This was to be a birthday cake but turned into a New Year’s Eve dessert. This flourless cake uses ground pistachios in the batter as well as chopped nuts as a garnish. A food processor is used to make the cake, leaving the stand mixer free to whip the egg whites. Instead of a ...
Dr. S had the great idea of making homemade caramel corn packaged in tall glass jars for some of her staff. We found a hot-air popper at Tap Phong in Chinatown, got the kernel corn in Kensington Market and went home to embark on our little project. We followed the recipe but o...
On a whim, I decided to make danish dough one evening. I’ve used this recipe before, and love its combination of flavours including orange zest and cardamom. It’s fairly easy to make, provided you have a stand mixer to do the kneading and decent skills with a rolling pin. The ...
This summer, an article in the NY Times discussed the history and development of chocolate chip cookies. To save you from reading the whole article, here are the highlights: let the dough rest for 1 to 3 days in the fridge for better flavor; make them big so you get a crisp ed...
For the final session of the glass blowing course I’ve been taking, I wanted to serve a dessert on the cake plate I was making. It wasn’t completed in time, but I made this chocolate-pear tart anyhow. The pate sucree crust was partially baked, before being filled with finely c...
One of the items for my upcoming weekend brunch is a yogurt parfait. Homemade granola is usually much tastier than store-bought but I have mixed opinions about this one. The sesame seeds tasted raw; maybe toasting them would have improved their flavour. I also misread the dire...
For a shabbat dinner Dr. S was hosting, I made the challah recipe by Lauren Groveman from this book. I ran out of milk so I used some skim milk powder and water as well. The eggs I used were some sort of Omega-3 Pro (!) ones that had deep orange yolks. This contributed a beaut...
I used some very juicy Flemish Beauty pears for this. It took almost a half hour for all the liquid to evaporate, but once it does, watch the pan carefully as the fruit scorches easily. The large amount of pear liqueur gives it quite a kick. At first, I couldn’t really taste t...
With the last of the Empire apples we picked, I decided to make a double batch of this quick bread. Whoops, I gave away the surprise (filling)! I didn’t have any bleached cake flour, so I mixed together unbleached pastry and AP flours. The crumble topping got fairly hard in th...
I read recently about organizations such as Not Far From the Tree which harvests fruit from urban trees that would otherwise go to waste. My coworker happens to have a pear tree growing on his property that is producing a lot of fruit, and he picked me a small box. The russet...
On a trip to Montreal this summer, I made a point of stopping by Chocolat-Chocolat, a store which I have purchased from online many times. Their retail building is a very cute house with a massive warehouse in the back. In the front is a well-stocked library of books and magaz...
A baking blogging group was all over this recipe earlier this year, but I found it via a Google Books link while searching for an apple cheesecake. I don’t own this baking book, but I really love Greenspan’s other books (Baking with Julia, the two Pierre Herme ones) so I had h...
A recent apple picking trip left me with over 30 pounds of red apples (either Empire or Macoun, we didn’t keep the bags separated!). I’ve been making a lot of apple pies, both the Cook’s Illustrated deep dish one and the apple-cranberry one. I borrowed one of those apple peele...
For a fall dessert potluck at work, I wanted to make something a little showy that would feature a fall fruit. On Monday night, I took twelve Golden Delicious apples (5½ lbs), peeled and quartered them. I was worried that some of the chunks were too big, so I cut the larger ap...
An experiment using Splenda Brown Sugar Blend last week didn’t turn out so well. Using my favourite recipe, I replaced the sugar with half the volume of the Splenda blend. The critical error was in using underripe bananas. I tried really hard to ripen them but in the end, the ...
The recipe calls for an unconventional way to line a fluted tart pan: form the dough into a log, then slice out pieces and pat them into the tin. I don’t understand how this is easier or better than just rolling it. It certainly wasn’t more tender; I do like the addition of le...
I used my remaining blue plums to make this custard and fruit cake. The crust is a crumbly mixture of butter, flour, cinnamon, cloves, sugar and sour cream. The filling is just plums over which is poured a custard mixture. Some reserved crust crumble is sprinkled over top and ...
I haven’t made individual desserts in a while using my tartlet molds, and these tarts sounded like a tasty way to use up some prune plums I have. The crust calls for fraisage, kneading the little pea-sized bits of butter and shortening so that smear and produce a flaky pastry....
Costco, that magical place, had a box of small black figs for sale, which inspired me to come up with this jam. I food-processed the ripe figs, yielding about 2 cups, combined it with 2½ cups of food-processed blue plums, then added a cup of port and a box of no-sugar pectin. ...
