies, but the batter looked like poop and I just can't bring myself to post the photos! I don't want to ruin it for you, because these cookies are super delicious, oh man. They just melt in your mouth and have an intense chocolate flavour. Try them!

Recipe
Truly, Truly, Truly Outrageous Chocolate Cookies

2 ¼ cups flour
½ cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup vegetable oil (canola/rapeseed, olive, whatever)
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 eggs
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375°F. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa and baking soda. In another bowl, beat together the oil, brown and white sugars and vanilla. Beat in the eggs. Make a well in the dry ingredients, and add the wet ingredients, stirring until combined. Add the chocolate chips and mix to distribute evenly throughout batter. Roll 1/8 cup (2 tablespoons) of batter into balls and place on a cookie sheet. You may press the cookies down if you wish - if not, they will bake into rounded domes. These cookies do not spread. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Remove trays to a wire rack to cool for a few minutes before removing cookies from the tray to cool completely.

Makes about 4 dozen.

Guten Appetit!

Guacamole and Home-made Flour Tortilla Chips

2009-08-18T19:19:00.003-04:00

Once upon a time, I made flour tortillas to use as wraps for a meal I made for myself and Anders. I never posted them because when I rolled them out they turned out to be more pointy and mishapen than circular. But they were tasty. Now, the other day I bought a bag of avocadoes. I don't really like avocado that much, but they're full of healthy fat and nutrients so I decided to just get them and maybe make myself like them. Instead I just went ahead and made guacamole a few days after buying them because that's really the only way I like to eat them. And to eat guacamole you need some chips. But have you ever noticed how much crap is in tortilla chips? Ugh. I have. So I decided to take that recipe for soft tortillas I had made before and make them into chips! That's right, folks. This post is a twofer! Guacamole and tortilla chips ho!

I started with the tortilla chips first, because the dough needs time to rest in between steps.

I started with some flour, baking powder, salt and canola oil.

I added some warm milk.

And that's it. Five ingredients, minimal mixing and I got this pleasant lump of dough, which I kneaded until it was well combined and smooth.

I threw the dough into the bowl I mixed it in and put a damp dish cloth over top. I let it rest for about 20 minutes.

Now, this next part is a lie, because I was multi-tasking the whole time and while the dough was resting I started on the guacamole, but to keep things simple, I'll continue with the tortilla chips.

After 20 minutes, I split the dough into four more or less equal parts.

And let them rest again. This dough needs a lot of rest, or it will be tough and gross.

After the second rest, I split each ball of dough in half and I rolled each one out very very thin. They do shrink back up a bit though. I didn't worry to much about how circular they were, because I was just going to butcher them anyway to make the chips.

Using my (dry, unoiled) cast iron pan, I...fried, baked?... each tortilla for about 30 seconds per side. They start to puff up a bit and turn brown in spots, so it's easy to tell when they're done.

When they were all done, I cut each tortilla into 8 triangular(ish) pieces.

I put those on a baking sheet, which I had first sprayed very lightly with canola oil. I also gave the soon-to-be-chips a light spray. This is what they looked like after baking for about 12 or 13 minutes.

Next, I worked on my guacamole!

Naturally enough, I started with avocadoes! What a lovely colour!

Next, I Chopped up some tomato.

And some green onion.

I threw those two things into my bowl with my avocadoes along with some lime juice, chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper.

Now look. I know you're supposed to put cilantro in guacamole. And no, I haven't done that. I have a confession. I hate cilantro. And I know very few people who DO like it so I don't feel bad about it! It makes me feel like my throat is closing up. That isn't a good feeling when you're eating! So I avoid it. I hope you understand.

Anyway... I don't like to mash my avocado before adding the other ingredients. I find that it just turns into paste when you do that and I don't like it. Guacamole should be think and rustic, not smooth and pasty.

So instead I just take a metal spoon to it and stir, breaking up the avocado as I see fit. And I also add some garlic because I realise I forgot it... and then I don't add enough. Whoops!

There we go. Oooh, look at it. Tastyyy.

Ooh, both together. Don't you want to just dive into the photo?

Delicious!

Okay. So I love guacamole. But it's nothing too new or exciting, so let's talk about the tortilla chips. They were good! They weren't WAY too salty like the store-bought ones, they had a nice light flavour and they were just... tasty. My only complaint is that some of them were a bit too crunchy but that was my fault. The only ones that were too crunchy were the darker ones, so they were obviously a bit over-baked. Next time I do this, and I definitely will do this again, I would decrease the baking time slightly. Other than that, they were great! I was pleased to be able to just sort of make it up. I spent a lot of time looking online for a recipe for tortilla chips, but I came up with nothing. Luckily it was easy to simply decide to make these into chips.

Recipes

Flour Tortilla Chips

×××

2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of vegetable oil
¾ cups of warm milk

×××

Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and oil. Slowly add the warm milk. Stir until a loose, sticky ball is formed. Knead for two minutes on a floured surface. Dough should be firm and soft. Place dough in a bowl and cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap for 20 minutes.
After the dough has rested, break off eight sections, roll them into balls in your hands, place on a plate (make sure they aren’t touching) and then cover balls with damp cloth or plastic wrap for 10 minutes. After dough has rested, one at a time place a dough ball on a floured surface, pat it out into a four-inch circle, and then roll with a rolling pin from the centre until it’s thin and about eight inches in diameter. Don’t over work the dough, or it’ll be stiff. In a dry iron skillet or comal heated on high, cook the tortilla about thirty seconds on each side. They should start to puff a bit when they're done.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cut the cooked tortillas into eighths and arrange a few pieces on a very lightly oiled baking sheet (canola oil spray works well). Spray the tops of the tortilla pieces very lightly with canola oil. Place in the over for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the chips are brown and crispy. Cool slightly before eating.

Guacamole

×××

4 small or 3 medium avocadoes
2 small or 1 large tomato(es), chopped
6-8 green onions, chopped
3 tablespoons lime juice
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 teaspoons chili powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste

×××

Cut avocadoes in half and scrap fruit into a bowl. Add chopped tomato and green onion, garlic, chili powder, cumin and salt and pepper. Stir and break up avocado. Serve with tortilla chips or pita bread or something equally delicious.

Guten Appetit!

Wilton Course 1 Class 2

2009-08-14T13:22:00.004-04:00

Last night I had my second Wilton class in which we decorated our cakes with the Wilton rainbow!

On Wednesday night I baked my cake.

Now, I did two things I don't normally do. I used a mix and I wet a dish towel and wrapped it around the pan to make it bake more evenly.
I don't like that mixes call for so many eggs. Three? Geez! But I do love the homemade bake-even strip I used. In the first Wilton class the instructor suggested we get the Wilton brand ones, but using a dish towel is a lot more... free. So all I did was roll up a dish towel to fit the height of the cake pan, soak it, ring it, wrap it around the pan and secure it with a couple of safety pins. It made my cake bake completely evenly. I didn't have to level it at all and the outside edge wasn't over-baked. It was excellent.
I did have to bake the cake for about ten minutes longer, because the wet towel kept the pan cooler than normal. But if you're planning on using this trick, make sure to check the cake around the suggested baking time and determine just how much extra time it will need!

Anyway, yesterday I spent a tonne of time making different frostings and then frosting the darned cake.

I'm really not good at frosting cakes. It took me about an hour and it was really uneven and not very smooth. But I let the frosting set for a bit and then rubbed it down with parchment paper to try to smooth it out a bit. If you'd like a tutorial for that, check out this video! This lady does it with a paper towel, but you can do it with parchment, as well.

Finally, I took the half hour bus ride to Michael's (the bus system sucks here) and decorated my cake!

It turned out pretty well! The colours were insanely bright (although the photos make them look brighter than they actually were), and I managed to make my rainbow pretty even. It was fun to do, too.

When I got home, a good friend came over and shared some with me.

So I just have to say, I think the Wilton "butter"cream is disgusting. It's all shortening and no butter. It tastes like sugar and chemicals. I think next week I'll frost the cake with a real buttercream and just decorate with the Wilton buttercream. If you're interested, the recipe for the Wilton buttercream is below. I think I would probably stick with the basic recipe, but replace the shortening with butter - I think then it would be pretty decent.
Overall, however, I'm pleased with the class! It's fun to learn some decorating techniques, even if they are really simple. I'm hoping that after I'm done this course, I can just find the books for the other courses and follow those instead of doing the other courses. Mostly because it's ridiculously impractical for me to get to Michael's, but also because it's all pretty well laid out in the books and now that I've learned how they teach things in the courses, I think I can just transfer it to the next levels. I think I would recommend the first course to anyone who wants to learn the basics of frosting!

Recipe

Wilton Buttercream
1 cup solid white vegetable shortening*
1 teaspoon Wilton Flavour**
3 tablespoons milk or water
1 lb. confectioners' sugar (approx. 4 cups)
1 tablespoon Wilton Meringue Powder***
pinch of salt (optiona)

Cream together shortening, flavour, water and salt if using (it's good to dissolve the salt in the liquid, otherwise it might dissolve later in your frosting and mess up the colours). Add dry ingredients and mix on medium speed until all ingredients have been thoroughly mixed together. Mix for an additional minute or so, until creamy.

*they suggest Crisco because it's very white
**my instructor recommended a mixture of colourless vanilla and butter flavours, but I just used regular vanilla... coloured and all
***this helps stabilise the frosting - I actually like the product.

This recipe makes about three cups of stiff consistency frosting. Wilton has three consistencies they use in class and it's actually pretty useful to know them and what they're used for.
Stiff consistency is used for things like flowers with upright petals, like the Wilton rose or sweet peas.
Medium consistency is used for stars (with the star tips), figure piping, borders (like the shell border) and floweres with petals that lie flat. To make medium consistency frosting, add one teaspoon of water for each cup of stiff frosting, or one tablespoon if you want to make the full recipe medium consistency.
Thin consistency is used for writing, making vines, leaves and frosting the cake. To make thin consistency frosting, add two teaspoons of water for each cup of stiff frosting, or two tablespoons for the full recipe).

Changes

2009-08-12T15:30:00.003-04:00

Hello friends, devoted readers, and visitors. I've just changed the layout of CCbmB and I've also changed the format of my posts. Not much has changed in the layout itself, but the format of the posts has changed. To read more about it...
I just wanted to change things around so that my front page wasn't bogged down with long posts, full of my process photos. This way, I'll have an introduction photo of the finished product on the front page, and the rest of the post, including process photos, commentary and recipes will appear after the link labelled "Continue reading..." I hope this makes the navigation and viewing of my CCbmB easier and more enjoyable for everyone!

As for what's going on with me right now, I'm still unemployed and thus unable to really buy too many extra groceries to be used in baking. Plus I don't have a 6'1" distance runner boyfriend in the apartment at the moment to share them with. None of that, of course, has stopped me from taking The Wilton Method of Decorating Course 1. So I will be updating the world on my progress in the class, as I currently have no decorating skill.
And with September comes more money (hopefully) and the return of the aforementioned boyfriend, so my posts should be more regular and more interesting (hopefully).

Thanks for keeping up with me and my fun in the kitchen!

Strawberry (and blueberry) Shortcake

2009-07-28T22:40:00.004-04:00

My lovely sister visited me a couple of weekends ago, and while she was here we decided to make shortcake! She'd made it before, but I'd never even eaten a real shortcake before. I find that most of the time you see it in a restaurant, grocery store or bakery, it's actually angel food cake served with strawberries. Very different!

Shortcake is actually made with a dough. It looks like bread dough. You mush it into a pan and it's lumpy and not very pretty when it comes out. But it still somehow looks delicious and perfect.
You're supposed to cut this (very thin) cake in half and layer it with whipped cream and fruit. We decided it would be difficult to do (plus we were tired and just wanted some cake), so we didn't. It kept a lot better that way.

I didn't take photos of the whole process because we were also busy making dinner when we made it, but here's what it looked like when we were done!

It's really a simple and lovely cake. Very filling, too, so you can get quite a few servings out of one cake!

Recipe

Strawberry Shortcake

×××

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 cup cold butter or margarine, cut into pieces
2/3 cup milk
2 pints strawberries (about 7 cups whole)
1 cup whipping cream

×××

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Grease 8-inch round cake pan. In medium bowl, combine flour, 3 tbsp sugar, baking powder, and salt. With pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in milk just until mixture forms soft dough that leaves side of bowl. On lightly floured surface, knead dough 10 times. With floured hands, pat evenly into cake pan and sprinkle with 1 tbsp sugar. Bake until golden, about 20-30 minutes.
Meanwhile, reserve 4 whole strawberries for garnish; hull remaining strawberries and cut in half or in quarters. In medium bowl, toss strawberries with remaining 1/2 cup sugar until sugar has dissolved.
Invert shortcake onto surface. With long serrated knife, cut shortcake horizontally in half. In bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat cream just until soft peaks form.
Place bottom half of shortcake, cut side up, on cake plate; top with half the strawberry mixture and half the whipped cream. Place remaining shortcake, cut side down, on strawberry mixture. Spoon remaining strawberry mixture over, then top with remaining whipped cream. Garnish with reserved whole strawberries.

Guten Appetit!

Strawberry and White Chocolate Tart

2009-07-16T00:14:00.010-04:00

Okay. So, not only am I back from Germany, but I'm also unemployed because 1) this is a weird time of year to hire anyone, and 2) it's a terrible economy to hire anyone. You're probably thinking that I should be using all this time to bake bake bake and post post post. But bake bake baking requires money money money, which I am sorely lacking because of my current state of unemployment.
Nonetheless, I did bake last week. I actually made something for a friend who was looking for a subject for a photography exercise/contest. I spent a lot of time considering all my options. Something tried and true or something completely new (rhyme not intended)? I chose a dish, then changed my mind, then changed my mind again and finally I did land on something I had made before... only completely different.
If you'll think (or look, if you weren't with me back then) back to June 2008, you'll remember that I made a strawberry chocolate pie for my sister's birthday. Well this time I decided to follow the original recipe more closely and used white chocolate... but I still used strawberries. Mostly because the raspberries were about twice the price.

I started by hulling and washing some beautiful, fresh, Ontario strawberries. I'm only glad I live in Ontario in the summer, and only because of the plethora of beautiful, fresh produce.

I set those aside to drain and cut up some chilled butter.

Then added some flour and sugar.

And blended it all up.

Next I added some egg yolks, whipping cream and lemon juice and blended those in.

The dough looked like this when it was all blended.

I formed it into a ball and wrapped it up in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.

Meet my new Paderno tart pan. I love it.

When the dough was chilled, I fit it into the lovely lovely pan.

The dough went back into the fridge and I chopped up the white chocolate.

I melted it in a pot with some whipping cream and vanilla (which made the colour kind of gross, but I tried to ignore it).

I poured the melted chocolate mixture into a bowl with an egg and beat it up.

While I was doing all that, the tart shell was baking blind, so once the filling was prepared, I filled the bottom of the tart with a bunch of strawberries.

And drowned them with the white chocolate mixture.

After going in the oven for 45 or 50 minutes, the tart came out looking like this, which is basically what I imagine heaven looks like.

So, I don't have any photos of the tart cut. I took the tart over to my friend's house where he had set up about three flashes and his fancy-pants camera. Many shots of the whole tart were taken before we cut a perfect slice out and took many most photos of the slice and the tart, etc. It was fun and a lot of the photos seemed to turn out pretty nicely. Of course I haven't seen any since that night, but as soon as I get my hands on them, I'll post them up and show you what my food looks like when you light it properly instead of just using the natural light of my huge apartment windows.
We also ate some, and it was pretty tasty! They crust was a little too thick, but the filling had a pleasant white chocolate flavour and the strawberries gave it a nice fresh taste, too! I did alter the recipe based on thoughts by eat me, delicious, who made it quite a while ago and thought that the white chocolate flavour was a little weak. All I did was increase the white chocolate by 2 ounces and decrease the whipping cream by 2 ounces. It worked out just fine!
I'm not sure I would add it to my regular rotation of desserts for gatherings or functions, but it was quite enjoyable.

More posts to come soon, hopefully! My sister is visiting for the weekend and we're planning to make shortcake!

Recipe

Strawberry and White Chocolate Tart
adapted from a Ricardo Larrivée recipe.

×××

Shortcrust
2 ¼ cups flour
1 pinch of salt
½ cup sugar
¾ cup unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
4 egg yolks
1 tablespoon ice water or 35% cream
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Filling
½ cup 35% cream
6 ounces white chocolate, chopped
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 ½ cups fresh strawberries (or enough strawberries to fill the bottom of your tart crust)

×××

Shortbread Crust
Place the butter, flour, salt and sugar in a bowl and blend with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the egg yolks, water or cream and lemon juice and blend until the mixture is uniform. Shape into a disk, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Pat the dough into a 9-inch tart pan. Refrigerate for another 30 minutes. With the rack in the lowest position, preheat the oven to 375°F. Line the chilled crust with aluminum foil, scattering a few dry beans or pie weights on top to hold the foil in place. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove the weights and foil and bake for 5 minutes more. Let cool.
Filling
Preheat the oven to 325°F. In a saucepan over low heat, gently melt the chocolate in the cream and vanilla. Lightly beat the egg using an electric mixer on lowest speed. While beating, slowly add the chocolate mixture, taking care not to incorporate air into the mixture. Beat for 15 seconds more. Arrange strawberries on the pie crust with their pointed ends facing up. Gently pour the filling over the berries without covering them completely. Bake until the centre is only slightly jiggly, 45 to 50 minutes*.
Let stand at room temperature for 3 to 4 hours. Best if served the same day.

* Make sure you check often after about 35 minutes, because all ovens are different!

Guten Appetit!

Jaffa Orange Cake with Orange Glaze

2009-06-22T16:45:00.006-04:00

Well, I'm back from Germany and I finally have time to post up the last cake I baked. The recipe is modified from one I previously modified and posted, so I'm not going to post all of my process photos, just the final product. Enjoy!

It all started with some oranges...

The finished product.

This particular cake got a little dark, but the orange flavour was so strong and lovely. The glaze on the outside hardened just enough to give a crisp bite on the outside of the very moist and soft cake inside.

Recipe

Jaffa Orange Cake with Orange Glaze
Cake
2 cups unbleached white flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon orange zest
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 ½ cups freshly squeezed orange juice*
Glaze
2/3 cup confectioners' sugar
3 tablespoons orange juice, fresh
1 teaspoon orange zest (optional)

×××

Cake
Preheat oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a 9-inch round or 8-inch square cake pan, and dust lightly with flour. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar into a bowl. Add the oil, orange zest and vanilla and mix the batter with a fork or small whisk. When the batter is uniform, add the orange juice and stir quickly. The batter will foam slightly where the baking soda and the orange juice are reacting. Stir just until the orange juice is evenly distributed throughout the batter. Pour the batter into the cake pan, and bake for 30 to 35 minutes. Allow to cool before glazing or frosting.
Glaze
Sift the sugar into a bowl. Add the orange juice (and zest, if using) and whisk until smooth. Pour over cooled cake.

