For a Shabbat dinner dessert, my original idea was to make a trio of panna cotta flavours, something like chestnut, maple and vanilla. But that was too ambitious for a weeknight project, so I ended up making this maple-yogurt one instead. The use of yogurt tempers the richness...
For my parents’ big birthday bash, my Dad requested a chestnut cake. Now, I briefly considered ordering one from the T&T bakery, but after a recent disappointment with their so-called “chocolate” slab cake, I decided to look for other recipes. The one I made a few years ag...
For a birthday party bash we threw for my parents, my Mom requested a carrot cake. Yard’s version is in the financier section of her cookbook, so it uses browned butter to give the cake base a deeper flavour. Ground almonds are also an unusual ingredient for carrot cake. I add...
After six weeks, our kitchen has been renovated and restored to working order. Here’s a very detailed tour that might be helpful to anyone who’s contemplating a similar project in the GTA.We started this whole process in the summer by talking to friends who had renovations don...
For Hanukkah this year, we didn’t host our own party like last year, but we were invited to two others. At the first one, a party for kids, Dr. S was in charge of crafts and I was in charge of deep-frying the churros! I used the same recipe and made a double batch, using scrap...
I made this for Rosh Hashanah this year, working in my brother-in-law’s kitchen in Montreal. This is a very rich bread, full of butter and honey. In fact, there’s even a honey butter glaze that’s applied both before and after baking. Of course, it was received extremely well. ...
With the last bowl of peaches bought from our trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake, I whipped up this peach cobbler. It was very easy to come together, the longest part being the peeling of all the peaches. Due to scheduling difficulties, I let the fruit macerate for a whole day in the...
We bought a lot of pears and peaches on our trip to the Jordan/Vineland area recently. One of Dr. S’ friends raved about a book about canning small quantities so we checked it out at Indigo and bought it on the spot. A lot of the recipes do indeed make small batches, like 2 cu...
After attending an alumni luncheon at Inn On The Twenty in Jordan, we drove west along King Street through Vineland and Beamsville. We stopped at a few wineries, including Daniel Lenko Estate Winery where we tasted vintages in the Lenko home kitchen. Somewhere east of the Lenk...
There was a recent NY Times article about egg-less “Philadelphia-style” ice creams. This is something I’ve made before, but I wanted to try their recipe. Unfortunately, it was not successful in my opinion, despite the reviews of my tasters. I found the vanilla to be overwhelmi...
My mom gave this book to us as a gift this year, and this is the first item I tried. This recipe, attributed to Tracey Barrett (the daughter-in-law of the author), featured pineapple, nuts and raisins, all things that I like in a carrot cake. To please Dr. S, I made the recomm...
This variation on the Old Fashioned 100% Whole Wheat Bread recipe sounded quite interesting to me. I used fresh buttermilk combined with regular milk, in place of dried powder mixed with water. In place of some of the whole wheat flour, I threw in a bit of buckwheat flour, a l...
Not only are we growing our own zucchini, but our CSA is providing us with a few each week as well. So, along with everyone else who grows zucchini this time of year, I went looking for bread recipes. I liked this one from Fine Cooking and tried making a double batch of it, wi...
We went raspberry picking on Sunday at Hutchinson Farm in Burlington. It’s late in the season, but we still managed to harvest enough to eat out of hand and make a batch of jam. In the evening, I followed Harold McGee’s advice for prolonging the life of berries and gave them a...
We’ve been disappointed with much of the local cherries we’ve purchased from green grocers this year. The clear plastic tubs contain watery, flavourless dark cherries that are a far cry from a decent, firm-fleshed specimen. After I saw this recipe on Tartelette, I thought it w...
Continuing with ways to use up some not so nice cherries, I found this recipe and was intrigued by the idea of putting chopped up fruit in a brownie. My preference is for a style of brownie that is somewhere in the middle on the fudgey-cakey spectrum. I made a double batch of ...
Dr. S’ cousin has a cherry tree in their backyard. Around this time of year, they get a big harvest, too big for them to consume by themselves. So on a Saturday afternoon last week, while we were visiting, we harvested a big shopping bag full of small Rainier cherries. These w...
With some leftover pink-tinted white chocolate I still had left, I thought using it in the filling of this recipe would be perfect. The filling included strawberry jam, white chocolate and butter. At the last second, I forgot to put in the balsamic vinegar called for in the or...
When this issue first arrived in my mailbox, I remember thinking how crazy it sounded to buy a box of All-Bran cereal to make bran muffins. Isn’t natural bran available everywhere? Or is it that I know where to look and can purchase it easily? Anyway, I finally decided to try ...
As part of a Mother’s Day BBQ we hosted, I wanted to make a dessert that I knew would be familiar to my Mom and that we all enjoyed. This yogurt cheesecake has been in our family since I was a kid, back when we used to make homemade yogurt. That machine is now long gone, but w...
