While in Florida at my wife’s parents’ condo, we hosted several dinners to celebrate Hanukah. On one evening, we needed a cake that would be kid- and adult-friendly. Dr. S’ mom had a Fine Cooking cake and pie compilation magazine, and I thought their Vanilla Layer Cake with Wh...
Since everyone enjoyed the donuts from last week, I decided to deep-fry again! I filtered the reserved frying oil through cheesecloth, and kept it frozen. Surprisingly, the combination of sunflower and canols oils actually solidified in the jar.This recipe is interesting becau...
While I no longer have the time to make twenty loaves of fruitcake to sell and give away, my family still enjoys having it at Christmastime. Previous recipes I’ve used have produced delicious fruitcake, but I’m always looking for new recipes to try. This year, I found one by M...
As I’m going to be away for Christmas this year, I’ve been planning some baking to give to my parents and family. One idea I had was to make a pound cake filled with those honey-glazed walnuts you can get at T&T Supermarket. I used the traditional pound cake recipe from th...
We are now in possession of a 5 pound (yes, five pound) bag of Intelligentsia Black Cat coffee beans. While Dr. S and I are not serious coffee drinkers, we enjoy it enough that we buy good beans and grind them just before use. Of course, roasting them just before use would be ...
For an early Hanukkah party we were co-hosting, I volunteered to make a deep-fried dessert. To ensure that all the adults and kids would have enough, we decided to make a double-batch of the dough. It’s quite sticky after rolling, so make sure you flour the counter heavily. I ...
I followed the quantities for the test size (one 8×4” loaf) and doubled it. To turn this cake into a tangerine one, I added the grated zest of one tangerine, plus the candied zest of an iyo tangerine I bought from Muji last fall. To prep the peel, which was a bit dry, I soaked...
After roasting a butternut squash and almost forgetting in our fridge, I decided to try out this loaf (substituting for pumpkin) from a recent issue of Fine Cooking. Using olive oil in baked quick breads is nothing to me, but I didn’t have any non-EVOO so I used sunflower seed...
A bunch of ripe, Bosc pears suggested another baking project, and I settled on this recipe in Mollie Katzen’s breakfast recipes book. As with most muffin recipes, these were really easy to put together. I may have overmixed these a bit, or used too much pear, as they came out ...
So, we’re back from our trip, and back to baking! Last week, my mother-in-law flew in before we landed, stocked our fridge and helped us to take care of Gabe while we adjusted to the time change. This week, we were still eating things out of the fridge, so I went looking for a...
For Rosh Hashanah this year, I again made the apple-honey challahs I made last year, but at the last minute, also made a dessert from the very ripe plums and peaches my mother-in-law had on the counter. Unfortunately, this recipe was a big let down. There is very little batter...
At an end of summer BBQ, we were asked to contribute dessert. We recently went apple picking at Avalon Orchards in Innisfil and came back with a lot of Nova Mac apples. They’re very small and tart, but there wasn’t much selection at the orchard. This recipe calls for carameliz...
We’ve been buying a lot of peaches and nectarines recently. My aunt from Edmonton was in town and we had her over for dinner. This cake was simple to put together for when I got home from work. It uses ground almonds, giving it a marzipan kind of flavour. I used yogurt mixed w...
For a BBQ class to reunite our prenatal class post-birth, we volunteered to make dessert. I had thought about something like the Summer Berry Pie but wanted to try something more advanced, just for the challenge.
We received a very large, striped zucchini from our CSA this week. It’s that time of year when vegetable gardeners start looking for new and exciting ways to use the bountiful squash harvest. This time, I turned to the Interweb and found this recipe for a chocolate loaf. It’s ...
To celebrate a recent work announcement, I decided to make some cookies on a Monday morning. A trip to St. Lawrence Market yielded a set of mini alphabet cookie cutters, and CI’s holiday butter cookie recipe offered several variations, including a jam sandwich one. The most ti...
The previous owners of our house must have planted mint in the backyard. Each year, I pick the plants right down to their roots but they keep coming back. This week, I harvested as many leaves as I could to make this ice cream. To maximize flavour, I let the washed, dried mint...
While we were in Montreal, we had the opportunity to partake in some delicious, juicy strawberries. They are so plentiful in the markets and roadside stands at this time of year. And the prices for a flat are so much cheaper than in Ontario. I wanted to showcase these berries ...
With the disappointing failure of the previous batch, I finally assembled all the ingredients for the recipe I wanted to try in the first place. In the version found on the Leite’s Culinaria website, the cookie has cream cheese and cornstarch. The latter is often found in shor...
During a recent Costco shopping trip, I picked up some vanilla beans from a company called Rodelle. Apparently, Costco’s been carrying this item for a few years now. My previous batch, purchased from an online retailer in bulk, had almost turned into twigs in the fridge. I too...
Continuing with our quinoa experimentation, I tried using it in a pancake this morning. After cooking and cooling a batch of quinoa, the rest of this pancake recipe came together quickly. I used cake flour instead of all-purpose so the pancakes would be more tender, and adding...
This healthy-sounding recipe looked good to me, high in fibre and low in sugar and fat. We’ve had a package of flax seeds in the freezer forever, and we always have dried fruit in our cupboards so I was all set. This is my first baking project since our son was born, and it di...