*I used jaffa oranges, but any oranges with a strong flavour will do just fine.

Guten Appetit!

Temporarily away

2009-05-25T07:17:00.003-04:00

Okay, so... I'm in Germany right now. I have a cake I need to post, that I made before I left and if I ever have less homework to do, I will post it.
I'm living with a family here, and apparently the son in the family loves baking as well. So hopefully he and I can do some German baking before I leave at the end of June.

Thanks everyone for hanging on and continuing to follow my blog. I'll be back in full force when I'm back in Canada!

Outrageous chocolate cookies!

2009-04-27T12:20:00.004-04:00

I love chocolate. I love cookies. I love chocolate cookies. These cookies are truly, truly, truly outrageous.

First I melted a whole bunch of chocolate. Oooh yea, chocolate. I didn't really want to use chocolate chips but it was all I had.

Then I sifted some flour and baking powder and a tiny bit of salt.

In another bowl I whisked up some oil, eggs, brown sugar and vanilla.

Then I added the melted chocolate to the egg mixture. You have to add it slowly so as not to cook the eggs.

Next I mixed in the flour mixture.

And then the chocolate chips.

Delicious cookie dough.

I dropped the dough by 1/8 cup on a cookie sheet, and then pressed them down.

I baked them for a bit and oh man delicioussss.

Seriously... look at that. Make these and eat them.

These cookies are soft and chocolatey and delicious and I love them. This is one of the most incomprehensible description of anything I've baked. But it involves chocolate. And I love chocolate.

Recipe

Outrageous Chocolate Cookies
Adapted from an adaptation of a Martha Stewart recipe.

12 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped
1/3 cup canola oil
1 cup all-purpose flour, plus an extra 1/3 cup
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
¾ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°F. Melt chocolate in a double boiler. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. In a mixing bowl, beat oil, egg, brown sugar, and vanilla until smooth. Mix in melted chocolate and then the flour mixture until just combined. If the batter is too wet, add the extra flour little by little. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop 1/8 cup portions of dough 3 inches apart onto baking sheets. Press down (the cookies do not spread much). Bake until cookies are crackly and edges are set, but centres are still gooey, 7-10 minutes. Cool on sheets for 10 minutes then transfer to racks to cool completely. Makes about two dozen cookies.

Guten Appetit!

Balsamic Bruschetta

2009-04-25T17:46:00.003-04:00

Okay, I love bruschetta. When I'm at a restaurant that has very few vegetarian choices, or if I just can't decide what I want, I get bruschetta. I've had so many different kinds. Some with cheddar, or mozzarella, or feta. Some with fresh basil, or no basil, or maybe oregano. Some with white onions, or red onions, or just too many onions. Some served hot, or served cold. It's always different and while I like it pretty much every way, I've never had an order of bruschetta in a restaurant that I would consider perfect. So I decided to try making my own.

I started by chopping up some tomatoes.

And some red onions. I like the flavour or red onions better than white onions, plus they don't seem to aggravate my heartburn as much.

Next I sautéed some garlic in olive oil.

And then added the onions.

I added some balsamic vinegar and let that cook until the onions softened slightly and balsamic mostly evaporated.

While that was happening, I cut some slices from this lovely Italian stretch loaf. I didn't take any photos of this, but I also brushed the slices lightly with olive oil and toasted them in the broiler just until they were a little golden.

Next I added the tomato (and salt and pepper) to the pan with the onions and garlic, and let it cook, ONLY to heat the tomatoes. I didn't want the tomatoes to cook and loose their bite and shape.

Finally I put a few spoonfuls of the bruschetta mix on each slice of bread and popped them back into the oven to heat through and toast slightly.

It took a few tries to get it to turn out how I wanted it to, and there are still some changes I would make, especially if I was just making it for myself, not myself and Anders. For example, I might try to put some fresh basil chiffonade in. I might also melt some mozzarella or parmesan or both on top. But generally, I like that it's simple and light. The balsamic adds a nice flavour and the red onion is nice and sweet. I can't wait to make this in the summer during the height of tomato season!

Recipe

Balsamic Bruschetta
1 cup tomato, chopped
3/4 cup red onion, chopped
olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
1-2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

×××

Briefly sauté the garlic in the olive oil then add the onions and balsamic vinegar. Allow this to simmer until the onions have softened and the vinegar is mostly evaporated. Add the tomatoes, salt and pepper and continue to simmer, only until the tomatoes are heated through. Serve warm on your favourite (toasted) French or Italian bread. Left overs keep well in the fridge for a few days and can be reheated in the microwave before serving on bread.

Guten Appetit!

Chocolate Orange Marble Cupcakes with Chocolate Orange Ganache

2009-04-24T15:03:00.002-04:00

It was my birthday well over a month ago now. On that day, I had one class at 8.30AM. I decided to treat those who actually showed up by bringing in cupcakes. Also, I just like making cupcakes. I modified my vanilla and chocolate marble cake to come up with these lovely cupcakes, so I didn't take step-by-step photos. The recipe is posted below!

Fresh from the oven. I made a recipe and a half and filled the cups quite high, so the domes came out beautifully, I think.

I made a simple chocolate ganache with some orange juice concentrate in it to top them, and decorated them with a few orange star-shaped sprinkles.

Recipes

Chocolate Orange Marble Cupcakes

×××

1 ½ cups + ¼ cup all purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup canola oil
1 ¼ cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup plain yogurt
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/8 to ¼ cup thawed orange juice concentrate

×××

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a muffin tin with papers. In a small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In large bowl, with mixer at low speed, beat oil and sugar until blended. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula. Beat in vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with sour cream, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat until smooth, occasionally scraping bowl. Transfer half of batter to medium bowl. Add cocoa to batter in one bowl and orange juice concentrate to the other and beat until blended. If the orange batter is runnier than the chocolate, add the remaining ¼ cup of flour. Alternately spoon orange and chocolate batters into cups. With a knife, cut and swirl through batters to create marbled effect. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean, about 25-35 minutes. Cool cupcakes in tin on a wire rack for ten minutes. Remove from pan to cool completely on rack.

For the ganache, all I did was melt some chocolate, add some cream and then add some of the left over orange juice concentrate. I didn't add very much liquid, as I wanted the ganache to form a thick layer over the dome of the cupcakes. When the cupcakes have cooled completely, dip the domes of the cupcakes into the ganache.

Guten Appetit!

Spiral Cookies

2009-04-04T17:53:00.002-04:00

This is a very short post. I made these cookies back in February, because I was doing a presentation on the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and I wanted to give my classmates cookies so as not to totally depress them. Not that cookies really makes up for the massive loss of life that was the Holocaust.
That said, I didn't have time to photograph all the steps I took with these, I just have the finished product. And oh man, were they good. They're very moist and soft, and the chocolate flavour is perfect. I loved these cookies and have been craving them since I made them almost two months ago.

Recipe

Spiral Cookies

for the vanilla dough:
½ cup unsalted butter
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 egg, beaten
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour, sifted
Splash of milk, if necessary

for the chocolate dough:
½ cup unsalted butter
½ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg, beaten
1 ¼ cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, sifted
¼ cup cocoa powder
Splash of milk, if necessary

Beat the butter and sugar in a medium bowl until soft and creamy. Add the vanilla, egg, and flour into the creamed mixture and stir until it forms a soft dough. In a separate bowl, make the chocolate dough in the same way. If either dough seems too dry, add a milk slowly until it comes together.
Knead each dough separately until smooth, cover in plastic wrap, and chill for 30 minutes. Roll out both pieces of dough to 10 x 7 inch rectangles. Brush a little milk on the vanilla dough and lay the chocolate dough on top. Press down gently. Roll up from the short side to make a spiral log. Wrap and chill for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cut the roll into about ¾ inch slices, arrange 1½ inches apart on parchment-lined cookies sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Cookies should spring back when touched lightly with a finger.

Guten Appetit!

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Muffins

2009-03-16T22:09:00.004-04:00

I realise it has almost literally been forever, but I have a few things to post about and the first one is some delicious, healthy muffins!

As usual, this recipe started with the dry ingredients: whole wheat flour, white sugar, brown sugar and some oats.

Next I washed two lovely Ida Red apples.

And skinned and chopped them up.

The wet ingredients: water, oil, eggs and vanilla.

I threw the wet ingredients in with the dry ingredients, and then added the apples and some cinnamon... because I forgot to add it with the dry ingredients.

All mixed up.

I filled a greased muffin tin, and put it in the oven.

They rose quite nicely and smelled amaaaazing while baking.

This is a recipe I sort of made up based on my chocolate chip muffin recipe, but it turned out so well. These are great for breakfast. It's like eating apple cinnamon oatmeal. The only thing I'd like is for them to have less sugar, so the next time I make them I will try them with less. The healthier, the better!

Recipe

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Muffins
1½ cups whole wheat flour
½ cup rolled oats
1/3 cup light-brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup sugar
cinnamon to taste
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup milk or water
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1½-2 cups chopped apples

×××

Preheat oven to 400°F and grease a muffin pan.
In a large bowl, stir together flour, oats, sugars, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, stir together milk/water, eggs, oil, and vanilla until blended. Make a well in centre of dry ingredients and add wet ingredients, stirring just to combine. Stir in apple.
Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups and bake for 15-20 minutes or until a muffins pass the toothpick test.
Allow muffins to cool on a wire rack for five minutes before removing from pan to continue cooling.
Serve warm or completely cooled. Muffins can be frozen.

Guten Appetit!

Still here

2009-02-19T18:07:00.003-05:00

I promise you I am here. And I am baking and I am really wanting to update my blog, but my computer was reformatted a while ago and I don't currently have an image programme to fix my photos so that I can post them.
But they will be up soon and there will be an abundance of delicious things for everyone to bake and get fat from. Mmm!!

Tortilla Soup

2009-01-17T23:38:00.004-05:00

This soup was inspired by my friend and faithful reader Irina. Her recipe is very loose and vague, so I really just did whatever I wanted to, and based it on her recipe. Oh man, it's exciting.

I started by sautéing some salt and pepper, garlic, chili powder and a tiny amount of red pepper flakes in olive oil. I also put on a pot of rice, but I didn't really take photos of rice cooking... it's kind of like paint drying... pretty self explanatory.

Next I chopped up some green onions (I like them better than yellow or white onions).

And then some red peppers.

I added both those things to the pot and let them cook until they were a bit tender.

Then I poured in some vegetable broth.

While the broth was heating up, I chopped some grape tomatoes in half. Okay, so it was just supposed to be chopped tomatoes, but 1) there weren't any good ones AT ALL at the grocery store and 2) I thought it was be awesome.

Anyway, then I threw those tomatoes into the broth. I also threw in some tomato paste.

And while that was cooking a bit, I opened a can of kidney beans and a can of black beans...

and rinsed them!

I threw them into the broth, along with the cooked rice.

I let that cook for about 15 minutes and then it was time to eat!

Irina suggested putting chips and cheese (soy cheeseloaf, if you're actually Irina) in the bottom of the bowl and then pour the soup on top, but I really can't do soggy things.
And Anders doesn't do cheese, so he put chips on the bottom of his bowl, and I elected just to put some on top along with my cheese.

This soup was absolutely great and delicious and quick. It was like eating nachos in soup form or something! I also like that I can just throw in what I/the grocery store happen/s to have on hand. The other excellent point is that Anders liked it. We don't eat soup like... ever. When he eats soup, it's usually from a can and with big hunks of beef in it. It did happen to be a little spicy for him, but we both really enjoyed it a lot.

Recipe

Tortilla Soup

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons chili powder
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste
2 cloves garlic, pressed
6-8 green onions, chopped
1 large red pepper, seeded and chopped
4 cups vegetable broth*
1-2 cups tomato, chopped
1 small can tomato paste
1 can kidney beans
1 can black beans
1 ½ cups cooked rice

×××

Sauté spices and garlic in oil. Add onion and pepper and cook until they become slightly tender. Add broth and simmer for a few more minutes. Add tomato and tomato paste and continue to simmer. Add beans and rice and stir well. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Serve with tortilla chips and cheese.

Guten Appetit!

Christmas 2008 Baking!

2009-01-15T18:27:00.004-05:00

Over Christmas, particularly Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I baked a lot. I made two lemon meringue pies, two types of cookies and a rather elaborate cake for my mother's 60th birthday. It was a very busy time, so I didn't do photos of my whole process and I apologise! But below you'll find my photos, recipes and thoughts on the things I made over Christmas!

Chocolate Shortbread Cookies with Hazelnuts

½ cup cold butter or margarine
¾ cup flour
3 tablespoons powdered sugar
1-2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
75 grams chopped hazelnuts
2 tablespoons sugar

×××

Combine flour, powdered sugar and cocoa powder. Cut in the butter and continue mixing until a smooth batter forms. Roll the dough out into a 20 centimetre long roll.
Mix together chopped hazelnuts and sugar. Spread the mixture out on a baking pan, and roll the dough in the mixture. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour.
Preheat the oven to 325°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cut the roll into thin slices and place on the cookie sheet. Bake for approximately 15 minutes. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

×××

I originally got this recipe in a Sanella recipe booklet (Sanella being a German margarine brand), which my German professor gave me. I'm not a fan or a friend of margarine, so I decided to switch it out for butter, making the cookies a lot like shortbread. Also, the recipe originally called for walnuts, and I was going to be making these cookies with my sister who is allergic to walnuts, so I switched those out for hazelnuts. These are very chocolatey cookies, however, a little dry. My suggestion would be to cut the flour down to about 2/3 cup, which would not only make them less dry, but also make the hazelnuts stick to the dough better.
All in all, a very good cookie, which I plan to make again, with the minor adjustment to the amount of flour.

Ginger chocolate chunk Cookies

7 ounces best-quality semisweet chocolate
1 ½ cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 ¼ teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
½ cup dark-brown sugar, packed
½ cup molasses (not blackstrap)
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ cup granulated sugar

×××

Line two baking sheets with parchment. Chop chocolate into ¼-inch chunks; set aside. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cocoa.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and grated ginger until whitened, about 4 minutes. Add brown sugar; beat until combined. Add molasses; beat until combined.
In a small bowl, dissolve baking soda in 1 ½ teaspoons boiling water. Beat half of flour mixture into butter mixture. Beat in baking soda mixture, then remaining half of flour mixture. Mix in chocolate; turn out onto a piece of plastic wrap. Pat dough out to about 1 inch thick; seal with wrap; refrigerate until firm, 2 hours or more.
Heat oven to 325°F. Roll dough into 1 ½ inch balls; place 2 inches apart on baking sheets. Refrigerate 20 minutes. Roll in granulated sugar. Bake until the surfaces crack slightly, 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes; transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

×××

This recipe is one I got my Anders' mum. She'd made it a few times previously and just... they are so amazing. Easily the best cookies I've ever had. The ginger is intense, the chocolate is an amazing addition and this is overall the most delicious cookie ever, and I really can't describe it well enough, so you'll just have to make them.

Lemon Meringe Pie

Crust
1 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2/3 cup unsalted butter, diced and chilled
1 x large egg
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Filling
1 ¼ cups sugar
1 ½ cups water
5 tablespoon cornstarch
5 large egg yolks
dash salt
1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest
½ cup fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoon unsalted butter
Meringue
5 large egg whites
½ teaspoon cream of tartar
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch

×××

Crust
For crust, combine flour, sugar and salt. Cut in chilled butter until a rough crumbly texture and little bits of butter are still visible. In a small bowl, whisk egg and lemon juice. Pour all at once into flour mixture and combine just until dough comes together. Shape dough into a disc and chill for at least one hour.
Preheat oven to 400 °F. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to just less than ¼ inch thick. Sprinkle a 9-inch pie shell with flour and line with dough. Tuck in rough edges and crimp (pinch) with your fingers. Put pie shell in freezer just for 10 minutes to rest and firm up. Once chilled, line pastry with aluminium foil (and have foil hang over crust edges to protect it) and weigh down with pie weights, dried beans or raw rice. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce oven temperature to 375 °F and bake 15 minutes more. Remove aluminium foil and weights and bake 10 minutes more, to dry out centre of the
shell. Cool completely before filling.
Filling
Whisk sugar, water, and cornstarch in a heavy-bottomed saucepot. Whisk in egg yolks and salt and cook over low heat for 5 minutes, whisking constantly. Increase heat to medium and, still whisking, cook until filling becomes glossy and thick, about 5 more minutes. Remove from heat and strain. Stir in lemon zest, lemon juice and butter until butter dissolves. Pour immediately into cooled pie shell and let cool 15 minutes. Chill completely before finishing with meringue, about 4 hours.
Meringue
Preheat oven to 350 °F. Whip egg whites with cream of tartar until foamy. While whipping, gradually pour in sugar and whip on one speed less than highest until whites hold a stiff peak (the meringue stands upright when whisk is lifted). Whisk in cornstarch and dollop over chilled lemon filling. Use sweeping motions with your spatula to create swirls and peaks that look so enticing once browned. Bake pie for 10 minutes, just until meringue browns lightly. Let pie cool or chill until ready to slice.

×××

I got this recipe from Anna Olson. I love Anna Olson. I loved the idea of a lemon meringue pie crust with lemon in it. The filling also set up really nicely, which I've had problems with in the past. It was a very delicious pie, all in all. There's nothing I would change about it and I would make a million and eat them all. Everyone who ate it liked it too. Make this lemon meringue pie.

Espresso Chocolate Cake with Hazelnut Mousse and Chocolate Ganache

And one of my mum singing Happy Birthday to herself!

Espresso Cake

2-2 ½ cups unbleached white flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cup sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup espresso, cooled
¼-½ cup water
1 tablespoon vinegar

×××

Preheat oven to 375°F. Lightly grease and flour a 9-inch springform pan. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar into a bowl. In a separate bowl, mix the oil, vanilla, espresso and water. When the batter is smooth, add the vinegar and stir quickly. The batter will foam slightly where the baking soda and the vinegar are reacting (you should do this only when you're ready to pour the batter into the pan and put it directly in the oven). Stir just until the vinegar is evenly distributed throughout the batter. Pour the batter into the cake pan, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Chocolate Cake

1 ½ cups unbleached white flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
1 cup cold water or brewed coffee (I used water for this one, because of the coffee layer)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons vinegar

×××

Preheat oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a 9-inch springform pan, and dust lightly with cocoa powder. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt and sugar into a bowl. In a 2-cup measuring cup, measure and mix together the oil, water or coffee, and vanilla. Pour the liquid into the bowl and mix the batter with a fork or small whisk. When the batter is smooth, add the vinegar and stir quickly. There will be pale swirls in the batter where the baking soda and the vinegar are reacting. Stir just until the vinegar is evenly distributed throughout the batter. Pour the batter into the cake pan, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Hazelnut Mousse (only make this when both layers are cool and ready to assemble!)