During a recent walk around Kensington Market, I wasn’t able to find any Ontario apricots and thought that the season was over. Last Friday, Square One’s Farmer’s Market yielded numerous vendors selling what I was looking for, and I bought a giant basket. Unfortunately, many o...
This recipe caught my eye because it uses a ½ cup egg whites and I always have extra whites. Local peaches are stacked a metre high in most supermarkets so I wanted to make something with the 6L that I bought (besides eating them). This recipe calls for poaching the peaches br...
I loosely followed the given recipe but since it’s so simple, I’ll describe it here. After blanching and peeling the peaches, I put chunks of it in a food processor and chopped them finely. I measured out five cups of peach pulp, then combined it with one cup of Viognier wine,...
With all of the peaches everywhere, I wanted to make a pie that featured this juicy fruit. Last week, I tried this recipe and was pleased enough to make it again last night. Instead of their crust, I used the CI vodka pie crust, replacing the vegetable shortening with lard. Th...
On a trip to Montréal last Friday, Dr. S’ and her parents took me to the Jean-Talon Market. What an incredible place, full of in-season fruit and vegetables stalls, interesting shops selling rare spices and olive oils, butchers and seafood vendors and delicious eateries. I saw...
Before going out of town for the weekend, I wanted to use a half litre of buttermilk in some way and thought about making a loaf of bread (too long) or a cake (too much work). I happened across these biscuits and pulled out the CI issue from my shelf. The technique for making ...
I decided to try using the no-sugar pectin to make this jam diabetic-friendly. To get the hazelnut flavour, I put toasted, chopped hazelnuts in a cheesecloth and added it to the jam mixture, as well as a quarter cup of Frangelico. Some of my peach chunks were quite large, I wo...
It turns out (perhaps everyone already knew this) that Canadian Tire carries the whole line of Bernardin canning supplies: jars, seals, lids, tongs, funnel, canner, etc. I bought some shorter, wider jars that would better fit in my stock pot. Dr. S and I got a whole flat (12 h...
Continuing the bran muffin baking spree, I tried this recipe out to use up some (really) dried figs. They were so hard I had trouble cutting them with my knife; I made sure they soaked in the boiling water to rehydrate them. I added a half cup of finely chopped pecans to the b...
After a weekend trip to the newly relocated Golda’s Kitchen, I was able to pick up the other canning equipment I needed: jar lifter (tongs), funnel and rack. I had purchased some white currants last week and wanted to do something with them; this recipe for a peach and redcurr...
Since it’s nearing the ending of cherry season, I decided to make another dessert featuring the fruit. I also wanted to use up more egg whites so this recipe fit the bill, especially since it calls for amaretti. The latter are often found in stores carrying Italian goods, but ...
This issue of the magazine features the best-loved baked goods from the past decades. 1981 was the initial publication of this muffin recipe and it’s still a delight. Of course, with ½ cup of butter and 1 cup of sour cream, it’s bound to be delicious and rich. The molasses gav...
I’ve never tried making jam before for one simple reason: I didn’t want anyone to die from poisoning. After making a batch of strawberry jam with Dr. S, and seeing how easy it was and how there were many precautions, I decided to try it for myself. Last week, a vendor at the S...
The prospect of combining two breakfast foods together enticed me. This recipe certainly didn’t disappoint. My only change to the recipe was to make it gluten-free and letting the batter rest for 5 minutes so that the cornmeal could absorb some of the liquid. Make sure you gre...
For a tenure party Dr. S’ friend was celebrating, I decided to make the caramel ganache chocolates from Peter Greweling’s Chocolates and Confections:After reading about homemade confectionary frames, I’ve been hunting around to make my own. My coworker’s brother is a machinist...
Instead of a berry fool I had intended to make, I took the raspberries I bought and made all three puddings from the recipes in this cookbook. One important note about these recipes is that they don’t yield the same volume, so if you’re trying to make a layered pudding like I ...
Just south of Bracebridge last Friday, we stopped by a roadside stand to buy some fresh wild blueberries. The vendor said they were from Sudbury, and I walked away with a 1.5L basket which cost $22. That’s a steep price for berries but the wild ones pack so much more flavour (...
For the Toronto Chowhound picnic, I decided to make a fresh cherry cobbler seeing as there is an abundance of the fruit at local markets. I bought a basket at St. Lawrence Market for $15 and this yielded exactly 4 pounds. It took about a half hour to manually pit all the cherr...
I’ve been up at a cottage with Dr. S and have been baking (as usual) using equipment and ingredients that we brought up. I made some old favourites including blueberry scones, a mixed fruit pie using the CI vodka crust, chocolate-chili ice cream and strawberry pancakes. We’re ...