With mangoes going for $10 a case or less, we’ve been excitedly buying and eating them. I wanted to make a dessert featuring mangoes but in this case, I was not impressed by this recipe at all. The first problem is that cooking the fruit did not seem to enhance it in any way. ...
A friend who visited Spain first told me about alfajores. A cookie with a dulce de leche filling sounded scrumptious. During the winter, we happened to walk by El Almacen before seeing a play at The Great Hall. Spotting a sign advertising alfajor, I added one to our lunch orde...
For the first night of Passover, I was looking for a dessert I hadn’t made in previous years such as the chocolate orange cake or the flourless chocolate-orange almond cake. My mother-in-law highly recommended this cookbook and it’s there that I found this Claudia Roden recipe...
The last container of applesauce in our freezer served as the inspiration for these muffins. I wanted a bran muffin I hadn’t made before and these looked good. To compensate for accidentally measuring 1 cup of yogurt+milk instead of two-thirds cup buttermilk, I added about a q...
This blog was started in part to visually document recipes that I try out. So the absence of a picture to accompany this post is unique. My defence is that the dessert got eaten before I could take a photo. Dr. S had a research group from out of town come over for dinner, and ...
I needed a snack to bribe my colleagues with, something easy to make. Rummaging around in my freezer produced a bag of hazelnuts. Flipping through Baking With Julia, I spied this biscotti recipe. Perfect! The first step involves skinning the nuts by processing them in a strong...
I had my first hamantaschen at a Purim service on Saturday. Dr. S has been wanting to take me to this annual holiday since we met, as she thinks it’s the most fun Jewish observance, filled with drinking, costumes and groggers.This recipe from the NY Times seemed to be a good p...
It was our tenant and friend’s birthday this week, so we decided to make her some cupcakes. We were also invited to dinner this weekend as well, so this recipe yielding 22 cupcakes fit the bill. Dr. S browsed through the book and narrowed the choices down, but ultimately selec...
I’ve never had fresh yuzu before. Every so often, the zest will show up as a garnish in a cup of chawan mushi or atop a bowl of chirashi in a restaurant, but I’ve never thought to ask where the chefs got it from. This recipe comes from an independent coffee chain in the States...
As a dessert for dinner for six, I made this creme brulee using Meyer Lemons that I bought at The Big Carrot. I love their intoxicating perfume with its hint of tangerine. This recipe calls for slicing the ginger and steeping it for an hour. After baking the custards, they cam...
The only substitution I made was milk-diluted yogurt instead of buttermilk. And I foolishly tried to make a double batch in 12 regular-sized tins. The tops of the tins were completely covered, so it looked like a bumpy cake. Because of this over-filling, the muffins were sligh...
There are at least four other banana breads in this blog (here, another, one more, and my previous favourite). I make some versions more often than others, but it’s like bran muffins or chocolate chip cookies for me: I’m still on the lookout for a recipe that improves on all t...
ul { float: left; width: 46em; margin: 2em; padding: 2em; } li { float: left; width: 23em; margin: 2em; padding: 2em; } I came across a friend’s blog post and was inspired to make my own 角仔 for the Lunar New Year. The name literally means “little corners”, re...
Bloggers everywhere have been enjoying Orangette’s French-style Yogurt Cake with Lemon. I hadn’t heard of it before but was looking for something to use up yogurt and lemons. This was very easy to put together and required just stirring all the ingredients together. Adding the...
With Dr. S out of town for a few days, I busied myself with another baking project, this time, quinoa bread. At first, I thought two loaves might be too much for my stand mixer, but I forged ahead anyway. This recipe uses a sponge plus cooked quinoa so it’s not as simple as, s...
Continuing the quinoa theme, I tried out a crumble using a quinoa topping. It’s billed as a gluten-free recipe, but it’s extremely delicious. Like Cook’s Illustrated’s technique, the topping is baked separately so that it will stay crisp. I made a batch of this in a larger con...
We brought back another case of Honeybells and red grapefruits from a recent trip to Florida. Combine that with two huge containers of plain yogurt from Costco and I got the idea to make a panna cotta dessert. I searched around for a grapefruit panna cotta, and the one that I ...
A Costco-sized bag of quinoa (is it KEEN-wah? or kee-NOH-ah?) was the motivation for making these muffins. I bookmarked this NY Times article last fall since I don’t know much about this grain, and have never tried baking with it. There’s a bit of prep work: I used a small Bra...
When I saw this entry on http://www.playingwithfireandwater.com/, I knew I had to try it. This isn’t the first time I’ve used miso in baking or dessert but it’s definitely my first cookie using the paste. My only substitution was using regular brown sugar instead of dark. I al...
Dr. S wanted some healthy muffins and I rummaged around on the Web to find one that might use up some ingredients in the fridge. Since I was out of wheat bran, I limited myself to ones using oat bran or something like that. This carrot muffin looked good but I didn’t have pine...
While in Florida, I got a chance to make a loaf of challah to enjoy on the weekend. On Friday morning, I made the dough with the only modification being a reduction in the sugar to accommodate some diabetics. I did the first rise at room temperature. After punching down, I put...
Ever since I discovered Print-On-Demand services, I’ve enjoyed making books that chronicle my baking and travel adventures. For Volume 1 way back in 2006, I made a very modest book using QOOP. For Volume 2 in 2008, I got a little fancier and made a book using Blurb. A book cov...