1 teaspoon agar-agar powder (gelatin substitute)
3 tablespoons cold water
½ cup chocolate hazelnut spread such as Nutella
½ cup mascarpone
1 ½ cups chilled heavy cream
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
3 tablespoons sugar

×××

Sprinkle agar-agar over water in a 1- to 1 ½-quart heavy saucepan and heat over low heat, stirring, just until agar-agar is dissolved and the mixture begins to thicken. Whisk in Nutella until combined and remove from heat. In a large bowl, whisk together mascarpone and Nutella mixture. Beat together cream, cocoa powder, and sugar in another large bowl with an electric mixer at low speed until just combined, then increase speed to high and beat until cream just holds medium-firm peaks (if they're too soft, they'll deflate when everything is mixed together). Whisk one third of whipped cream into mascarpone mixture to lighten, then fold in remaining whipped cream until well combined.

Simple Chocolate Ganache
1 ½ cup whipping cream
½ lb. semi-sweet chocolate
¼ cup Nutella

×××

Chop the chocolate into small pieces, and place in a medium bowl with the Nutella. In a pot over high heat scald the cream. Remove from the heat and pour over the chocolate and Nutella. Whisk rapidly until all the chocolate has melted and the mixture is a smooth, even colour. Cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally. Whip half the ganache until soft peaks form.

Assembly

Even out the tops of the cakes by slicing off any round dome that may have formed. Place the coffee layer on the base of the springform pan and spread the whipped ganache over just the top. Place the chocolate layer on top and use any remaining whipped ganache to to fill in the crack between the two layers. Clamp the collar of the springform pan around the top portion of the chocolate layer. Spread the mousse over the chocolate layer, inside the collar and refrigerate, covered, for a least three hours. Just before serving, remove the collar and pour the remaining ganache over the top, allowing it to spill down the sides.

×××

So... this cake. Wow. I made up the espresso cake recipe based on my chocolate cake recipe (number of times the chocolate cake recipe has been altered: 3), and the flavour came out pretty well, but if I made this again, I would leave out the espresso layer altogether. In that case, I would cut the chocolate cake in half and layer that with the whipped ganache. Moving on - the chocolate cake was delicious, as always and the hazelnut mousse... wow. It was just perfect and so amazingly tasty. It went perfectly well with the chocolate cake. I'm planning to do the chocolate cake with the hazelnut mousse for Anders' birthday coming up next month.
The cake was really delicious, and while it had many layers and lots of parts, it was nearly as heavy as I was expecting and I was really pleased with how it turned out.

So that's Christmas, in a nutshell. Coming up next, tortilla soup inspired by my friend Irina, and both peanut butter chocolate chip and apple cinnamon muffins. Delicious!

Guten Appetit!

Blueberry Cheesecake Squares

2009-01-13T13:45:00.003-05:00

So here's my excuse for this stretch of time without updates: it was the end of the semester, and then Christmas, and THEN when I got back to Kingston my computer's power adapter died so I was without my computer for a few days. Now, instead of doing laundry or getting ahead on reading, I've decided to update my blog. With a baked good I made over a month ago... It was for a potluck Christmas dinner I went to at my best friend's apartment, the night before I went home for Christmas.

It started with a sort of shortbread base.

I pressed that into a greased baking dish, and baked it for a bit.

While it was baking I put together the cheesecake filling, something I'd never made before.

Now, when you say "whip together the cheese and sugar" it sounds just so wrong. But if cheesecake is wrong, I don't want to be right...

Added some eggs...

And whipped until smooooooth.

Next, I opened the can of blueberry pie filling I had bought on sale before Thanksgiving... thank goodness for canned goods.

And I poured the cheesecake filling onto the shortbread base...

And then spooned the blueberry filling into lines in the filling.

Next I took a knife and swirled the blueberry pie filling through the cheesecake filling.

It baked for a bit and then came out looking much the same as it did before I baked it, just a little more brown!

Riveting!!!!

All cut up and lovely.

Of course, I had extra pie filling, and I made this the day after I made my chicken pot pies, so I had extra pie dough, SO I made mini blueberry pies.

Cute!

The cheesecake was enjoyed by all at the potluck! I had fun making it, too, since I had never made cheesecake before. It's hard for me to say if this is a good recipe, since I hadn't made cheesecake before this, but it was very tasty and I did actually follow the recipe, so it couldn't be too bad!

Recipe

Blueberry Cheesecake Squares

×××

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour, divided
½ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/3 cup unsalted butter
24 ounces cream cheese, softened
¾ cup sugar
3 eggs
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
½ - ¾ cup blueberry preserves or pie filling

×××

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 13 x 9 x 2 inch baking pan. In a medium sized bowl, combine 1 cup of flour with brown sugar. With pastry blender cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Press evenly into prepared pan. Bake for 20 minutes and remove from oven to cool on a wire rack.
In large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed beat together cream cheese and sugar just until combined. Beat in remaining 2 tablespoons flour, eggs, lemon juice and vanilla until combined. Pour over partially baked crust. Drop spoonfuls of blueberry preserves over top. With the broad side of a butter knife lightly swirl in preserves. Bake 20 minutes longer. Turn off oven; prop oven door open with handle of wooden spoon. Let cheesecake cool in oven 10 minutes; then cool completely on wire rack away from drafts. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours and then cut into squares with a wet knife.
Store in refrigerator.

Guten Appetit! And stay tuned for my Christmas baking, including a five layer cake I made for my mother's birthday on December 26th!

Chicken Pot Pie

2008-12-13T00:13:00.004-05:00

I recently traveled from Kingston to Hamilton to spend Christmas with my family, leaving Anders behind, at our apartment, where he is studying for exams until next week. Before I left, I wanted to make sure he wouldn't have to resort to eating cookies and granola bars until he gets home. This is not to say he can't cook. He can! It's one of many reaons he's a great man. But cooking (and cooking well) takes time, time that could be better used studying and preparing for exams! So before I left, I set to work making some chicken pot pies!

Naturally enough, I started with some chicken breasts!

I drizzled the chicken with olive oil, and seasoned it with salt, pepper and rosemary and baked it.

While the chicken was roasting, I prepared some potatoes, carrots, celery and an onion.

And then the chicken came out of the oven, smelling super delicious. Even though I don't eat meat.

I set the chicken aside to cool and started on the pie filling. The recipe called for oil and butter in the pan, but elected to use the remaining oil and chicken drippings from the pan and some butter.

In that, I sauteed the onion and celery.

Next, I added a bit of flour...

And blanched the potatoes and carrots in some chicken stock.

After blanching in the stock for three minutes, I removed the potatoes and carrots and set them aside.

And then added both the chicken broth and some cream to the onion and celery and whisked until smooth.

Once it had thickened a bit, I added the potatoes, carrots, and some frozen peas and corn.

And I mixed it all together again, and then cut the chicken up into chunks (which I added later and didn't snap a photo of, apparently).

I turned to my trust olive oil pie dough for these little pies, and rolled the dough out to fit into little pot pie tins.

Next, I stuffed shell full of the chicken filling. Let's face it, if I made it any smaller, it wouldn't be filling enough for Anders!

Then, I put on a simple top.

I put four pies on a tray (two of these are actually beef!) and put them in the oven to brown up.

Anders heated up a pie the next day for dinner.

And enjoyed it!

I was personally just happy they turned out so well! I'd seen so many photos of chicken pot pies with completely liquid fillings, so I was pleasantly surprised to see this nice, thick filling. I can't say anything about the flavour, but it all looked really good!

Recipes

Olive Oil Pie Crust

2/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil
2 ½ cups of all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ cup ice water
1 tablespoon of vinegar

×××

Place olive oil in the freezer until it solidifies, approximately 3 or 4 hours.
Combine flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl and mix. Add remaining ingredients and blend with a pastry blender. Place dough in an air tight container or plastic wrap and place it in the fridge for an hour or so to chill.
Roll ball out to 1/8 inch thickness and fit into a pie plate(s). Use as you would a regular pie crust.

Chicken Pot Pie

3 cups cooked chicken (three to four breasts)
1 onion, diced
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (or the chicken drippings)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
2 large carrots, peeled and diced
4 cups chicken broth made with one extra boullion cube
1/2 cup all purpose flour
2/3 cup cream
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup frozen corn
1/2 cup frozen peas

×××

Preheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit. Drizzle the chicken with olive oil and sprinkle generously with salt, pepper and rosemary. Roast in the oven for 35-40 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through.
In a large, deep pan, sautee onion and celery in chicken drippings and butter for about 5-10 minutes. Be sure to stir every few minutes to ensure it doesn't stick to the bottom of your pot.
Heat up the *chicken stock in a medium sized pot, adding one extra cube of bullion. Blanch the carrots and potatoes in the stock for 3 minutes, remove and set aside.
Add the garlic to the onion and celery and cook for another couple of minutes. Add the flour and cook out the starch for about 2 minutes. Stir constantly, to avoid burning. Add the hot chicken stock and allow to come to a low simmer as you stir to thicken. Once the mixture has begun to thicken add the salt, pepper, and cream, and allow to simmer for a couple of minutes. Add the carrots, potatoes, corn, peas and chicken and stir until combined. Allow to simmer for a few minutes before removing from the eat.

×××

Preheat oven to 375 Fahrenheit. To assemble the pie (or pies), roll out the dough and fill the pie dish, leaving a little extra dough around the edges. Fill the pie with the desired amount of filling, and place a vented top over the filling. Pinch the edges to seal. Bake for up to 45 minutes, or until the filling bubbles and the crust browns. After removing the pie(s) from the oven, allow to set for a few minutes before serving.

*For the stock, I used OXO broth boullion powder.

Guten Appetit!

Germany Cupcakes!

2008-12-08T22:46:00.004-05:00

Germany cupcakes... what could that possibly mean?! German doesn't have a word for "cupcake." From what I gather, muffins and cupcakes are called the same thing: der Muffin. I also looked "cupcake" up on the Leo translator. It came up with this: kleiner, muffinähnlicher Kuchen. It means "small cake, similar to a muffin." That's a mouthful. But so are cupcakes... which bring me back to the real point of this post...
I made these cupcakes for one of my German classes. As you may (or may not) know, Germans are not terribly, outwardly patriotic, and they haven't been for some time. But shortly before and after (the first) German unification, there was a tremendous amount of national pride and patriotism. We were discussing this period in one of my classes, and to get a better idea of what we were talking about, we did a pretend, "in-character" Rollenspiel (role play), in a Berlin salon. And what do you do in salons other than talk politics and literature, etc.? Why, you eat small sweets! Now, I'm sure they wouldn't have eaten cupcakes in the salons of Berlin back in the day, but I like cupcakes.
This still doesn't explain why the cupcakes are called Germany cupcakes, but if you continue reading, you will find out soon!

I started with two bowls with ingredients for vanilla cake in one and chocolate in the other.

The cake ingredients at this point are flour, sugar and baking soda, and cocoa for the chocolate cake.

I made the chocolate batter first: to the above mentioned ingredients I added some oil, water (it's supposed to be coffee, but we don't drink it!) and vanilla.

And I whisked it all up!

To the dry vanilla ingredients, I added oil, milk and vanilla.

And whisked it all up!

Next, I split the vanilla batter in two bowls and got out my trusty gel colouring...

Does anyone see where this is going yet?

I dyed one bowl yellow, and one bowl red (well, neon pink...:\)!

I layered the batters in my muffin tin, starting with chocolate.

And ending with yellow.

I realised afterward I should have done it the other way, since the black is actually on top and yellow on the bottom. Whoops!

After baking, they came out with cute little domes!

While they had been baking, I worked on some buttercream, which I also dyed schwarzrotgold (black red gold). I had never piped with more than one colour in the bag, so three was quite an ordeal! I also have a very small piping bag, so for many of the cupcakes, two colours came out fabulously, but the third was kind of lost.

In any event, I thought they looked pretty cute in the end! Which is why I took 23409834 photos...

Of course it rained the day I had to take them to class, and when it rains in Kingston, it rains horizontally. So this is how I ended up getting my hard work to class. In a Rubbermaid dishpan, which I then put in a garbage bag.

The cupcakes were enjoyed by one and all in my class! And what did I think? Well, something happened to my tried and true chocolate cupcakes. I must have messed something up in the ingredients, because they stuck like crazy to the paper. The vanilla turned out very well, considering it's an adaptation of the chocolate recipe (total current number of variations of that recipe: 3)!
But they were tasty and really cute. I just wish I had gotten some extra credit for it! ;]

I really want to post a recipe for this, but unfortunately, I typed it up in Notepad, and printed it to use while baking. Now it's attached to my fridge with a magnet... in Kingston. And I'm in Hamilton. So what I'll do is post the vanilla recipe when I get my hands on it, and if you're looking for the chocolate recipe, you can find it here!

Up next: chicken pot pie and blueberry cheesecake squares. And after that, stay tuned for some Christmas baking, as well as a ridiculously decadent cake which I'm planning to make for my mum's 60th birthday (on the 26th)!

Guten Appetit!

PS - apparently I have ~~three~~ make that FOUR followers! Rock on! Your patronage is much appreciated! :]

Marble Cupcakes

2008-12-01T00:56:00.005-05:00

It has certainly been a while. I have been baking a little, and the semester ended on Friday, so I actually have time make some updates. The first one is marble cupcakes.
This is a recipe my sister used a couple of times a few years ago. The recipe is actually for a loaf cake, but... well I don't know, I like cupcakes.

It all started with the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder and soda, and salt.

Next I creamed together the butter and sugar...

until it was smooth.

And then added eggs and vanilla (not pictured).

This cake is interesting because it has sour cream in it.

But it's added in alternately with the flour mixture, which comes first.

When it was all smooth, I separated it into two bowls.

And added some cocoa to one bowl.

Then I scooped it in layers into my prepared tin.

Right out of the oven, the cupcakes had cute little domes.

But as they cooled it shrunk. Probably due to too little time in the oven.

But damn, they were still delicious.

These cupcakes were moist and the flavour was great. The chooclate was super chocolatey, but the vanilla was strong enough to not be overpowered by it! I didn't frost them; I think it would have masked the nice flavours in the cake. They stayed fresh for days, as well. I was very very pleased with the way they turned out. So if you're looking for a moist flavourful marble cake, this is it! I think it could also be fantastic to flavour the vanilla portion, perhaps with orange or mint. Mmm.

The recipe below is for the original loaf cake, but to make cupcakes is simple enough. I must have been distracted while I was making these, because I didn't note the baking time for the cupcakes. However, I think it would be safe to give them 15 minutes before checking on them (since they are so moist) and going from there. This could also be made into a round or square cake quite easily.

Recipe

Marble Loaf Cake

×××

1 ½ cups all purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter/margarine
1 ¼ cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup sour cream or plain yogurt
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

×××

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 9" by 5" glass or metal loaf pan. In small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In large bowl, with mixer at low speed, beat butter and sugar until blended. Increase speed to high; beat until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Reduce speed to low; add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula. Beat in vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with sour cream, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat until smooth, occasionally scraping bowl. Transfer half of batter to medium bowl. Add cocoa to batter remaining in large bowl and beat until blended. Alternately spoon vanilla and chocolate batters into pan. With a knife, cut and swirl through batters to create marbled effect. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean, about 1 hour. Cool in pan on a wire rack 10 minutes. Run knife around cake to loosen from sides of pan. Remove from pan to cool completely on rack.

Guten Appetit!

Chocolate Chip Muffins

2008-11-02T00:15:00.005-04:00

After all the muffin-making I did in the summer, I've noticed a serious lack of muffins around here recently. So, a few weeks ago (actually, it was a month ago...), I made chocolate chip muffins! This was something I'd never done before - all my previous muffins had been fruity. So I was excited. There was chocolate involved, how I could not have been excited?!

The process started out, as usual, with my wet and dry ingredients.

Flour, sugars, baking powder and salt.

Milk, oil, eggs and vanilla.

And then I just mixed them both together.

Simple or what?

The only other step was to add chocolate chips.

Normally I just dump them in all wild and crazy, but this time I measured them out. I put in about a cup, and it was the perfect amount.

The recipe also calls for nuts, but I hate hate hate nuts in baking, so I left them out.

I spooned the batter into a greased muffin tin, and tossed them in the oven.

15-20 minutes later, these beauties came out:

Nomnomnomnom.

These muffins have officially earned the status of "staple." I mean, if I had time to bake muffins all the time, these would be the ones I'd bake. Which is not to say that the process is time consuming, in fact these are very quick, I just mean that I have no time. Which is why I'm updating my blog at 12.13AM on a Sunday.
Anyway, I made these muffins again last weekend when my parents and Anders' parents were here, and they were gone within minutes of me putting them on the table in front of our small crowd.
They're light, they're fluffy, they're tasty, they're chocolatey, they're absolutely everything you could ask for from a muffin.

Man... I want a muffin...

Recipe

Chocolate Chip Muffins

×××

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup light-brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup milk
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
chocolate chips
1/2 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped (optional)

×××

Preheat oven to 400°F and grease a muffin tin.
In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugars, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, stir together milk, eggs, oil, and vanilla until blended. Make a well in centre of dry ingredients and add milk mixture, stirring just to combine. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts (if using).
Spoon batter into prepared muffin tin and bake for 15-20 minutes or until a muffins passes the toothpick test.
Allow muffins to cool on a wire rack for five minutes before removing from pan to continue cooling.
Serve warm or completely cooled. Muffins can be frozen.
Makes 12 standard sized muffins.

Guten Appetit!

Cinnamon Buns

2008-10-28T13:19:00.003-04:00

So... it's been a while. And I don't really have time to be doing this right now, but I need a break between finishing class for the day and studying for the entire afternoon (well, at least until I go horseback riding...). Hence, I present, cinnamon buns and their less well-known but just as delicious cousin, chocolate chip buns!

I started out by heating up some milk and mixing it in my largest bowl with eggs, some oil (which I swapped in for melted butter), half the sugar.

Once that was well mixed, I added the yeast and, gently mixed it again and let the mixture sit for a few minutes.

After that, I threw in the other half of the sugar along with the flour, one cup at a time...

Until it formed this big lump of dough.

I covered the bowl with a tea towel and put it in my oven, which I had heated up then turned off.

While that was in the oven (for about an hour), I mixed together some brown sugar and cinnamon.