With some leftover mascarpone in hand, I decided to combine two of the variations in Sherry Yard’s basic ice cream recipe.
We went strawberry picking on the weekend, and after making a batch of jam, still had lots of fruit leftover. I decided to try making something simple for a first recipe from this book. The sorbet was easy enough, as was the balsamic syrup and mascarpone cream (mascarpone, mil...
While reading about Sam Mason, I came across another one of his recipes that begged to be tried. Since I don’t have maltodextrin nor high acyl gellan, I wasn’t able to make the apple puree, but I did want an apple component to go along with the miso ice cream. The salted dried...
I made a photobook out of the pictures from my Baking and Dessert, Volume 2 set. I’ve made a book with Blurb previously and really liked their layout software, BookSmart. All of the images were pulled down from Flickr using BookSmart’s built-in support.Each page has a coloured...
I bought the Trung Nguyen coffee a while ago at T&T and having been drinking cups of it occasionally. I’m not sure what the strong flavour, maybe camphor? Or the Chari or Catimor beans? Anyway, an entire half cup went into the ice cream base, tinting it a deep brown. Passi...
The last of the rhubarb plus organic (not local, though) strawberries went into these easy-to-make muffins. My only substitution was replacing the plain flour with a bit of kamut flour, and sprinkling ground almonds on top. These had a store-bought flavour, not a bad thing, wi...
My original plan was to make Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Malteser Cake but many reviews online have mentioned it’s not very tasty, so I tried this more complicated cake. Do read the directions carefully, as numerous eggs are required in the cake layers and mousse, and you don’t...
I wanted a cake to use up some yogurt I had and not require any butter because I had none (!) and this cake met my requirements nicely. Halving the recipe, I baked the cake in an 8” square pan, adding an extra 10 minutes to the baking time. A whole tablespoon of baking powder ...
We bought some rhubarb from a farm in Markham on Sunday and I wanted a recipe that would use up a lot of it. Unfortunately, while this recipe fit that requirement, I didn’t find it all that tasty, especially for the amount of work required. The fruit is roasted in the oven wit...
This bread has walnut oil in the recipe and both white and whole wheat flours in it. To fit my schedule, I relied on the time-saving cold fermentation technique. After mixing up the dough on Monday night, I let it proof in my very warm apartment for about an hour, then put it ...
The recipe comes from a professor at a college in Ohio and is part of annual maple syrup tradition at the school. I liked that it used beer and had sunflower seeds sprinkled on the waffle iron. I subbed blue cornmeal for regular. These came out a little thin, without a lot of ...
Edamame were filling Dr. S’ freezer so I took two frozen containers home and looked for recipes to use them and found this involved dessert. As the beans were already cooked, I just microwaved them per the directions, shelled them, and also slipped off the thin skins. The ice ...
I made several substitutions: replacing a third of the flour with kamut flour, and mixing soy milk and sour cream in place of buttermilk. These weren’t anything special, a very tender muffin with cinnamon-walnut flavours.
Another item for Heart & Stroke fundraising. I had some leftover sour cream and was pleased to find this recipe which uses it in both the cake and icing. I didn’t know what a “sandwich tin” was so I just used two 8” round cake tins. The cake is quite tender so be careful w...
For Dr. S’ birthday. Both cupcakes are made in the food processor but the quantities are so small that it was hard to get everything well-mixed with a minimum of processing to avoid toughness. The espresso cupcakes are frosted with melted chocolate, butter and espresso powder ...
Macaron recipe adapted from Sherry Yard, buttercream recipe fromsplendidtable.publicradio.org: As part of my fundraising for the Heart & Stroke Foundation at work, I made another flavour of macarons, this time, coffee. For the shells, I adapted the gingerbread recipe by re...
Just a quick breakfast treat to have an excuse to eat leftover chocolate ganache. The batter only has four ingredients: flour, milk, butter and egg. I made it with a large proportion of gluten-free flour mix. This made the crepes prone to tearing in the pan but very tender.
I had fun trying to translate this French recipe into English. What intrigued me was the use of natural ingredients to colour the macarons, in this case, turmeric. I’ve reluctantly purchased vials of food colouring but try to use as little as possible, and only when absolutely...
Instead of using three 6” pans, I used two 8” pans with the realization that the extra surface area would make a thinner cake. I added about a teaspoon of strawberry essence into the batter plus a bit of Guavaberry liqueur, as I didn’t have any Wildberry schnapps. The cakes ba...