No need to measure!

Once the dough had doubled in volume:

I took it out of the oven and let it rest for a few minutes.

Then I divided it in two.

I rolled each bit of dough out into a long, thin quasi-rectangular shape.

And spread on some butter.

For the cinnamon buns, I heavily coated the dough with the brown sugar and cinnamon mixture I had prepared earlier.

And for the chocolate chip buns, I sprinkled on some brown sugar a chocolate chips.

Apparently I don't have photos of the rolling or cutting process, but all I did was tightly roll up each rectangle, starting at the long end. I then cut each roll into six equally sized pieces.

These went into my small Pyrex dish

I prepared the dish by making little tin foil dividers to keep the cinnamon out of the chocolate and the chocolate out of the cinnamon... I really don't like it when food mixes.

While the buns were in the oven, I made some cream cheese frosting.

And when they came out, they were golden and delicious smelling!!

I let the buns cool a little bit before I put on the frosting, but you have to put it on before they cool completely.

Later that evening, Anders and I enjoyed them with two of our friends.

And everyone lived happily ever after, because of the deliciousness.

These were really quite good. The recipe I originally found claimed to be "clone of a cinnabon" and I certainly don't agree with that, but they were still quite scrumptious.
I definitely used too small a dish and the bottoms of the buns didn't bake fully... luckily, that's the way cinnamon buns taste best! I actually liked this recipe so much I made another batch (all cinnamon) the next day to take to one of my 8.30 classes in which we were writing a midterm. They baked more fully the second time and I liked them just as much!
Next time I make them (which I wish could be sooner rather than later, but I just have too much to do...) I think I'll try to roll the dough out thinner so that the dough to cinnamon (or chocolate) ratio is lower. All in all, a really lovely recipe though!

Recipe

Cinnamon Buns

Buns
1 cup warm milk (110° F)
2 eggs, room temperature
1/3 cup vegetable oil
8 gram package of active dry yeast
½ cup white sugar
4 ½ cups flour
1 teaspoon salt

Filling
brown sugar, to taste
ground cinnamon, to taste
1/3 cup butter, softened

Frosting
1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt

×××

Heat the oven to 200°F. Beat together milk, eggs, oil and half of the sugar. Add yeast and allow mixture to rest for 10 minutes. Next, add the remaining sugar and the flour, 1 cup at a time. Turn the oven off, cover the dough with a moist tea towel and place the bowl in the oven for about an hour.
After the dough has doubled in size turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, cover and let rest for 10 minutes. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar and cinnamon.
Roll dough into a 16x21 inch rectangle. Cover dough with butter and* sprinkle evenly with cinnamon sugar mixture. **Roll up dough and cut into 12 rolls. Place buns in a lightly greased 9x13 inch baking pan. Cover and let rise until nearly doubled, about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400°F.
Bake rolls until golden brown, about 15 minutes. While rolls are baking, beat together cream cheese, butter, confectioners' sugar, vanilla extract and salt. When buns come out of the oven, turn the pan upside down over another pan to allow cinnamon mixture to redistribute through buns. Spread frosting on warm rolls before serving.

×××

* To make chocolate chip buns, follow all steps up until the asterisk. At this point, sprinkle the brown sugar over the buttered dough, and then spread on the desired amount of chocolate chips. Continue to follow steps after the double asterisks (**).

Guten Appetit!

Always excuses...

2008-10-19T22:56:00.004-04:00

My greatest hope and wish was that I would be able to bake at least one thing each weekend and post it... and I've been able to attain half that!
I have been baking... several weeks ago I made cinnamon buns, and the weekend after that I made chocolate chip cupcakes, and last weekend, for Thanksgiving, I made two pumpkin pies, a pumpkin roulade cake and gingersnaps!
But here's the problem: I have no exams this semester, which means that all my marks are based on term work, which means I'm up to my ears in term work, which means even when I do get time to bake my photos sit on my camera, and my edited recipes stay magneted (totally not a word, what good is university?!) to the refrigerator and I never seem to get around to posting them! This is not the ideal situation.
What I'm hoping (that phrase sounds oddly familiar...) is that I can post something some time this week. There's a back log and I need to deal with it. Plus I love sharing... and I love getting nice comments from strangers, too. It's good for my ego some times.

So, if you wanted to take a main point from this whole spiel (there's some German for you), it's this: I'm so busy I hardly have time to eat three normal meals a day, let alone post about what I'm making. But it will happen! Probably when I feel really rebellious one day soon and decide to put off work... and then later I'll look at the work again and cry because I shouldn't have put it off. But it will be worth it to see something new on this darned blog!

By the way, I totally didn't even mean to post just because it was an entire MONTH since my last post... but it worked out that way. Geeeeez...

Filled Butter Braids

2008-09-19T14:36:00.005-04:00

I'm here, I'm here! I promised I would be back, and here I am! I'm hoping that from now on I can find time every weekend to bake something. Anything. This school-but-no-baking thing really bites.
Anyway, last weekend, Anders was away at training camp for cross country, so I had the apartment and the kitchen all to myself. It was glorious. Except that I missed him. But then he came back and ate the food I made, so all was well.
And what did I make? I made Raspberry Butter Braids from this recipe. Except that I didn't make a raspberry one at all. Instead I used triple berry jam and Nutella. Mmm.

To begin with, meet my new kitchen:

Why yes, we do house a greenhouse in our kitchen. That's a ficus, a lemon tree, a clementine tree (both grown from seeds!) and a jade bonsai.
The house our apartment is in is over 100 years old. It originally belonged to the general manager of the train line in Kingston, when the trains used to run along the lake (the window faces the lake). So, being that the house is old and was owned by a fancy person, the windows are gigantic. The two of us have to work together to get them up and down because they're wider than our armspans. They're also heavy.

Is this a cooking blog or is a home blog?!?!

But one more thing! This is my oven/stove:

It was more or less perfectly clean and brand new when we moved in. It was like heaven.

As for the bread, I started out by scalding some milk, and then adding some butter, sugar and salt.

While that was cooling a bit, I put some yeast into a bowl of warm water and let that sit for about 10 minutes:

And while that was sitting, I beat an egg.

At which point, all the above mentioned ingredients that did their things and then sat for x number of minutes were added together.

To that, I added the four, 1/2 cup at a time.

I think I ended up using all 4 cups of flour suggested - it was a very humid day.

Then, I realised I had used my biggest bowl and needed to wash it out so that I could put oil into it and use it to let the dough rise. I'm not always the smartest in the kitchen.

This is the dough sitting in its oiled bowl.

This whole time, I had my oven sitting at the lowest temperature it would heat to (170°F). When I was finished mixing up the dough, I turned the oven off.

I covered the bowl with a clean tea towel and put it into the turned-off but still-warm oven to proof.

Success!

About 90 minutes later, it had double in size and was nice and soft.

I kneaded it a bit, then split it into two even portions.

I split each half again into three equal portions and rolled them out into long (18") ropes.

Next, I took my lovely, heavy marble rolling pin to the ropes and flattened them out a bit.

And I spread some jam (triple berry, in case you were wondering) along each one.

Closing these suckers up was the hardest part about this recipe. Especially the jam ones.

You can see that some jam escaped. And then after I took this photo the seams all came apart and the jam went everywherrrre.

But I managed to move the ropes to the greased pan and braid them, nonetheless.

It took some patience though.

The Nutella ropes were much easier to deal with.

And the braid came out much better.

Once I had them both braided and ready to go, I let them proof again in the turned-off oven for about an hour.

As you can see, when I took them out, the braid had disappeared a bit. I put an eggwash on them anyway, and put them in the oven for about 25 minutes.

And when they came out of the even at the end, the braid have almost completely disappeared!

I'm not completely sure why this happened. I think it could have been that I didn't put enough flour into the dough initially and it was unable to hold itself up? Who knows.

Now, we ate the Nutella one like it was going out of style and I only got a photo of the jam one.

Both were good, but the jam one is still sitting out of the cutting board on our kitchen table, all sad and alone.

I really like this recipe. I really didn't need a lot of ingredients that I didn't already have, and the amounts of the ingredients seem very low compared to how much product ou get out! Two loaves of bread! It's great that these are filled, too. It takes one step out of breakfast (which these work very well for), and that is always nice when you're running out the door to stupid 8.30AM classes.
I have two small problems with this recipe... and it's not even the recipe, really, both things are my fault and things that I can fix. The first problem is that the filling to bread ratio was too low. Both Anders and I (but especially Anders) thought these would be better with more filling. The other problem was, of course, that the braid really sucked in the end. And again, that was my fault. It's funny, because when I worked at the bakery I used to do egg braids almost every day. I loved doing them, actually. They were always so pretty and I got pretty good at it. You'd think that I might remember the difference between that experience and this one... but I don't. It's all a learning process though, and I look forward to making these again so that I can figure out where I went wrong!

Recipe

Filled Butter Braids

1 cup milk
½ cup butter, cut into pieces
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 envelope dry yeast
¼ cup warm water
1 large egg, beaten to blend, room temperature
4 cups (approximately) unbleached all-purpose flour
¾ cup desired filling (I used triple berry jam and Nutella)
1 large egg, beaten with 2 tablespoons water

×××

Scald milk in heavy, medium saucepan. Add butter, sugar, and salt. Let stand until butter melts. Pour mixture into large bowl. Cool to 105 to 115 degrees. Sprinkle yeast over ¼ cup warm water in small bowl; stir to dissolve. Let stand 10 minutes at room temperature. Add yeast mixture and egg to milk mixture. Stir in enough flour, ½ cup at a time, to form soft, slightly sticky dough. Lightly grease large bowl. Add dough, turning to coat. Cover bowl with kitchen towel and let dough rise in warm draft-free area (like a turned-off, but still-warm oven) until doubled in volume, about 2 hours. Grease two heavy large cookie sheets. Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface and knead until smooth, 2 minutes. Divide dough in half. Divide each half into thirds. Roll each piece out between hands and floured surface to 18 inch long rope. Using a rolling pin, roll each rope into a flat strip, about 3 inches wide. Spoon about 2 tablespoons of filling down the length of each strip. Fold dough over filling to seal. You can brush the edges of the dough with a bit of water to help seal the dough. Arrange 3 ropes side by side on 1 prepared sheet. Braid ropes. Pinch ends together and tuck under loaf. Repeat process with remaining 3 ropes on second cookie sheet for second loaf. Cover each loaf with kitchen towel and let rise in warm draft-free area until almost doubled in volume, about 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Brush egg wash over loaves. Bake until loaves are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped on bottom, about 20 - 25 minutes. Transfer to racks and cool.

Guten Appetit!

Peach Cupcakes with Peach Buttercream

2008-09-19T14:36:00.004-04:00

I bet you didn't think I'd be back this soon. Well, you were wrong! Booyah!
I had planned to do great things yesterday. I wanted to get all my homework done, or at least started so that I can relax on Sunday, when I'll be trying out for the Queen's Equestrian Team, and when Anders gets back from his race. Instead, I spent most of the afternoon in front of my computer and then I decided to bake cupcakes and then I spent five hours at the front desk of a residence building keeping my best friend, who works there, company. What this means, though, is that you get another entry and recipe! AND, before I sat down to write this, I did do most of my German homework. So not all is lost.
Let's get started though, yes? So, do you remember how I said my chocolate cake recipe is very versatile? And then how I took that recipe and made it into lemon cake? Well, yesterday, I realised that the peaches Anders bought on Tuesday were quickly growing soft and I decided to take that recipe and change it again, to include peaches!

It started with the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda.

Once I'd measured that all out, I washed some peaches and cut them up into the blender.

This blender rocks. It belongs to Anders' brother, so we're only lucky enough to have it until he comes back to Canada. But I really do love it.

Then I pushed a series of buttons because this blender is super high tech, and the peaches were more of less instantly turned to liquid.

Next, I strained the liquefied peaches.

The other liquid ingredients consisted of oil and vanilla.

I threw everything together in a big bowl, and mixed it up.

I ended up having to add some water, because the peach puree was a bit too thick. Also, right before I poured it into the muffin tin, I added some vinegar to activate the baking soda.

And then I poured the batter into my lined muffin tin.

Twenty minutes later, I pulled them out and they looked and smelled excellent!

While they were cooling (on a windowsill, no less!), I got to work on making some peach buttercream. I started by whipping some room temperature butter.

To that, I added a whole bunch of confectioner's sugar.

Finally, I added some vanilla and peach puree for flavour.

I also added a bit of red and yellow gel food colouring to give it a nicer colour and whipped it up again until it looked like this:

Mmm.

When the cakes were cool, I used a large star tip in my piping bag and piped on the buttercream.

From here on out, it's just food porn:

Did I mention how much I love my chocolate cake recipe, and how I can pretty much make it into whatever I want?
These cupcakes turned out really well. They're extremely moist inside, and while the peach flavour is pretty subtle, they taste great. I also love this buttercream icing. It's nice because you can always just omit the cream that it calls for, and use some flavoured liquid instead, which is what I did in this case. The only problem, of course, is that it's very rich, and there's no way to make it even remotely healthy.
All in all, though, a nice treat... especially if you have over-ripe peaches sitting around!

Recipe

Peach Cupcakes with Peach Buttercream

Cupcakes
2-2 ½ cups unbleached white flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup sugar
1 cup fresh peach puree
½ cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2/3 cup water
2 tablespoons vinegar

Buttercream
¾ cup butter, at room temperature
1 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar
¼ cup peach puree
Vanilla, to taste

×××

Cake
Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a muffin tin, or lightly grease and flour a 9-inch round or 8-inch square cake pan. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and sugar into a bowl. In a measuring cup, mix together the peach puree, oil and vanilla. Add the peach mixture to the dry ingredients and whisk together until combined. At this point, you may want to add some yellow and food colouring to achieve a peachier colour. When the batter is smooth, add the vinegar and stir quickly. The batter will foam slightly where the baking soda and vinegar are reacting. Stir just until the vinegar is evenly distributed throughout the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and bake for 20 minutes if making cupcakes, or 25 to 30 minutes it making cake. Allow to cool before glazing or frosting.

Peach Buttercream
Whip the butter until light and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat until well combined. Add peach puree and vanilla and beat again until smooth. You may want to add some yellow and red food colouring to achieve a peachier colour.
Can be piped or spread onto cakes.

Guten Appetit!

Where am I?

2008-09-10T10:42:00.001-04:00

Okay, so it's been a while again. But I moved in to a new place and school started up again two days ago and I'm just busy. Understand?
That said, I have nothing to do this coming weekend and will be baking. So you have photos from a new kitchen to look forward to! Isn't that worth the wait?!

Wild Blueberry Galette

2008-08-24T23:30:00.006-04:00

I have discovered my new favourite pastry. It's much simpler than a pie, and to me, much prettier. It's a galette. I made one for the first time on Thursday for a dinner I was having at Anders' house with his family. I got the recipe from this foodblogger, who posted it on Bake! Bake! Bake! I mostly followed it, too, and it did not disappoint. Oh no, it didn't.

The filling was blessedly simple. I love a simple filling.

Wild blueberries, lemon juice and zest, sugar and cornstarch. Could it be any simpler?

The only other thing I needed was a pie crust. I went for my lovely olive oil recipe.

To get a nice, perfectly round crust to work with, I used the serving dish I planned to use as a cookie cutter and pressed it into the dough.

As I said, this is a simple recipe, and all I had to do with the filling was pour it into the centre of my crust.

And then fold up the edges to hold it all in. I tried to make my pleats as pretty as possible.

It's not hard to make a dessert look good when you're working with berries that look this delicious.

The galette baked on a piece of tin foil on top of a cookie sheet for about 30 or 35 minutes.

And came out looking perfectly scrumptious, if I do say so myself. And I do.

This dessert was enjoyed by all (nine of us!) later that evening.

I am I love with this recipe. I think it's a great alternative to pie, especially if you're only feeding a small crowd (which I wasn't, really, but it worked out, because we had THREE kinds of dessert). I found the lemon a little too strong, so I will definitely reduce that amount when I make this next time, and there will definitely be a next time. In fact, we have some soft peaches in the fridge that I might try in a galette next!
If you're one of those people who can't seem to get pie crusts right, whether it's because they always shrink in the oven, or putting them into the pie plate is simply a chore, try a galette! You won't be disappointed... and you'll probably be more relaxed!

Recipe

(Wild) Blueberry Galette

1 premade pie crust
1 pint fresh (wild) blueberries
zest of one lemon
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 ½ teaspoons cornstarch
brown sugar*, to taste (I think I used 1 ½ tablespoons)
egg wash

×××

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cover a cookie sheet with tinfoil and spray with non-stick cooking spray. Roll out pie crust to form a large circle and place on the prepared cookie sheet. In a medium bowl, gently mix together blueberries, lemon zest and juice, cornstarch and sugar. Pour the filling onto the centre of the crust and fold and pleat the edges around the filling. Brush with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for approximately 30 to 35 minutes, or until edges are golden brown and filling bubbles. Allow to cool before removing to a serving plate. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.

*The original recipe called for white sugar, but I like brown sugar better in a pastry.

Guten Appetit!

Granola Bars: An Update

2008-08-22T19:47:00.001-04:00

Remember the granola bars from a few posts ago? Do you remember how all the ingredients were measured in weights, instead of cups? Well, I made them again yesterday and decided I would measure all the ingredients in cups so I could post those amounts here... since I'm guessing that most of my readers would use cups rather than a scale. So here it is!

2 1/3 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup plain flour
½ cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup honey
1/4 cup brown sugar
2-3 tablespoons smooth peanut butter (or Nutella)
3/4 to 1 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut
1 1/3 cups assorted nuts and seeds
1 1/3 cups assorted dried fruit

To get a refresher on the rest of the recipe, check out my original post!

Pasta Fresca

2008-08-22T19:38:00.002-04:00

Do you love tomatoes? Do you love fresh, local, summer tomatoes that make you want to eat them whole because they're just so darned delicious? Do you like garlic? And basil? Lots of basil? Do you like answering lots of questions about food?!

If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, you need to make Pasta Fresca. Quickly! Go out and get tomatoes now! They're in season and won't get any better. And you cannot make this dish in the winter, or even when the tomatoes are just out of season. So go!!

I always start by cutting up half a pound of mozzarella cheese into small cubes.

And then I throw it in the fridge until I'm ready to use it.

Next, I roughly cut up tomatoes, about 4 cups.

Okay, so you don't need this many tomatoes to get four cups.

And then I throw a whole bunch of garlic and basil into the blender with some olive oil.

The tomatoes go in the blender next, and I add salt and pepper to taste.

Vrrrroooooommmmm!!

The sauce goes into a microwave safe bowl until it's ready to be used.