Even though I made this cookie before, I wanted to use up some of my egg whites (again!) and I knew these would be a hit at our office bake sale fundraiser for the Heart & Stroke Foundation. The link above is part of a very long discussion on macaron making on eGullet, and...
I owned this cookbook a number of years ago when I was at university, but must have left it behind in a house I lived in. However, I found a copy of this recipe which I had copied out by hand for some reason. I didn’t follow the recipe exactly. Instead, I made the simple syrup...
Over a period of several days this week, I made these chocolates to go with a Mexican party I was having on Saturday. First, I infused the cream with a whole sliced jalapeno as I didn’t find habaneros in the major supermarkets. The slabbed ganache set up very quickly at a cool...
I used an entire 3 lb bag of organic tangerines for this recipe. The recipe contains only sugar, water, tangerine and lemon juices, so it’s not difficult. It freezes quite firm and has a strong orange popsicle flavour. Perhaps I used too much zest, or the Microplane releases t...
When I bought this issue from the newsstand, it was the article on Mrs. London’s Bakery and Café in New York State that caught my eye, especially the photos of the lemon meringue pie and chocolate babka. Ever since this article, I’ve seen mention of Mrs. London in the New York...
This recipe is CI’s take on the celebrated no-knead bread. They tweak it by adding vinegar and lager to the dough, and doing 15 seconds of kneading before shaping. In the morning, I made the dough following the whole wheat variation. It felt like a regular dough, not one with ...
This cake was my contribution to Saturday’s Passover seder at S’s parents in West Palm Beach, Florida. We stayed in a neighbour’s apartment, and I brought my mixer and springform pan in my luggage just in case. It’s a little slow working in someone else’s kitchen, trying to fi...
Due to my hectic schedule, I made these over several days. Yesterday morning, I tempered a batch of milk and dark chocolate, then used the former to stipple the molds, and the latter for coating. I did this sequentially which turned out to be a mistake: Greweling specifically ...
Pear sounded like an interesting flavour, plus I wanted to use my new bottle of pear liqueur. To make the reduced pear puree, I took a tin of canned pears, liquified it with a hand blender, then gently simmered the mixture over low heat until the weight was halved. The glucose...
I bought some new ganache cutters from chocolat-chocolat.com recently and thought they would be cool to use with this recipe, which originally called for making squares. There are several steps to making this. First, you make a small amount of caramel to which you stir in sesa...
I got this book a few months ago and was impressed by all of the scientific explanations of chocolate and candy making. There’s very detailed step-by-step instructions about tempering, molding and dipping chocolates, as well as how to make things like candy canes, sponge toffe...
I turned this into a gluten-free recipe in my continuing quest to use up the GF flours I have in my fridge. Instead of melted butter (because I was lazy), I used oil in the batter but did grease the waffle iron with butter. Also, I just mixed some sweetened blueberry puree wit...
I searched for recipes that would use up a carton of leftover buttermilk and found this tasty cake. Extra-large eggs are never in my fridge; I just used 5 large ones. Four organic navel oranges yielded a fragrant amount of zest. I chopped up leftover milk chocolate from my Chr...
Due to some timing constraints, I wasn’t able to bake this cake immediately. The batter sat in the fridge for over 12 hours. I’m happy to report that it turned out fine, but I think I overbaked it. It was a little too brown on the bottom, and a little dry. However, it’s loaded...
When I saw this recipe last month, I knew I had to try it: bacon in a cake! One cup of bacon was about 8 slices for me (note that the version that appears in the NY Times only calls for three. Pfft, wimps). Do grease and flour the pan, even if it is non-stick, as I didn’t and ...
I needed to make a quick dessert for S’s dinner party as she had suggested pie, but there wasn’t enough time to make a crust (I know, what kind of a pastry chef am I if I don’t have ready-to-use pie dough in my freezer?). This recipe popped up on Google so I gave it a shot. An...
I made the pate fermentee around 11:00 on Tuesday, letting it ferment in the fridge until the evening at which point I incorporated it into the final dough. Instead of watching the dough, I watched the clock, so I let the dough rise for a full two hours at which point it had m...
To use up some yogurt I had, I tried making this simple banana bread recipe. Some interesting things about the recipe: honey is one of the sweeteners, and it also calls for baby bananas. The red ones I bought never ripened (!) so I just used regular bananas. While the cake is ...
I made a half recipe of the cornbread (one 9×5” loaf) earlier in the evening, letting it cool for a bit, then slicing it in large pieces to cool even further. I also made a half recipe of the custard, which is sweetened mostly with maple syrup and flavoured with vanilla and or...