The last thing to happen is to cook pasta. Okay, I also chiffonade some basil and chop up an extra tomato for garnish.

When the past is done (and just done, overcooked pasta is the worst), I mix the pasta, cheese and sauce together in layers.

And finally, top it off with some tomatoes and basil!

This pasta dish is a delicious dining experience. It's nice a light dinner on those hot August nights, and it's simple and so quick! If you have any respect for the combination of tomato, basil and garlic at all, you'll go out and get the ingredients and make it right away!

Recipe

Pasta Fresca
from Moosewood Cooks at Home

4 cups + 1 cup chopped, ripe tomatoes, de-seeded
10-15 fresh basil leaves
2 medium to large garlic cloves, pressed
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1 pound fusilli pasta

½ pound fresh mozzarella cheese, cut into small cubes (store in fridge until needed)
grated Parmesan or Pecorino cheese (optional)

×××

Roughly cut up and de-seed the tomatoes. Put the basil, garlic, olive oil and 4 cups of tomatoes into a blender and puree. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pour into a microwave-safe bowl and set aside until ready to use. Cook the pasta to al dente and drain, but do not rinse. Heat the sauce in the microwave for about 30 second, until just slightly warmer than room temperature. Pour a third of the pasta, sauce and cheese into a serving bowl and mix gently. Repeat until all the pasta, sauce and cheese is used up.
Serve with remaining cup of chopped tomato and chiffonade basil.

Guten Appetit!

Lemon Cake with Lemon Glaze

2008-08-22T19:06:00.004-04:00

Remember how I said my chocolate cake recipe was versatile? I wasn't lying. Because this lemon cake recipe is a wild adaptation of that recipe. Well, maybe it's not wild, but it is an adaptation.

The first time I tried it I really neglected the wet to dry ratio and ended up with a lemon-flavoured pancake. A lemon-flavoured pancake that was not fully baked. And that explains why there aren't a lot of photos. I completely switched up the method when I made it the second time and didn't take photos the second time around.

The recipe starts with fresh lemons. Mmm.

I started by grating the zest off the lemons, and then juicing them. I think I used two lemon, but I squeezed them really well with the mighty juicer we have. It may take more if you're not using such a mighty juicer.

Then, I mixed together the dry ingredients, which consisted of flour, baking powder and soda, and sugar. To that, I added oil, lemon zest and vanilla.

I left the lemon juice out still, because it makes the baking soda react, and I didn't want that to happen until just before the batter hit the pan.

And then I poured it into my greased and floured pan.

After being in the oven for longer than I had planned (because I used an 8 inch pan, rather than a 9 inch pan like I was supposed to), the cake looked and smelled deliiiish.

Once it had cooled, a poured a simple lemon glaze over it.

And once that had set, I added a few curled pieces of zest to decorate.

I enjoyed this cake with my parents after we ate a delicious dinner of Pasta Fresca (coming soon to a blog near you).

Oh my gosh. This cake was so moist and perfectly lemony. It wasn't too sweet, and it was lovely and light. We loved it. It really was perfect. And delicious. And I want more, now that I've written this little devotional.

Recipe

Lemon Cake with Lemon Glaze

2-2 ½ cups unbleached white flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons lemon zest
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ - ¾ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

×××

Preheat oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a 9-inch round or 8-inch square cake pan, and dust lightly with flour. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar into a bowl. Add the oil, lemon zest and vanilla and mix the batter with a fork or small whisk. When the batter is smooth, add the lemon juice and stir quickly. The batter will foam slightly where the baking soda and the lemon juice are reacting. Stir just until the lemon juice is evenly distributed throughout the batter. Pour the batter into the cake pan, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Allow to cool before glazing or frosting.

Lemon Glaze

2/3 cup confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice, fresh
1 teaspoon lemon zest (optional)

×××

Sift the sugar into a bowl. Add the lemon juice (and zest, if using) and whisk until smooth. Pour over cooled cake.

Guten Appetit!

Healthy Banana Cookies

2008-08-18T22:23:00.003-04:00

Two healthy recipes in a row?! Is this a baking blog, or is it a sissy natural food store blog? Okay, I didn't mean that. I like natural food stores. They have the best peanut butter. And their baking stuff is usually cheeeeap. And I like goat's milk soap. And organic produce.

Okay, let's move on...

Healthy banana cookies... it's another one of these recipes you can use your almost inedible bananas in, and I love those recipes, because I can only consume so much banana bread and so many banana muffins. And I really don't like wasting fruit. It makes me sad and I feel very guilty throwing those things in the green bin.
The other great thing about these cookies? They're easy. And another? They're soft. And another? They're chewy. And another? You can sort of throw whatever you want in. Sort of.

I started by mashing up some bananas, and throwing in oats, coconut, dried cranberries (left over from the granola bars), oil, vanilla and a bunch of cinnamon and nutmeg.

I mixed that all up and let it sit for about 15 or 20 minutes.

At that point, I decided it was too wet, so I added some more oats, and let it sit for a little while longer.

Then, I pulled out my trusty 1/8 cup measure to scoop the batter.

Seriously, 1/8 measure makes for the perfect size cookie.

These cookies don't flatten out during baking, so I used a spatula to press them down.

These went in the oven for about 20 minutes.

As I said, these are soft, and chewy and flavourful and light and delicious. And they're healthy. It's great. So next time you have brown bananas, make these!

Recipe

Healthy Banana Cookies

3 ripe bananas
2 ½ cups rolled oats
¼ cup dried coconut (optional)
1 cup dried fruit (like cranberries, raisins, dates, etc.)
Cinnamon to taste
Nutmeg to taste
1/3 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

×××

Preheat oven to 350°F. In a large bowl, mash the bananas. Stir in oats, dried fruit, spices, oil, and vanilla. Mix well, and allow to sit for 15 minutes. Using a ¼ cup measuring cup, scoop the batter and drop it onto an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for approximately 20 minutes, or until lightly brown. Allow to cool slightly and then remove cookies to cool completely on a wire rack.

Guten Appetit!

Granola Bars

2008-08-18T12:35:00.003-04:00

I'm here, as promised, to update you on the myriad things I've baked and cooked recently. This morning I pushed my camera's memory card into the slot on my computer and thought "oh crap, what was I thinking not posting these things as I did them. Work be damned, I shouldhave just updated the blog instead!!" Now, I have four recipes to post. Maybe that doesn't sound like that much but look at my previous posts! They're long and detailed. And even as I type this I'm trying to figure out how to do it... all in one post or a post for each one. I think the latter is probably a better idea. So here we go...

I'm going to start with granola bars. Oh. My. These bars make me wonder why mass-produced granola bars even exist, or why anyone has ever bought them, or thought they were healthy. These are so simple and customisable, I really have no reason to ever buy granola bars again.

This process started with a lovely trip to Bulk Barn.

This places rocks (my gypsy soul?). It's easy to spend a lot of money though. Especially when you're like me and you buy things like dried pears, instead of the normal dried fruit... whatever.

I got this recipe from Kitchen Wench, and shock and awe, I basically followed it. Because the recipe is in weights (which I'm very much not used to, being a silly North American and all), I had to pull out my mum's trusty kitchen scale.

I actually shouldn't comment on its trustworthiness... I think I've used it about three times. It's because I'm a silly North American and hardly any recipes even mention the weights of ingredients.

For these bars, I decied to use dried cranberries, golden raisins (much better than red), and dried pears.

I took a knife to them and chopped them up to about the size of sunflower seeds.

I kind of splurged and used hazelnuts for these bars... I also used roasted (unsalted) peanuts, and sunflower seeds.

I had to chop up the peanuts and hazelnuts, as well.

Then, I threw the fruits and nuts into a big bowl with some organic muesli. It was supposed to be rolled oats, but I saw the muesli at Bulk Barn and just bought it... I'm impulsive like that. I also threw in some coconut.

This on its own would be delicious for breakfast.

To hold all this together, I had to used a few sticky ingredients, including honey (and some Nutella, because I didn't have enough honey), peanut butter, oil and brown sugar.

I let that all melt and get gooey in a pot.

While it cooled a little bit, I threw some flour into the dry ingredients and mixed it all up so everything was coated.

And then I dug a little hole into it and poured in the wet ingredients.

Mixing it all together was fun... sticky and gooey.

To bake the bars, I lined a pan with parchment paper, and then pressed the granola mixture into the pan.

It was amazing how much these would compact.

The pan went into the oven for about 35 minutes, and then came out and cooled for about 20 minutes before I cut them up. I couldn't let them cool completely, or they would have just shattered when I put the knife anywhere near them. It was easy to remove from the pan, too, with the parchment paper. I cut the mass that would soon be bars in half, lengthwise, first, and then cut each half into 10 3/4" width bars. That's right... 20 bars from one recipe... that's right, enough for two people for two work/school weeks. Could this recipe be any better?!

And look how delicious they look!

Mmm. These really were great. Healthy and chewy and easy to take to work, or pick up for a quick snack before my run. Next time, I would use a bit more wet ingredients, because the bars did tend to break up a bit. I also wouldn't bake them as long. After 35 minutes in the oven, these were a bit more roasted than I would like. But they really were worth making and I will be making them again as soon as I can get out to Bulk Barn!

Recipe

Granola Bars

320g rolled oats
1/3cup plain flour
100mL vegetable oil
200g mild honey (try 100g honey and 100g golden syrup for a deeper flavour)
50g brown sugar
2-3 tbsp smooth peanut butter (or Nutella)
40g shredded, unsweetened coconut
150-200g of assorted nuts and seeds
150-200g assorted dried fruit

×××

Preheat oven to 325°F, and line an 35×25cm (or close) baking pan (Pyrex or a metal cake pan both work) with parchment paper.
Roughly chop the nuts and larger pieces of dried fruit into smaller pieces (about the same size as a sunflower seed). Then place the chopped nuts and fruit into a bowl with the oats, coconut and flour and stir together with a wooden spoon until well combined. Slightly heat the honey in a pot on the stove, then add the sugar, peanut butter and oil and whisk together thoroughly. Pour together the wet and dry mixture and mix to combine. If the mixture does not seem to stick together well enough, add more honey. Dump the mixture into your prepared pan. Wet your hands with some cold water, and using both the wooden spoon and your hands, pack the mixture down flat, making sure to get it into the corners.
Bake for 25-35 minutes if you prefer a softer, chewier bar, and up to 50-60 minutes if you prefer a crunchier one (the longer baking time will roast the ingredients quite a bit). During the baking process, use a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to press down on the mixture every 10-15 minutes.
Allow to cool for 15-20 minutes after baking, then carefully remove from the pan. Using a sharp knife, cut into bars. These can be stored in an airtight container in a cool place for up to 2 weeks. Keep a sheet of parchment paper between each layer of bars.

Guten Appetit!

I'm still alive (and, more importantly, baking).

2008-08-11T09:15:00.002-04:00

Would you believe me if I said I'm still baking up a storm on a regular basis, but that my job drains me so thoroughly that I haven't had the wherewithall to sit down, upload all the photos, edit them, and then upload them online, type out instructions and witty quips and recipes, and then actually post it all in some coherent sort of way? Please say yes.

Not that I'm counting or anything, but I'm done work in 4 days, 7 hours and 10 minutes, so here's what you have to look forward to in the near future: delicious, nutritious granola bars, tangy lemon cake (adapted from my chocolate cake recipe), healthy banana oat cookies with dried cranberries, and a delicious summer dinner dish called Pasta Fresca. Your life won't be the same after you try it. I'm also hoping to give frozen yoghurt a try this week. Am I crazy? I don't even have an ice cream maker!

The quest for steak supremacy continues... sort of.

2008-07-27T17:02:00.005-04:00

Last weekend, Anders and I spent a long weekend at my cottage. Usually, our meals there are very simple. Pasta with jarred sauce, salad, and delivery pizza. But Anders and I had the cottage to ourselves on Saturday night, since my parents wouldn't be arriving until Sunday. We went to the grocery store when we got there and decided we'd roast potatoes on the fire and make salad, but the main dish was a bit of a head scratched at first. Anders needed to eat some meat, so we looked around for a while before he decided on a nice strip steak. I got myself a portabello mushroom.

Anyway, this post is really not long, because I didn't chronicle all the steps in making this steak. All I did was make a very simple marinade and massage it in, and let the steak sit for an hour or so before cooking it. The marinade was made up of olive oil, pear infused white balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper. It was browned in olive oil in a cast iron pan for three minutes on each side and cooked in a 325°F for four minutes.

Anders loved it! He said it was much more tender than the eye of the round steaks I had been getting and that the flavour was much better. It was cooked perfectly, too.
This is a step in the right direction, for sure. Strip steak suits Anders' tastes better, and a simple marinade is enough to coax some good flavour out of the piece of meat. This, however, will not stop me from continuing to try different things, and trying to replicate the peppercorn steak he had for our anniversary dinner out.

But for now, I'm pleased!

Six-Minute Chocolate Cake

2008-07-27T16:14:00.004-04:00

Life has been particularly busy recently. My older sister had major surgery not long ago, so the whole family has been busy checking up on her. Of course, my way of "lending a hand" during this time was to bake something delicious.
This recipe is an old standby. I remember the first time I made it; it was Anders' birthday in 2003, before we were dating, and I've made it for his birthday almost every year since (this year being one exception - I made mousse). It's such a beautiful and simple cake. No other simple chocolate cake I've tried comes close to this one in flavour, texture and moistness. Every time I've served it, people seem surprised by how rich the flavour is, without the cake being extremely heavy. Another great thing about this cake is the lack of ingredients that are really terrible for you.
I wasn't a great fan of the white sugar, so the first time I made it (on Tuesday evening), I used half the amount of brown sugar. It made the batter so sticky and thick that I had to add an extra 1/4 cup or so of water. Figuring it would be okay, I split the batter between two pans and baked them. They turned out okay, but the I noticed the next day that they looked a little flatter than they usually did, so I decided to run to the grocery store and get some white sugar to try again.
I was in a major rush to get to my sister's house on Wednesday, so I didn't photograph the whole saga, but I did on Tuesday. So, I'll come right out and say that these photos are a big lie, in that they didn't actually make the cake you will see at the end, but it's all mostly the same.

The recipe calls for brewed coffee, but being that my parents had gone away and taken all the coffee in the house with them, I had to try something else.

What I did have was a can of Tim Horton's French vanilla cappuccino mix.

I added some oil to that.

Normally I'm an olive oil kind of girl (which you should know by now), but it's too strong a flavour for this cake. I used canola oil and I also added some vanilla.

Next, I mixed together the dry ingredients, which consisted of flour, sugar, cocoa and baking soda.

It looks like a mountain!

I always feel very satisfied when I mix up the dry ingredients and they look just like a box mix.

Espeically since this recipe is so simple. I doubt all the steps thus far were any more time consuming or labour intensive than opening up a box and ripping open the ingredient bags.

Finally, I mixed everything together until it was nice and smooth and deliciously chocolatey-looking.

The final step, before putting it into the pans, was to add vinegar.

People usually think this is really weird. And I always get asked, "but... can't you taste the vinegar...?" The answer is no! The vinegar is there to activate the baking soda, which makes the cake nice and light and fluffy.

Tip: never flour your chocolate cake pans again. Ever. Grease them, and then dust them with cocoa, the same way you would with flour.

Instead of chocolate cakes with white dust around the edges, you'll have purely chocolatey-brown cakes. If you're icing the cake, maybe you don't care as much. But if you're glazing it, say with a fruit glaze, this is very handy.

Next, I divided the batter evenly between the two pans and put them into the oven to bake for about 25 minutes.

While the cakes were baking, I made some buttercream icing.

It's simply butter, icing sugar, cream (I used half and half) and vanilla.

But I'm not a huge fan of vanilla buttercream on chocolate cake, so I melted some chocolate (part semi-sweet, part 85% cocoa) and added it in.

Oh my.

The cakes came out of the over shortly after I finished the buttercream.

They cooled on racks for a few minutes.

And then I popped them out to cool some more. Of course, on Wednesday I was hoping to be up at my sister's house by around 7, so I was rushing like a mad woman.

And I ended up holding the cakes up to the air conditioner so they would cool more quickly (that didn't really work).

I iced it anyway, and then threw it in the freezer until I left, so that the buttercream wouldn't completely melt.

It ended up looking pretty darn good.

And it tasted delicious.

This is one recipe I mostly follow exactly. The one exception, being that I add more cocoa. The recipe also says to mix the batter in the cake pan (which is where the six-minute name comes from), but I prefer to mix it in a bowl, so I can grease and dust the pans. It's not that I don't trust the cake to come out on its own, but I feel safer doing it this way. It's also easier to do it this way if you're doubling the recipe, which is what I normally do. I double it and make a two layer cake. It works nicely because the cake has a rich flavour, but doesn't feel rich or terribly filling. As I said, it's a really light cake with a ton of flavour and a great texture. It's moist and chocolatey and perrrfect. You should probably make it the next time you want chocolate cake or cupcakes. You won't be disappointed. But I sort of will if you don't make it. And I don't think you want to disappoint me, do you?

Recipes

Six-Minute Chocolate Cake
from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home

1 ½ cups unbleached white flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
1 cup cold water or brewed coffee
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons vinegar

×××

Preheat oven to 375°. Lightly grease a 9-inch round or 8-inch square cake pan, and dust lightly with cocoa powder. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt and sugar into a bowl. In a 2-cup measuring cup, measure and mix together the oil, water or coffee, and vanilla. Pour the liquid into the bowl and mix the batter with a fork or small whisk. When the batter is smooth, add the vinegar and stir quickly. There will be pale swirls in the batter where the baking soda and the vinegar are reacting. Stir just until the vinegar is evenly distributed throughout the batter. Pour the batter into the cake pan, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Let the cake cool in the pan for a few minutes before turning out to wire racks to cool completely.

This makes ONE cake. Double the ingredients for a double layer cake!

Buttercream Frosting
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups powdered sugar
1-3 tablespoons heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

×××

Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until fluffy. Gradually beat in sugar, then cream and vanilla.
To make chocolate buttercream, melt the desired amount of good quality chocolate and let cool slightly before adding it to the plain buttercream.

Guten Appetit!

Chocolate Berry Roulade Cake with Fudge Drizzle

2008-07-10T21:36:00.005-04:00

Just look at that title. I bet you want to just skip to the end with the photos of the completed cake and the recipe right now so you can run to your kitchen and make this delectably perfect dessert. Don't you?

Let's get to it.

This was basically an all-day affair, so if you're planning on making it, clear your schedule. It wouldn't take nearly so long if you didn't make it into a roulade, but I did. Next time I'm planning to just make the cake in muffin tins and treat them as short cakes, of a sort.
On that note, you may want to clear your schedule for this entry about the cake. Seriously. Around 30 photos ahead.

I started with the cake.

The recipe said to make it in a jelly-roll pan, and after just a moment of searching online, I found out what they really meant was "a normal cookie sheet, with sides." Okay, well sort of. It's supposed to be 1" deep. Mine was 0.75" deep, but it was both wider and longer than it need to be, so I figured it would work out. I greased it, put in a layer of parchment paper, and then greased the paper. This is is what i t looked like:

In case you were wondering, I rely heavily on my laptop while I'm baking:

I keep all my recipes on it, and I play music on it. It's partly responsible for any greatness that comes out of my kitchen. Thank you, little Toshiba.

Back to the cake. The first thing the recipe asked me to do was the to make really really really thick cocoa.

I also separated some eggs.

Okay, yea, I really cheated. I used a separator. Normally I don't, but there were a lot of eggs to separate.

I whisked the egg yolks:

And added the really thick cocoa, some brown sugar, and vanilla.

Finally, the flour went in, too.

I let that sit while I whipped up some egg whites:

Man. I love making meringue. It is so pretty. And tasty.

I added it in two batches to the chocolate mixture.

This took an unexpectedly long time. The chocolate mixture was really thick. Probably because I refused to follow the recipe and used brown sugar instead of white sugar. Or something. Who knows. Anyway, by the time it was all folded together, the egg whites had deflated more than they were supposed to, I think.
But, I poured it into pan anyway, and spread it out with a spatula, and put it in the oven.

While it was baking, I completely covered a tea towel in confectioner's sugar.

How weird is that?

When the cake came out of the oven, it started shrinking!

I don't know why, but whatevski. It smelled goooood.

I very carefully (and quickly) flipped the cake over onto the sugar-covered tea towel and took off the parchment paper.

And then rolled the whole thing up together, and let it cool on a wire rack.

I did several things while it was cooling. One was to make an extremely unsuccessful attempt at a healthy filling for this cake. The recipe called for a whooole bunch of whipping cream, which is not light, that's for sure. So I thought I would try making something with Quark. Oh my goodness. It went so badly I don't even want to talk about it. Finally I just caved and bought whipping cream. I also hulled and washed strawberries, and pureed some of them, too.

When everything was ready, the assembly of the cake began. I was nervous that when I unrolled the cake it would be in pieces and all dry and gross. But it was still nice:

I started by spreading the pureed strawberries over it.

Then spread on the whipped cream:

And finally, placed on some sliced up strawberries:

I rolled it all back up, which was a little more difficult than I thought it would be. The strawberries wanted to escape.

This went in the fridge for a while, and while it chilled, I made a simple chocolate sauce of whipping cream and melted chocolate. I drizzled that on before I sliced up the cake. It looked so damned pretty when I started cutting it up.

I served each slice with some of the extra strawberry and chocolate sauces.

It went over very well.

This cake was delicious. The flavours were all simple, but very delicious all together. There was never a question about that, though, since it was strawberry, chocolate and whipped cream. As a said earlier, I'm not sure it was worth all the effort. Sure, a roulade is very pretty, but I'm not convinced that it wouldn't look just as pretty as little individual cakes, piled up with whipped cream and strawberries and topped with chocolate and strawberry drizzle. Just thinking about it is making me want to try it this weekend.
We have some slowly (but surely) softening strawberries in the fridge... and this might just put them to good use.

Recipe

Chocolate Berry Roulade Cake with Fudge Drizzle

Cake
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa
¼ cup boiling water
4 eggs, separated
½ cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ cup white sugar
1 cup sifted cake and pastry flour
½ cup icing sugar

Filling
1 ½ cups whipping cream
3 tablespoons icing sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups fresh berries*

Fudge Drizzle
100 g dark chocolate
½ cup heavy cream

×××

Cake
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a 10x15 inch jelly-roll pan with parchment paper or waxed paper coated with grease. Stir cocoa into pot of boiling water and let stand. In a mixing bowl, beat yolks with a mixer until thick and pale yellow. Slowly beat in ½ cup sugar, cocoa mixture, salt and vanilla. Beat in the flour. In another bowl, with clean beaters, beat egg whites with cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar. Continue beating until firm peaks form. Fold into flour mixture in two batches. Smoothly spread batter in jelly-roll pan. Bake for 20 minutes or until cake springs back in centre when gently touched. Meanwhile, heavily spread icing sugar over a clean tea towel. Run a knife around cake pan to loosen sides. Turn out onto tea towel and remove paper. Starting on the long side, roll up the cake and tea towel together. Completely cool cake wrapped in tea towel on a rack.

Filling
Beat whipping cream, icing sugar and vanilla together until firm peaks form. Place in refrigerator for 10 to 15 minutes.

Fudge Drizzle
Completely melt chocolate in cream over low heat.

Assembly
Unroll cooled cake, keeping on tea towel. If the cake is still warm, fan to cool. Spread filling to within 1 inch of all edges of the cake. Evenly top with berries. With the long side toward you, use the towel to help firmly roll up the cake – leave the towel out of the roll. Slide rolled cake onto a large baking sheet, seam-side down and cover with plastic wrap. Chill for at least 1 hour or up to one day.
To serve, transfer cold cake to a serving platter. Drizzle cold cake with some of the fudge sauce, and reserve the rest to drizzle on individual slices.

*I found this recipe in the LCBO Wine and Food magazine for June and it was all about blue berries. So, the original recipe was with blueberries, but any in season berries will work.

Guten Appetit!

New layout

2008-07-09T21:30:00.002-04:00

We're back in business!

Expect a post about these ingredients, soon: chocolate, strawberries, whipped cream, chocolate sauce and strawberry sauce. Get excited.

Brief intermission

2008-07-05T13:00:00.001-04:00

Pardon the mess. I'm coming up with a new layout. One that's not so brown, hopefully.

Banana Pineapple Muffins

2008-07-04T19:09:00.006-04:00

Oh. My.
Everyone who reads this is probably so tired of reading about muffins. Lots and lots of muffins, I know! But muffins are good! Breakfast, dessert, a snack... they're multi-talented, let's face it. And these ones. Well, I could gobble down about 12. Whole. That's how good they are. Except if I ate them whole I guess I wouldn't really taste all the banana pineapple goodness. And I certainly wouldn't want that.

Anyway, my original inspiration for this recipe was, naturally, bananas going bad on our counter. Also, this recipe from The Crepes of Wrath. This recipe looked reeeeally good. Except I don't like coconut (not shredded coconut anyway, I like the flavour though!) or dried pineapple. Or raisins in my baking. Uhhh. But I still thought it looked great and interesting. Especially since I was trying to use up bananas and we had fresh pineapple in the fridge. Of course, my recipe is far far different, so it's posted below.

There were a lot of bowls in this recipe, which I'm not a big fan of. I like one-bowl recipes... they're so uncommon though.

ANYWAY.

Instead of using butter, I used (surprise!) olive oil. I was going to use honey, as well, until my naive illusions were crushed and I found out bright yellow sugar has fewer calories and carbohydrates than honey! Can you believe it? All I had to do was read the labels. Who would have thought to do that? Especially someone who is watching what they eat. Man, I'm dull. Anyway, I was actually pretty excited, because brown sugar has a lot of flavour, and honey... not so much. That said, I know that honey is still better for you because it's unrefined, unlike most sugars. My next goal is to find sugar that actually has some good flavour and won't kill you.

I started by mixing together some olive oil, bright yellow sugar, vanilla, and rum.

Oh yea... real rum.

Next, I crushed some bananas up with the eggs.

In the end, these are what the bowls looked like:

Oil doesn't mix very well with brown sugar, apparently.

But all was well when the two separate bowls of ingredients got together.

The dry ingredients consisted of flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg.

After I mixed in the dry ingredients, I chopped up about a cup of fresh pineapple and threw that in, too.

And scooped the batter into my greased muffin tin and put them in the oven.

20 minutes later, these smelled irrestibly delicious. I cooled them in the pan for a few minutes.

And then turned them out to cool completely on my wire racks.

While the muffins were cooling, I made surprise lasagna for myself and my parents...

after which we gobbled down some of these muffins:

Seriously. I can't believe how good these muffins are. They're so moist, and the pineapple adds a nice punch of flavour to what would be otherwise normal banana muffins. Not that I don't like banana muffins. I really do, but they're tried and true, easy, comfortable, simple, etc. The pineapple is such an amazing touch. Also, rum? Freakin' add it to anything you bake with bananas. It's so. good.

Recipe

Banana Pineapple Muffins

½ cup olive oil
½ cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons rum
3-4 ripe bananas, mashed
2 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoons baking soda
¾ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
½ cup pineapple

×××

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a muffin tin. In a large bowl, beat together the oil, brown sugar, vanilla, and rum. Combine the mashed bananas and eggs in a separate bowl and add to the sugar mixture. Beat until thoroughly combined. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir it into the banana mixture. Chop up a cup of fresh pineapple and add to batter. Spoon the batter into the muffin cups. Bake the muffins for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven, and let cool in the tins before removing to cool completely.

Guten Appetit!

Orange Berry Muffins

2008-07-01T21:34:00.006-04:00

My computer crashed and I lost this once already, so I'm annoyed, but the show must go on and you must see this recipe for muffins.
Even if my previous write up was far cleverer than this one will be.

Anyway, today is Canada Day! Yayyy, Happy Canada Day! Woo 141 years as a country. You go, second largest land mass in the world!
The thing is, I didn't get a long weekend, thanks to McMaster (and in part, the government) deciding we should work on Monday and have real Canada Day off. At first I was pretty annoyed about this whole thing, but all was forgiven when I stepped into the kitchen early this afternoon. And then, a series of thoughts went through my head: 1) Ooh, I'll try my hand at Brötchen again, with one of the three recipes I've been hoarding; 2) Man, this calls for one whole pound of flour? That's a lot, especially if it's not going to work out yet again. I'll try this roulade recipe I found a few days ago. 3) Whhhat? This calls for a lot of whipping cream. And gelatin? No problem, I'll try Quark, instead! 4) Oh yea, all the stores are closed and we don't keep Quark on hand... I'll just make cookies. 5) Oh, we don't have chocolate chips... okay, which of the over 20 recipes in my "To Try" folder do I have the ingredients for?

Turned out I had the ingredients for these bad boys. I originally got the recipe from Eat Me, Delicious, but of course, it was altered as I went along.

To be perfectly honest, I was reluctant to put in the orange zest. I hate zest in baking. Sacrelige, right? Sorry, but I hate it. It interferes with lovely moist cake or smooth filling, or whatever. I just don't like it.

But I don't have a zester, so I used the very fine side of a cheese grater. It turned the zest into mush, which is perfect by my standards.

Next, I took that same orange and cut it into quarters to juice it.

I love this juicer. It's so efficient. You should go get one.

The orange gave me about 1/2 cup of juice. I filled the measuring cup up to 1 cup with milk, then added two eggs, some honey and oil. I meant to add some vanilla, too, but I forgot. I was disappointed.

This looked so delicious that I forgot about the muffins and just drank this.

I'm totally lying.

I actually just whisked it all together until it looked uniform.

Now, this wasn't the first place I deviated from the recipe, but it was the first time I had a bit of a headscratcher. The recipe told me to rub the zest and the sugar together with my fingers. But I didn't use sugar. I used honey. And I had already put the honey in with the liquid ingredients. So I decided to put in an extra tablespoon of honey.

And mixed it until uniform.

Then I mixed in the flour and baking soda (it called for baking powder, too, but I was surprised to find we didn't have any), and then the liquid ingredients.

The recipe called for blueberries, and we did have some, but they're so much more expensive than in-season strawberries, so I threw those in, instead.

I had to fold it pretty gently because I picked out the softest ones, so as not to "waste" the nicest ones that can be eaten by themselves. Mmm.

And then I spooned the batter into a greased muffin tin.

I love this thing. My mum bought it for me after she saw me struggling to get cookie dough out of a 1/8 cup measure. It's perfect, because you can push whatever it is you're scooping out with the soft little silicon bit. You should probably go out and get one of these, too. It's good for scooping ice cream, too.

Fresh out of the oven, I was expecting that these would smell amazingly orange. But they didn't.

They still looked amazing.

Really. Amazing.

And how did they taste?

Pretty darn good! Not nearly enough orange flavour, but it was there. Next time, I would probably use two oranges, instead of just one. The strawberries are great, though! These little bursts of flavour and freshness. Delish.

And since I changed the recipe, here's my version.

Recipe

Orange Berry Muffins
1 orange*
Milk
2 large eggs
5 tablespoons honey
¼ cup olive oil
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 ½-2 cups berries – fresh or frozen (not thawed)

×××

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Grease a muffin tin and place it on a baking sheet.
Pour the orange juice into a large glass measuring cup and top up to 1 cup with milk. Whisk in the eggs, oil and 4 tablespoons of the honey.
In a large bowl, mix the orange zest and the remaining tablespoon of honey. Whisk in the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir just to blend. Gently mix in the berries and divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.
Bake for 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before turning out the muffins.
Makes about 15 standard-sized muffins.

*I recommend using 2 oranges, not just one. Also, add some vanilla!

Guten Appetit!

The quest for steak supremacy (also, crash hot potatoes and crepes)

2008-07-01T17:47:00.005-04:00

This past weekend, Anders parents went away so we got to spend some good quality time together. Which, naturally, meant lots of cooking. I love cooking for him! He eats so much. It's great.
My newest endeavour and quest (because I totally gave up on the Brötchen one, until I can get a real recipe from a real German) is mastering steak. I did it for Anders' birthday with a filet, which went fine, but I was told (later) that it could have used a bit more flavour. I also made an attempt of it a few weeks ago, one night before Anders was racing. But I was stressed or something and ended up overcooking the damned eye-of-the-round I had bought from the farmers' market (seriously, buying meat at a market is key; $3.59 for a steak!). And this weekend, I thought I would give it another try. We did some research on marinades before I got started and Anders went to do his workout.

I ended up marinading it for about two hours in a mixture of olive oil, soy sauce, garlic, salt, pepper, and a bit of white wine vinegar.

I didn't just leave it out on the counter, though. I covered it with a plate and let it sit in the fridge.

I also made a marinade for the portabello mushroom cap I bought for myself. It was olive oil, white wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and garlic.

While the steak and my mushroom were doing their respective thangs, I prepared the potatoes I had bought, also at the market, for crash hot potatoes. This idea came from Pioneer Woman. I can't help myself. her recipes are delicious and she is my idol.

Ooh, two colours.

And then I threw them in a pot of boiling water.

Photographs of boiling water are cool.

Once they were fork tender, I drained them, spread them out on a lightly oiled cookie sheet (in a pattern of red, white, red, white, because I'm crazy), and half smashed them with a metal spatula.

I made up a mixture of olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, and drizzled it over top of the smashed potatoes. Boy, is this photo bad, or what. Then I put them in the oven at 375°F (because that's the temperature it had to be at for the steak).

At this point I did some dishes, made a spinach and strawberry salad (with a sweet lemon dressing), watched some TV and waited for Anders to get home so I could start the steak and mushroom.

This is what your stove would look like if you were vegetarian and dating a guy who loves steak.

Mmm, dinner on the table.

Want a better idea of what our dinners looked like? No? TOO BAD.

Ooh, crash hot potatoes.

Aah, steak.

Ooh, portabello mushroom (too bad I charred it... I was so concerned about the stupid steak).

Aah, spinach and strawberry salad.

So there you have it. I can only really comment on the potatoes, which were totally delicious, but could have been crispier (the oven wasn't hot enough, but I knew that), and the mushroom cap, which was also delicious, if a bit charred. It really helps to marinade mushrooms before cooking them. They don't feel so rubbery, and they really absorb... well they absorb anything, but especially flavour in this instance. The salad was also delightful and simple.
And the steak? I'm told it was better than the last one I overcooked, but should probably be marinaded longer to really be flavourful. BUT the flavouring it did take on was tasty (apparently). So at least I know how to flavour, now I just need to plan ahead a bit more, I guess.

I know I would usually post a recipe or three right about now, but it's all pretty straight forward, and in the experimentation phase. You can look at PW's recipe, linked above, for crash hot potatoes, since that's the one I used (basically), and for now, here's a rough idea of what I did with the steak.

Eye of the Round, Marinaded
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 clove of garlic, crushed or grated on a rasp
1-2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

×××

Place the steak in the marinade, cover and refigerate until ready to cook (at least half an hour). Flip over in the marinade every half hour.
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Add olive oil and a small amount of butter, just enough to moisten the bottom of a small pan (one you can put in the oven, like a cast iron pan). Heat the pan on high until very hot, but do not allow it to smoke. Place the steak in the pan and brown each side for about 2 minutes. Put the pan in the oven for 3-5 minutes, depending on how you like it cooked. When the steak is removed from the oven, allow it to sit in the pan for about 3 minutes, so the juices may redistribute in the meat.

I would also like to mention that we (read: I) made crepes the next morning (read: afternoon) for breakfast (read:linner [lunch-dinner]). I love crepes. So. Much. They are so simple and delicious and really not too terrible for you, which is great, in my books.

They do look funny though, when you're not quick enough to spread them out in the pan. They also bubble strangely. Point and laugh!

But before I even started making them, I hulled and washed some more of the strawberries (which were getting a bit soft in the fridge), and peeled and sauteed a pear in some brown sugar. And then I made the crepes.

They looked something like this sexy little thing when we finally ate them (at 3PM).

This one, I have a real recipe for! One I actually followed, too! I got it from the Food Network. More specifically, it's Alton Brown's recipe. And really, does Alton Brown ever do any wrong?

Recipe

Crepes
2 large eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1 cup flour
3 tablespoons melted butter
Butter, for coating the pan

×××

In a blender, combine all of the ingredients and pulse for 10 seconds. Place the crepe batter in the refrigerator for 1 hour. This allows the bubbles to subside so the crepes will be less likely to tear during cooking. The batter will keep for up to 48 hours.

Heat a small non-stick pan. Add butter to coat. Pour 1 ounce of batter into the center of the pan and swirl to spread evenly. Cook for 30 seconds and flip. Cook for another 10 seconds and remove to the cutting board. Lay them out flat so they can cool. Continue until all batter is gone. After they have cooled you can stack them and store in sealable plastic bags in the refrigerator for several days or in the freezer for up to two months. When using frozen crepes, thaw on a rack before gently peeling apart.

Guten Appetit!

Chili con Veggies

2008-07-01T17:16:00.002-04:00

My mum used to make this chili, which I lovvve, while I was still living at home (full time... now I'm home in the summers and on long holidays, but for all intents and purposes, I live in Kingston, where I go to school). Last week, when no one could decide what to eat for dinner on Monday night, I decided to make it. It's so simple and delicious. Usually we make it in the winter, because who wants to eat chili in the summer, right? But everything is field-fresh right now, so it's really the perfect time.
I started by making a pot of basmati rice. It's my favourite rice.