Like every good CI recipe, this one had plenty of explanation for each of the steps so it’s easy to follow. I used a mix of pimento-stuffed Manzanilla and oil-cured black olives. The only part I was uncertain about was after dividing, and rounding up the dough, whether to pat ...
I made a few changes to the flours, using regular whole wheat instead of soft, and replacing a bit of the AP with kamut flour. One and a half cups of puree is less than one whole can; I was tempted to use all of it, but figured it might make the muffins too dense or gummy. The...
This is basically a carrot cake with mashed, boiled sweet potatoes replacing carrots. The layers were an inch thick each, making the whole cake over 4 inches high! I ran out of sugar (!!!) so had to make some substitutes for the frosting. Caramelizing turbinado sugar wasn’t to...
I was hungry for waffles and had a whole carton of buttermilk so this recipe fit the bill. It’s got toasted wheat germ in it, but the other ingredients are typical for a waffle. I used my gluten-free flour mix in place of the all-purpose, but I think the wheat germ might preve...
I haven’t had a good almond cookie in a really long time, and I thought it would be fitting to make some for Chinese New Year (week). In place of almond flour, I used ground almonds; the dough was refrigerated for the minimum time. With a small scoop, I was able to get 6 dozen...
I’m incorporating more raisins into my baking while Dr. S is away so here’s the first experiment. I followed the recipe as written, using candied ginger puree from The Ginger People. Being short on time, I only chilled the dough for about 30 minutes. When the first tray of coo...
The recipe on Epicurious is copied verbatim from the book, but the recipe on marthastewart.com is slightly altered to fix typos in the yield, plus there’s a video of her and Pichet making this recipe. Tangerines are traditional fruit given out during Chinese New Year (hey, why...
First of all, these turned out nothing like the pineapple buns you buy from any Chinese bakery in the GTA. I had my doubts about the recipe to begin with as there was so little proofing time for the buns, no glaze was mentioned for the topping, etc. The crust uses a bit of amm...
We made a batch of these on the weekend which were pretty tasty, but I wanted to try again with some modifications (also, I didn’t get a picture). Many substitutes: ground quick-cooking oats instead of oat flour, gluten-free flour instead of all-purpose (incorporating even mor...
I wanted to make some kind of chocolate cookie for Dr. S but didn’t have time to make one of her favourites, the chocolate sparkle ones, and decided to try this one. There’s a full pound of melted chocolate in here; I used all 72% rather than half-64% and half-84%. My scoop wa...
My only change to the recipe was using cultured butter rather than regular. This may have caused the cookies to puff up rather than spread out. As I turned the pan in the oven, I gave it a sharp rap which helped to deflate the cookies somewhat. I also needed about 5 extra minu...
I let the slurry sit for a long time so it was quite active and bubbly by the time I started to mix the dough together. The mixer kneaded the dough to a smooth ball quite easily as the dough is soft and elastic. The Empire apples I used were very small, so I ended up using 8 o...
The use of Bird’s custard powder caught my eye in this recipe; I had not used it since I made the sago pudding last year. I also had a large quantity of Philadelphia cream cheese so I was all set to try out a recipe from this newly purchased cookbook. Several notes about the r...
I wanted to make a fancy coffee-chocolate dessert for a dinner party and didn’t have any luck finding Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé in several bookstores. In the end, I decided on the classic Opera Cake using the detailed recipe here.The cake layers are based on a recipe ...
These were easy enough to make on a weekday morning. Start to finish: about 2 hours. This isn’t a traditional madeleine recipe as it uses baking powder and doesn’t require chilling of the batter. The citrus flavour comes from simmered, pureed blood orange (the entire fruit: ze...
It may be useful to compare this recipe to the version originally featured in the New York Times in November 2004. Instead of steaming the squash, I cut it into chunks, placed it in baking dishes with a little water, covered them in foil, and baked them in a hot oven for about...
This was a multi-day project that began on Sunday afternoon when I made the initial dough. It seemed quite stiff and I thought about stopping the mixer well before the 4 minute mark but let it go as this was my first time making the recipe. After a 3-hour rest, I did the lamin...
I was looking for a way to use up the rest of the buttercream, when I saw this recipe from the current issue of CI. The spice mixture is bloomed in browned butter which is supposed to bring out their flavours; I ran out of cinnamon (!) so I ground up a piece of cinnamon bark a...
I was at a party where a celebrated macaron maker and I were commenting about Sherry Yard’s delicious gingerbread macaron recipe from last Christmas. Since I don’t like to repeat baking projects, I decided to make a chai variation after seeing a chai cupcake recipe in a magazi...