And if you're one of those people who's always had trouble making rice that's perfect and not nasty and sticky, follow these instructions: bring two cups of water to a boil; add one cup of dry rice (any kind except brown, which takes a ridiculously long time) and stir to prevent sticking; allow water to come to a boil again, and turn the heat on the stove down to the half-way point (or a bit lower, if your stove runs hot); cover the pot and set your timer for 15 minutes, AND DO NOT LIFT THe LID TO STIR OR CHECK ON THE RICE AT ANY TIME (it's fine, I promise!); after 15 minutes, remove the pot from heat and allow to sit for at least another 5 minutes. It can be left longer. Which is what I did in this particular instance, because by the time the rice was done, I was making chili. It probably sat for about half an hour or something.
Anyway, once the rice was on its way, I got out the big pot and poured in a couple tablespoons of olive oil.

No need to be exact, just enough to cover the bottom of the pot. I also added some flavouring: chili powder, turmeric, tamari (or soy sauce) and garlic and let it simmer for a few minutes.

I chopped up some vegetables while I was waiting (I'm lying, I did this before I even started...).

For this recipe I usually use some sort of bell pepper (yellow, in this case, but any colour will do), celery and carrots. I also throw in a fresh tomato. It must be peeled first, though.

Once the vegetables are chopped and the spices have had some time to simmer in the oil, the pepper, celery and carrots go in, but not the tomato, yet.

This needs to cook for just a few minutes; between three and five.

I don't know about anyone else, but we always have a can of tomato paste in our cupboard.

It goes in with the vegetables, along with the tomato, a splash of lemon juice, and salt and pepper, to taste. It looks really thick and pastey at this point, but it's nothing to be concerned about.

That cooks on medium-high heat for 15 minutes. While I'm waiting, I open a can or two of beans, any kind:

We had red kidney beans and black beans. Yum.

After cooking for a bit, the juices from the tomato really add some liquid to it.

At this point, it's time to add the beans.

And simmer for another 15 minutes.

Once it's done, serve it on the perfect rice you have sitting, waiting on the stove. Deliiiish.

Recipe

Chili con Veggies

1-2 cans of beans (any kind)
Chili powder, to taste
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon tamari (or soy sauce)
1-2 cloves garlic, pressed
2-4 tablespoons olive oil
1 large bell pepper (any colour) chopped
3 celery ribs, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
2 large tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 can tomato paste
3 tablespoons lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste

×××

Briefly sautee the spices, tamari and garlic, stirring to avoid burning. Add the pepper, celery and carrot and cook for 3-5 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients, except the beans, and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. Add the beans and simmer for another 15 minutes. Serve on rice.

Guten Appetit!

Honey Banana Muffins

2008-06-17T17:27:00.004-04:00

Have you ever left a bunch of fruit like bananas or pears sitting around your house until the bananas are black and you can't pick up the pears without putting your thumb through the skin? No? Because that's pretty much a weekly occurence in this house. It's a terrible habit I've taken with me into the beginning of my life away from home, much to Anders' shagrin, I'm sure. In any event, in true Gulewitsch-Broadley-Malott household fashion, we left three bananas and three pears in our kitchen for about a week. Mum was going to make banana bread with them, because that's what we usually do when we find almost-black bananas in our kitchen. This time, though, I decided to look up something different. We let bananas go bad so often and I can only eat so much damned banana bread.
What I found was honey banana muffins. It looked good to me because it has no added fat (like oil or butter), no sugar (only honey, which I somehow consider healthier) and applesauce. Of course, I didn't actually have applesauce, but I did have really soft pears and a food processor. And, naturally, I strayed from the original recipe quite a lot. I really see recipes as guidelines. Sort of like the pirates' code.

I started by pulling out the lovely Kitchenaid mini food processor that has never been used.

I nuded up my pears and quartered them, taking the cores out as I went:

Then, pulsed them until they were fairly smooth, but with some solid bits remaining:

Then, I roughly mashed up the three bananas and mixed that and the pears with two eggs and some honey:

The dry ingredients simply consisted of flour (supposed to be partly whole wheat, but I was sad to discover we were out), baking soda, nutmeg and cinnamon.

I omitted the salt because it's bad for your brain!

And then I let the wet and the dry meet and they had a grand ol' time getting to know each other:

It went very smoothly, if you know what I mean.

I decided to go with the suggestion in the recipe (shock, awe!) and grease the muffin tin rather than line it. With no oil in the batter, I bet these would have stuck like crazy and we would have had to eat the paper to get all the muffiny goodness.

After 18 minutes in a 375°F oven, they were lightly golden and passed the toothpick test. I let them cool in the pan for a few minutes (another suggestion in the recipe!) while I did some dishes, then popped them out and set them on a wire rack to cool completely.

I love how baked banana things get these big bumps on them. They're like banana camels.

At this point, I wished you could photograph scents because daaaamn, these smelled fine.

And then I waited impatiently for this morning when I could eat one for breakfast as I ran out the door to work.

Literally, I took a bite, took a photo, threw it in a Ziploc bag and ran out the door. And then I finished it at my desk.

Okay, so here's my new way of doing this:

Pros:
+ really simple recipe;
+ no refined sugar;
+ no added fat;
+ no salt;
+ extremely moist;
+ not too dense or heavy, like other banana baking can be;
+ a good way to use up fruit you wouldn't otherwise eat.

Cons:
- a little short on flavour.

I think next time, I'll use another banana and more apple/pear sauce, plus some more cinnamon and a bit more honey. The idea, I guess, is to keep the muffins healthy but punch up the flavour. These still made a really great breakfast, even if you do eat it running out the door.

Recipe

This is the recipe I used for these muffins, not the recipe I plan to use in the future.

Honey Banana Muffins
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 eggs, lightly beaten
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1/3 cup unsweetened pear sauce
3 tablespoons honey

×××

Preheat oven to 375°F and lightly grease a muffin tin. In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, banana, applesauce and honey and mix into the dry ingredients, just until moistened. Fill muffin cups to two-thirds full with batter. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from the pan to wire racks.

Seriously, can you believe how simple that is?!

Guten Appetit!

Strawberry Chocolate Pie

2008-06-15T18:19:00.006-04:00

My older sister's birthday was on Friday and her husband planned her a surprise party for today (Sunday). Since her friend offered to make cake, I took my cue from the just recently fresh Ontario strawberries and made a pie yesterday. For a while now, I'd been eyeballing this recipe for raspberry and white chocolate pie, and waiting somewhat impatiently for the berry season here in Ontario to begin. The original plan (I guess... do bakers make plans? Because really, it's sort of whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like it, rather than planning to make specific things) was to make it for Anders, because he loves white chocolate and I don't know many other people who do. Instead, however, I substituted raspberries for strawberries and white chocolate for dark chocolate. And some of the amounts of ingredients were changed significantly and the baking time was way longer, etc., etc., so essentially it's a mere version of the original recipe, but I digress.

I started by making my olive oil pie crust. This, I thought, would be a far sight more difficult than the previous time I made it, because we've had this hot, humid, disgusting weather here. But it turned out just fine.If you'll think back to my recipe for olive oil pie crust, you'll recall that the olive oil has to be frozen before beginning. I put a little bowl full in the freezer in the morning while I waited for Every Kilowatt Counts people to come pick up our old fridge.

See? Old fridge...

New fridge... <3.

Anyway, the fridge people didn't come, and when my parents got home from grocery shopping, I had a shower, ran some errands (which included going to buy some new stainless steel frying pans that Anders and I were going to buy the night previously except that the power went out in the store before we had a chance!), left my camera on the kitchen table and found this gem on it today:

(yea, that's a squirrel, totally flaked out on the top of our fence)

and came back to get started.

By that time it was about 4.30PM. And my olive oil was like a brick. A round, smooth, oily brick...

It shouldn't look like this. If it turns pale yellow, it's too frozen. You won't be able to get it out. Just give it a few minutes (especially if your summers are as gross as the on the summers in Southern Ontario) and it should pop out, though. Don't microwave it. You will regret that.
Me? I didn't give it long enough and was using my pastry cutter on it for aaages before it finally mixed into the other ingredients.

Eventually I ended up with this pleasant lump of dough:

And instead of putting it in the brand new fridge for an hour, I put it in the brand new freezer for half an hour:

While I waited (I set the timer on my oven because my skill for estimating the passage of time is not very well developed), I hulled and washed these beauties:

and admired my new pie plate ($10 at Wal-Mart!):

I also looked up some information of baking a pie blind, because I couldn't for the life of me remember ever having to do it before yesterday. While I was looking at that information, I came across some "techniques" for rolling out dough. I tried one, where I put the dough between two pieces of parchment, but the paper was quickly discarded and instead I rolled it out on the floured, crappy counter top in my kitchen with my lovely marble rolling pin. This brings me to my only gripe with this dough. It's really elastic. You absolutely need a heavy rolling pin and some patience. It pays off, though. It rolled out so perfectly in the end that I didn't have to patch any spots and it didn't stick to anything. Is it possible to be in love with pie dough?

Right, so putting it in my new pie plate was pretty exciting too:

Don't make fun, I've never been good at crimping edges.

For those of you who don't know, to bake a pie blind you need to weight the centre so it doesn't puff up or shrink too much. I just gently pressed in a piece of tin foil and filled the centre with about a cup of dry beans.

I also pricked it with a fork, just in case. I'm panicky like that.

It went in the oven for a total of ten minutes, but halfway through I carefully took out the tin foil and beans without spilling them all over the floor. Go Cathlin. By this time, my sister and her husband had showed up, and we had dinner reservations in about 45 minutes, so naturally I got to work on making chocolate curls. I had never done this before, and turned to Pioneer Woman. You could say that I want to be this woman when I grow up. I also would love if my blog would be as funny and popular as hers. Yea, that's pretty much how I felt all through high school, too.
Anyway, you can find her recipe and method for chocolate curls here. Basically, you throw a tablespoon of Crisco and three ounces of chocolate into the microwave and then mix them until they're.... well, mixed.
At this point, I would go look at Ree's. I did take photos but they're really bad. Plus, I don't have a pallet knife and ended up using a butter knife. It sucked. Seriously, go look at Pioneer Woman's. It's toward the bottom of the page. You won't be sorry.

So, by the time I'd gotten about half of the chocolate curls done, it was time to go for dinner, so I left my chocolate in the freezer, ate some quesadilla at Papagayo's, came back home and gave my sister her gift (in true kitchen-wench fashion, I got her a book of 1080 Spanish recipes), and then got back to my pie.

The filling couldn't have been easier to make, even if I did mess with the ingredients. I started by running some water into the bottom of a double boiler, and then melting eight ounces of chocolate (the recipe called for four) in one cup of whipping cream (the recipe called for 3/4 cup) in the top.

This is what chocolate melted in whipping cream looks like:

Yea, I tasted that deliciousness a few times...

Then I lightly beat an egg, and added the chocolate mixture in, steadily but slowly, until it looked like this:

Now, the recipe said to make sure not to incorporate air. I don't know, mine looks like it had air incorporated.

Let that mixture sit for a minute, and arrange a bunch of strawberries on the bottom of your cool pie shell (I used almost two cups).

And then drown those suckers in chocolate, wahahahahaha!

Okay, so this is where the recipe really didn't work for me: the baking time. Perhaps with four ounces of white chocolate, 3/4 cup of whipping cream and one egg, the 35 minutes suggested baking time would have been sufficient. But when I looked at my pie at 35 minutes, it was still liquid. Completely liquid. So I turned the oven up from 325°F to about 400°F and let it go for about another 30 minutes. At that point it was still sort of jiggly, but it looked baked. I've been puzzling about what to suggest for baking temperature and time all day and I think next time I'll try 400°F for 35 minutes. Of course, I'll be checking it constantly.

By the time the damned thing came out of the oven, it was midnight, so I didn't take any photos. I just went to bed.

This morning when I woke up, it looked like this:

I sliced the leftover strawberries in half and instead of arranging them neatly on top (which is what I did at first and it made me feel like a stuffy grandmother getting ready for a church bake sale), I dropped them on. All willynilly. I really let loose at 8.30 this morning. It was great.

Just don't do this on the brand new white tablecloth your mother just bought for the kitchen table.

Intermission while I shower, get dressed, get pretty, actually go to the party, eat and share the pie, take photos, come home, start my laundry and make my lunch for tomorrow.

What a day!

Okay, so I was sort of concerned about the inside of this pie. I was afraid when the first piece was taken out, it would just be liquid hangin' out in a pie crust. Not so. It was more the consistency of rich chocolate pudding. And the strawberries were so destroyed from being baked that they had almost completely disappeared into the chocolate. Certainly not a bad thing! It tasted like strawberry infused chocolate. Oh goodness, it was delicious. And a huge hit with the crowd, even the people who didn't really like dessert.

You should probably go make this pie right away. People will say things like, "you are a baking goddess/god" (I actually got that one today). If you don't have a mild ecstatic experience while you eat it, we probably shouldn't be friends.

Recipes

Olive Oil Pie Crust

2/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil
2 ½ cups of all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ cup ice water
1 tablespoon of vinegar
1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon of sugar (REALLY optional, depends on what pie you're making)

×××

Place olive oil in the freezer until it solidifies and is of a consistency similar to cold butter, approximately 3 or 4 hours.
Combine flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl and mix. Add remaining ingredients and blend with a pastry blender. Place dough in an air tight container or plastic wrap and place it in the fridge for an hour or so to chill.
Roll ball out to 1/8 inch thickness and fit into a pie plate. Use as you would a regular pie crust. To bake it blind, fit a piece of tin foil into the pie crust, and pour in about 1 cup of dry beans. Bake at 425°F for five minutes, remove the beans and tin foil and continue to bake for another five minutes, or until evenly light golden brown.

Strawberry Chocolate Pie
1 cup whipping cream
8 ounces dark chocolate, chopped
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 cups fresh strawberries
Dark chocolate shavings
1 prepared pie crust

×××

Preheat the oven to 400°F. In a double boiler, gently melt the chocolate in the cream. Lightly beat the egg using an electric mixer on lowest speed. While beating, slowly add the chocolate mixture. Beat for 15 seconds more.
Arrange as many strawberries as will fit on the bottom of the pie crust with their pointed ends facing up. Gently pour the filling over the berries Bake until the centre is firm, about 35 to 40 minutes*. Let stand at room temperature for 3 to 4 hours. Just before serving, garnish with chocolate shavings and the remaining strawberries.

*I haven't tried this, so I don't know if it'll work, but it seems about right, based on my experience. Don't sue me if it doesn't work though!

Guten Appetit!

Moderately healthy baking: olive oil-based cookies

2008-06-07T13:10:00.005-04:00

Thursday was my five year anniversary with my boyfriend, and on Wednesday evening, having nothing else for him, I thought I would make some cookies... with a little switch up (am I like Anna Olson or what?). At first I was just going to try this recipe (scaled up to 24 cookies) which came highly recommended by the members of Bake! Bake! Bake!. But the more I thought about it, the less thrilled I was about the entire cup of butter these cookies would require. Now, I'm willing to endure a very full stomach and the prospect of weight gain over a sustained period of eating bakery cookies, whose ingredients are technically a mystery and whose fat content is not desirable to imagine. However, I always feel that one of my major goals in baking at home is to make food that is healthier than it would be if I were to buy it prepared.
Anyone who has followed this blog (mum, Ally...) will remember the first post I made included a pie crust made with olive oil. Taking my cue from this, I decided that instead of the melted butter the cookie recipe called for, I would substitute olive oil. Being that I was making these cookies the night before our milestone fifth anniversary and I was starting at 8PM (when I had to be in bed early for work the next morning), I was a little nervous about how the dough would turn out, but mostly certain that it would work just fine. The other thing about making these when I did was that I didn't get many photos, since I was sort of rushing through.

Anyway, without much further ado:

Cookie dough! As much as eating cookie dough is usually rather delicious, when it is made with olive oil, it's not quite as superb.

I'm a big fan of cookies that are all the same size, so I used a quarter cup measure to divide up the dough.

Mmm, fresh out of the oven.

Recipe

Olive oil based Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients
2-2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup olive oil
1-1/3 cups packed brown sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
1-1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
semisweet chocolate chips, to taste

Method
Preheat the oven to 325°F. Mix together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside. In a medium bowl, mix together the olive oil, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla and eggs until light in colour and creamy. Mix in the dry ingredients until just blended. Mix in the chocolate chips by hand. Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time onto the cookie sheets. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the edges are lightly browned. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

Honestly, this recipe couldn't be more simple. I was concerned that I would be working on the cookies forever, but all of the cookies were out of the oven by 9.15PM or so! It was great.
I was pretty sure, after making the olive oil pie crust that the olive oil in the cookies wouldn't interfere too much with the cookie flavour. For the most part, I was right. Certainly when the cookies were still warm, the olive oil was pretty easy to taste, but once they had cooled down, they tasted just like normal cookies, with a very slight olive oil after taste. This is not unpleasant at all. In fact, just knowing that it's healthy mono-unsaturated olive oil fat instead of saturated butter fat is a treat in and of itself.

Anders (and everyone else who tried them) loved them, too! As much as I love my grandmother's recipe for cookies, I think this will become my go-to.

Guten Appetit!

Staples: pasta primavera

2008-05-27T09:59:00.002-04:00

One of Anders' and my staples is pasta primavera. It's great because we both love vegetables, so despite the fact that there's no meat in it for Anders, we both really enjoy it. I also have severe emetophobia and eating light is one of the few things that helps keep me sane. And, besides the time it takes to cut and clean the vegetables, it's a really simple dish.

To begin, cook some pasta. Shock it when it's done so it doesn't continue to cook and let it sit until you're ready for it.
Next, choose a whole whack of vegetables you like.

These are the ones we usually use:

Rinse them and chop them up, pretty much however you want:

In this instance, I cut the peppers into strips, julienned the carrots, halved the green beans, quartered the mushrooms, and cut the broccoli and cauliflower into bite-sized fleurettes.

Pour a generous amount of olive oil into the pan, and crush some garlic into it:

I threw some Italian seasoning into the pan, too, but I don't, usually.

Put the vegetables in and toss them to coat in oil:

Let them cook for a while. I usually let them go until they brown a little:

If it's taking a long time, put a lid over the pan the let the vegetables steam.

Once the vegetables are cooked (tender but crisp), throw in the cooked pasta and toss it all together:

Guten Appetit!

The German influence: Brötchen

2008-05-24T21:33:00.004-04:00

Anyone who actually keeps up with this blog, which I'm guessing includes my mother and my best friend and not many other people, will notice that I haven't updated for quite some time. The thing that those of you who aren't my mother or my best friend don't know is that I was in Germany for two weeks and just got home on the 22nd in the early evening.
The whole trip was lovely, but in keeping with the idea that this is a cooking and baking blog, I thought I would talk briefly about the food.
Being a vegetarian often makes eating in foreign places (whether it's overseas or just a new city) pretty difficult. Germany was no exception. Many, if not most, of my dinners consisted of potatoes in some form (Bratkartoffeln, Pommes Frites, boiled, etc.) and salad (some of them were really strange, with pickled grean beans or canned corn or both, and more...). Lunches were often the same thing, or some times sandwiches (if you ever go to Germany and you're not used to eating a lot of butter, you should watch out for sandwiches that are premade... unless you want to try eating a pound of butter on one sandwich). Desserts were unquestionably the tastiest part of every meal or snack (Germany has lots of Italian gelato and ice cream, being so close to Italy, plus German bakers are some of the best in the world, in my opinion). Breakfast, it so happened, was the easiest meal of the day. Yoghurt, fresh juice, fruit, and best of all, Brötchen (or Kaisers in the south)!
Now, I'm not sure how unusual this is, but before going to Germany, I had never actually tried Nutella. I'm not sure why. Hazelnuts and chocolate... how could I possibly not like that?! It somehow seemed like not having ever tried it before was really odd, though. So that's what I ate on my Brötchen almost every day (when it was not available, I had lovely jam or emmenthal... delish, but I still craved it on those days).
Yesterday morning was my first breakfast back in Canada. Needless to say, after two solid weeks of eating fresh Brötchen, Kaisers, and bread, everything in the house seemed really lame. And while Nutella is available in Canada, we were sorely lacking a delicious jarful in this particular house (but my parents went grocery shopping today and bought me some... thanks mummy!).
So after eating a Second Cup coffee flavoured granola bar, peach yoghurt and left over macaroni and cheese (?!) for breakfast, I decided that I should probably make some Brötchen to ease the transition back into Canadian living and the post-vacation blues.
I used to work in a bakery and making bread was always my favourite part. Bread dough is the best thing in a bakery. It's beautiful, soft, and forgiving; a dream to work with. Every chance I get to work with any sort of bread dough is a treat.
So I researched some recipes online and found one that I thought might be alright (but having never made Brötchen before, I had no idea).

The ingredients.

The dough.

It's easiest to cut it up into (mostly) equal portions if you stretch and roll into a long loaf shape.

Then divide in half a few times until you get the desired size.

I'm surprised I haven't lost this skill I learned at the bakery.

Put your hand over the ball of dough like you're using a computer mouse. Push your thumb into the dough and down slightly and move your hand around in a circular motion.

This should be the result.

And this was my final result.

I went over to Anders' house last night to give him the photos from the trip and took some along with me to share. I took one for myself as well and ate it with some emmenthal. It was terrible. It tasted like cardboard. Really flavourless cardboard, at that! A terrible way to waste good cheese, really. So, there's really no point in posting the recipe. They were nothing like they should have been.

Undaunted, and still craving some delicious Brötchen, I woke up at 6.30 this morning and being unable to fall asleep again, I researched some more recipes. At Allrecipes.com, I found another one that looked different enough from the one I tried yesterday, and which had good reviews from people who were familiar with authentic Brötchen. So, after editing the dust out of a mere few of the 1500 photos I took on the trip, I got to work on it.

Here we go again:

The ingredient. Similar to the other recipe, but in different amounts.

Yeast, sugar and water. Yum.

The method was very different too, and the dough was much more pleasent to work with. A good sign?

And then I sort of forgot to keep taking photos... so this was the end result.

Looks good, yes?

These smell much better, rose a lot more and are far less dense and heavy.
Before I started to top my Brötchen with anything, I tore a piece off and tried it. Much better.

So this time I topped it with emmenthal, melted it in the broiler, then sliced some tomatoes (which, for the record, are not in season and almost inedible at this time of year) and put them on top.

Rather good, but still not quite the German Brötchen I so enjoyed for two weeks.

So, the search continues.

Recipe

I took this recipe from Allrecipes.com. I used the scaling option to scale done the recipe to a yield of 12 (and I only got 8), and I made some of my own adaptations. Below is what really went into mine.

Brötchen

1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1-1/2 teaspoons white sugar
1-1/4 cups warm water
1 tablespoon butter, softened
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 egg2 whites, stiffly beaten

×××

In a large mixing bowl, dissolve yeast and sugar in warm water. Let sit until creamy; about 10 minutes. Mix in butter, salt and 1 cup of the flour. Beat with a heavy spoon for 2 minutes. Fold in egg whites. Using a stand mixer with dough hooks, gradually add flour 1/4 cup at a time, until dough forms a ball and begins to pull away from bowl. Turn onto a floured surface. Knead, adding more flour as necessary, for 8 to 10 minutes, until smooth and elastic with bubbles.
Lightly oil a large mixing bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn over to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubles in volume, about 1 hour. Deflate the dough, form into a round and let rise again until doubled, about 45 minutes.
Preheat oven to 425°F. Deflate the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into 12 or 8 (or whatever) equal pieces and form into oval rolls about 3 1/2 inches long. Place on lightly greased baking sheets, slit tops of rolls, cover and let rise until doubled in volume, about 40 minutes.
Bake for about 20 minutes or until the tops are golden brown. Remove to a wire rack and cool.

Guten Appetit!

Who likes cornflakes anyway?: Sweet Maries

2008-04-29T12:32:00.002-04:00

I made some square yesterday, that I have always known to be called Sweet Maries, but a couple of searches on recipe websites and Google tells me there's essentially no such thing. Who knew?

Anyway, the inspiration (instigation may be more correct) for these tasty squares was a surplus of plain cornflakes which I bought when we were all suffering from the stomach flu, and which I discovered pretty much no one likes. We've moving on Thursday and the last thing I want to have to pack is a box of cornflakes, so I asked around for recipes and was given this link. They sounded like these things that my cousin has always called Sweet Maries when she brings them to family get togethers, so that's what I'm calling them.

They're really easy, no-bake and made with things I would normally have around the house:

...except that this time I had to go out specifically to buy everything except the white sugar (not pictured) and the cornflakes.

Here's how it went down:

Throw together the peanut butter, sugar and corn syrup in a pot, on the stove.

Heat gently and mix until it looks like really sugary, terrible-for-you peanut butter, then take it off the heat.

Pour the peanut butter mixture into a large bowl, throw in the cornflakes and mix until they're coated evenly.

Ooh, close up.

You'll want to try some at this point. Go ahead, try some... I did and it turned out it wasn't peanut buttery enough, so I added another 1/4 cup or so.

Press it into a pan. I covered the inside of this Pyrex dish with a sheet of plastic wrap so it would be easy to get out. Turned out to be a good idea.

Okay, the recipe gives an exact amount of chocolate to melt for the topping, but what I did was open the package of chocolate and dump in what looked like enough to make a young child really sick and messy.

Pour the chocolate over the top and spread it out evenly. I put mine in the fridge to help the chocolate set, but since the chocolate is chocolate chips, I'm guessing it would set if you didn't put it in the fridge.

This is what mine looked like when they were done.

And putting them in the fridge turned out not to be a great idea. When I tried to cut the block up it pretty much shattered and sent cornflakes flying evvvverywhere. Pretty delish, still. They got the Anders and Trevor seal of a approval, anyway.

Recipe
3 cups corn flakes, crushed
1 1/4 cup crunchy peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup white corn syrup
However many chocolate chips look appropriate

Heat peanut butter, sugar and corn syrup over low heat to melt. Mix with cereal.
Pat into a 8x8 (mine wasn't 8x8) lightly greased pan. (I lined mine with plastic wrap and sprayed it with Pam).
Melt chocolate chips over low heat or in the microwave and spread over top. Cool until firm.

Guten Appetit!

Easy food: pizza and Quaker muffins

2008-04-25T22:33:00.005-04:00

The plan for my next baking endeavour was chocolate berry pie, but I haven't got the ingredients for it yet, so instead, the past two real food things I've made have been mostly packaged and easy.

First, Anders and I ate pizza for dinner last night. It's sort of a new dinner we've started enjoying, and it's nice because it's pretty easy.

We buy the crust ready-made with sauce included. Both are of surprising taste-quality.
We buy Molinaro brand:

Since Anders hates cheese more than anything in the world (no joke) and eats meat, we cut the shell in half and make completely separate pizzas.
His toppings usually include some sort of meat (most often bacon, but he's also put on ham, and maybe even hotdog once), pepper (red, orange or yellow), and some times pineapple.
I, on the other hand, like toppings that most other people think are insane. I put on the usual grated mozzarella cheese, then top that with broccoli and green olives. It's a lovely salty taste with a nice amount of crunch in the broccoli.

All in all, a great, mostly healthy dinner:

Second, today I made Quaker brand oatmeal chocolate chip muffins from a mix.

Yes, that is a poster of two girls making out in the background... I live with all boys, don't you know.

After a crummy day today, I was craving a chocolate hit, and while these are oatmeal chocolate chip muffins, most girls will understand that this is just not enough.
So, I had the ingenious idea of adding some unsweetened cocoa to a few of the muffins, before I remembered I live in a student house with four (now three, tomorrow two) boys and there is not a dusting of unsweetened cocoa to be found. Instead I nicked some of Trevor's Nesquick and added that to a few of the muffin cups before they went into the oven.

After baking for a mere 18 minutes, the muffins looked lovely and golden... kind of like this:

And how did the Nesquick ones actually turn out?

Pretty good. Could definitely use more chocolate, still.

Guten Appetit!

Pink lemonade cupcakes

2008-04-24T18:17:00.006-04:00

Yesterday I made my attempt at pink lemonade cupcakes, adapting a recipe thebyrds posted some time ago on Bake! Bake! Bake!

First of all, I doubled the recipe to get 12 regular-sized cupcakes. I also changed some ingredient amounts to taste and omitted the food colouring, since the pink lemonade mix made the cupcakes a very pleasing pink on its own. I made my own variation of buttercream frosting, which I have begun to call sour buttercream frosting, and just added some pink lemonade concentrate.

I like the texture of these cupcakes a lot better than the rainbow ones, but they're still sort of dense. They're also not too terrible for you, which is always a bonus.

As much as I wanted to cut down the number of photos I was going to post for these, I liked so many of them. Plus it's a fairly short post, so deeeeeeal.

Naked, fresh out of the oven.

Frosting, waiting for the cupcakes to cool.

Decorated and deliiiish.

Pink Lemonade Cupcakes

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
2/3 cup granulated sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
4 egg whites
3/4 cup thawed frozen pink lemonade concentrate
½ cup milk

×××

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line muffin pan with liners.
In a small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, oil, egg whites and lemonade concentrate. Alternately whisk in flour mixture and milk, making three additions of flour mixture and two of milk, beating until just smooth.
Scoop batter into liners. Bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes. Let cool in pan on rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool completely on rack. Top cooled cupcakes with frosting.

Pink Lemonade Buttercream Frosting

3/4 cup softened butter
1 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons sour cream (4 tablespoons or 1/4 cup if it wasn't flavoured with pink lemonade)
2-3 tablespoons pink lemonade concentrate, thawed
Vanilla to taste

×××

Place all ingredients in a bowl and whip with an electric mixer on medium-low. The frosting tends to look slightly strange and lumpy for a while, but will smooth out nicely after a few minutes of whipping.

Guten Appetit!

School's out... time to bake!

2008-04-19T14:16:00.011-04:00

On Friday, I finished my last exam for the year and decided it would be an excellent time to start whipping up some food fro the excellent recipes I've been nicking from Bake! Bake! Bake!
Well, I suppose only one is from there.
But, let me take you back a few days before that, to Wednesday. Picture it... you walk into the grocery store and there they are... baskets of strawberries... 2 for $3.00. No joke. Suddenly I found myself rummaging through pallet upon pallet of strawberries, looking for the best two baskets I could find. Of course, I didn't actually decide what I was going to do with them until the day I ended up using them, Friday.
So anyway, Thursday I write an exam, and study the rest of the day for my Friday exam. On Friday I finish my exam, which was supposed to be three hours long, head to Tim Horton's and make it home before the first hour of the allotted time is up. Most of my planning was done then, while I sat on the couch drinking an iced cappuccino, eating a double chocolate muffin and thinking about how I didn't have to think anymore. Sweet relief.
After seeing 29983439834 posts about it on Bake! Bake! Bake!, I decided to make rainbow cupcakes. I also found a recipe for olive oil pie crust that looked like it might actually work (two failed attempts preceded this one), and decided to pick up some peaches to design a peach and strawberry pie. Finally, I figured I'd try something new for dinner and make some lasagna, the idea for which I stole from Restaurant Makeover (<3). Onward to downtown, where I stopped at the kitchen store and bought a pastry cutter/blender, a tiny piping kit and some concentrated gel food colouring. I ended up spending more there than I did on the actual food for the day. After that it was on to the grocery store where I found everything I needed. The walk home was delightful, as the weather has finally decided to be spring-like. Ahhh.

The first order of business when I got home was to make the pie crust:

The key is to freeze the olive oil first. So I popped a bowl full of it into the freezer before I went out. It was a good working consistency by the time I got home from downtown (about 1.5 to 2 hours, but I guess it depends on the freezer).
While that was chilling in the fridge I set to work on the filling:

I had to use tinned peaches because, of course, peaches aren't in season right now. The strawberries are fresh though. To make this I just sliced up the fruit and tossed it in a maple cinnamon glaze. Delish.
This is what it looked like when all was said and done:

I made the crust a little too thick, and the fruit was a bit too juicy, which led to a partially uncooked/soggy crust in some places. The flavour of the crust was great though, and the filling was excellent as well. The best part was knowing that the olive oil pie crust wasn't actively clogging people's arteries as they ate!

Next I made rainbow cupcakes, which were a huge fad on Bake! Bake! Bake! for a little while.

They had quite a nice flavour, but were extreeeemely dense. I will probably never use this white cake recipe again. Eating a cupcake was like eating an entire, really unhealthy meal. Tasty though.
This is what they looked like inside:

I kind of made up the frosting for these, because we didn't have any milk or cream in the house for buttercream. We did, however, have sour cream, since I was using it for the cupcakes.

Finally, I made some lasagna for Anders, Ally and myself. Of course that meant making both meat and vegetarian. And, of course, I did it a little differently than normal. Instead of layering it in a dish the traditional way, I made lasagna rolls. It was later christened "surprise lasagna" following a phone conversation with my sister, in which the description of the dish was a little confused.

This is what my dinner looked like:

Recipes

Olive Oil Pie Crust

2/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil
2 ½ cups of all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ cup ice water
1 tablespoon of vinegar

×××

Place olive oil in the freezer until it solidifies and is of a consistency similar to thick honey, approximately 3 or 4 hours.
Combine flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl and mix. Add remaining ingredients and blend with a pastry blender. Place dough in an air tight container or plastic wrap and place it in the fridge for an hour or so to chill.
Roll ball out to 1/8 inch thickness and fit into a pie plate. Use as you would a regular pie crust.

×××

I got this recipe from DaffodilLane on Flickr.

Filling

3 ½ cups peeled, sliced peaches
3 ½ cups washed, hulled and halved strawberries
½ cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons butter
cinnamon to taste
2 unbaked pie crusts

×××

Hull and wash the strawberries, then slice them in half. Wash and peel fresh peaches, or drain tinned pears. Slice peaches into quarters or eighths.
In a pot, heat maple syrup, butter and cinnamon, stirring constantly. Bring the mixture to gentle boil for a few moments and remove from heat. Allow the glaze to cool slightly, and toss with strawberries and pears.
Pour the filling into one of the pie crusts and cover with the other.
Bake at 400° for 15 minutes, and then reduce heat to 325-350° for 20 to 25 minutes. Allow to cool slightly before serving.

Rainbow Cupcakes

1½ cups all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
¾ cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
2/3 cup reduced-fat sour cream

×××

Preheat oven to 350°. Line a standard (12-cup) muffin tin with paper liners. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until combined. Beat in vanilla.
With the mixer on low speed, gradually beat in flour mixture and sour cream in alternating batches, beginning and ending with the flour. Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin cups.
Bake until a toothpick inserted in the centre of a cupcake comes out clean and the top is springy to the touch, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool 10 minutes in the pan, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely before spreading with frosting.

×××

This is a Martha Stewart recipe, which I took from the Bake! Bake! Bake! community.

Frosting
3/4 cup softened butter
1 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup sour cream
Vanilla to taste
Food colouring (optional)

×××

Place all ingredients in a bowl and whip with an electric mixer on medium-low. The frosting tends to look slightly strange and lumpy for a while, but will smooth out nicely after a few minutes of whipping.

And as far as the lasagna goes... well there is no recipe, really. Here's what I did:

I cooked a whole bunch of regular lasagna sheets, grated some cheese (I cut up some emmental for mine, actually), cut up some broccoli and browned some beef (for Anders).
When the pasta was done, Ally and I spread out the sheets on cutting boards, spread sauce over them, sprinkled them with cheese, and bunched some broccoli up at one end of the sheet. Starting at the end where the broccoli was, we rolled the pasta up onto itself and put them in a Pyrex baking dish on their ends.
For Anders, I mixed the beef up with the sauce, then spread that onto the pasta sheets. Before rolling it up I put some wilted spinach in and also baked them on their ends in a Pyrex dish.
They take about 20 minutes in the oven at 350° or so.

That's really all there is to it. Just pick a sauce you like (I used Marinelli, which is our favourite), some toppings you like and roll it all up.

Next, I'm making pink lemonade cupcakes!

Guten Appetit!

essen, fressen, nicht vergessen...

2008-04-19T14:00:00.003-04:00

Here's the deal:
I love cooking, and I love baking. I love doing both these things for other people. My boyfriend is a distance runner and eats a lot, so I always have someone to test new things out on. Plus, I love to eat, so that helps, too! This is why I've decided to make a food blog.
I plan to chronicle the new things I cook or bake, as well as my old favourites.
The original name of this blog was "essen, fressen, nicht vergessen..." This was a phrase my grandfather used with my mother, when she was young, and which she used with me, when I was young. It's really a nonsense phrase. If you wanted to translate it, it would be something like "eat, eat, do not forget," however, "fressen" is the verb "to eat" ascribed to animals.
I've since changed the name to Cathlin cooks... and bakes! or Cathlin cooks... but mostly bakes. Cathlin cooks, for short.
This is where I'll be posting photos, recipes and commentary on the food I make from now on. Some food is directly from recipes, but you'll find that many of my recipes stray, or that I've made them up myself!

Enjoy, and guten Appetit!