I was excited by all of the things that went into this 100% whole wheat loaf: flaxseeds, raisins (ground up), oat bran, sunflower seeds (I used pumpkin) and sesame seeds. This is definitely not a bread for the amateur: there are four separate components that are made over thre...
I’m always on the lookout for interesting ideas, and two things in this recipe caught my eye: raisin water and ground pecans. I used a stand mixer to knead the dough, and added the soaked raisins and nuts by hand, rolling it up like a jelly roll, then tucked the two ends under...
With the last chunks of milk chocolate I had leftover from the big, chocolate making project, I decided to make this dessert ahead of time for a dinner party on Friday. The original uses walnuts, but a sidenote says it works really well with salted peanuts too. On Sunday, I wo...
My new workplace is pretty small, around 30 people. I thought that a nice inaugural treat would be to make these cupcakes from Cook’s Illustrated. While inserting a blob of ganache in the centre is a pretty neat idea, I thought it would be overkill if I also made different fro...
For the second night of Passover, I ended up making a chocolate orange cake, a little different than the one I made two years ago. This recipe uses oranges that have been boiled until soft, and the entire softened fruit is whizzed in the food processor along with all the other...
In the days leading up to Passover, I looked through many different books to find new ideas for desserts. Most Pesach sweets are either meringue-based or cakes made with ground nuts. The recipe I ended up using incorporated the puree of cooked apples to keep the cake moist. La...
A friend who loves milk chocolate was celebrating her birthday, and I had a lot of milk chocolate, so it was natural to look for a cookie recipe that used this kind of chocolate. I decided to incorporate a peanut butter filling into the cookie, as it is a natural companion to ...
These waffles feature the inclusion of ricotta cheese which adds some protein (and fat), and also separate beating of yolks and whites. The addition of cornmeal adds a little crunch, but the crispiness comes from the whipped egg whites. And are these waffles ever crisp and lig...
After spending 9+ years at one company, I recently decided to switch jobs. As a final treat to my coworkers, I decided to make a fancy-ish cake. This one from Malgieri’s cake book combined a lot of my favourite flavours and didn’t seem difficult to make, especially since I was...
Looking back at this blog, I’ve made five different blueberry muffins before, and I already have two favourite recipes. This week, I made one batch of one kind and another of this recipe from BakeWise. It’s from the section where she goes on about how whipped cream makes every...
I bought this book before Valentine’s Day as I was drawn in by the incredibly creative designs and decorations that are featured on every other page. Of course, being a Martha Stewart book, this is to be expected. For a dinner with my parents this week, I settled on making the...
What started out as a Valentine’s idea turned into a much bigger project in the end. This chocolate was one of three that I made for Dr. S, and we ended up serving them at a games night we hosted on Saturday.To make the shells, I tempered white chocolate and added quite a bit ...
I like two-layer pieces, for both the visual and textural contrast. Unfortunately, they are a lot more work, as two fillings have to be made and you often have to wait for the first one to set. In this case, the recipe is actually quite simple. I used a magnetic mold lined wit...
This bread came about, because of, what else? Leftover sweet potatoes! Since I’m writing this almost a month later, a lot of the details are fuzzy. It’s a lengthy recipe involving a sponge, followed by two rises, then a final proofing after shaping. I remember not enjoying the...
A recent trip to Whole Foods scored us a big bag of beautiful Meyer lemons. What better way to use them than to make lemon tarts, one of my favourite desserts? I prepped the dough for the tart shells the night before, and this morning, I started with the garnish: Meyer lemon c...
I rarely make brownies (the last time was more than two and a half years ago), and I’ve never made them from a box before, so this new recipe from CI intrigued me. It promised a shiny top and a chewy texture obtained through a careful balancing of saturated vs. unsaturated fat...
For a recent dinner party, I thought that a loaf of fresh bread might be a nice change for the usual crackers that we serve with cheese. I recalled a CI recipe for ciabatta from a while back, and decided to try their method. As with most full-flavoured breads, this one starts ...
With all the leftover egg whites from making citrus curd, I thought it might be time to make macarons again. From looking at my own blog, it’s been over a year since I last made them, so I had to look over my notes and refresh my memory. I started with Clement’s basic recipe, ...
There’s a section in the back of this book that combines various components to make a fancier, plated dessert. Since I still had some grapefruit left over, I thought that the pound cake with grapefruit curd would be a great dessert to make this week. While the recipe says to h...
A very simple sorbet with just three ingredients. Lebovitz’ original recipe calls for Champagne, but I used a Jackson-Triggs sparkling wine. The flavour of this sorbet obviously depends on the quality of your grapefruits. I found the wine flavour to be a little too strong, and...
I read recently that a signature Reinhart recipe technique is soaking grains, and sure enough, this cornmeal-based bread requires an overnight soak of the coarse cornmeal. I’ve made it before many years ago, and remember that it makes excellent toast. The large quantity of mol...
On our way back from Florida, we bought a travel pack (25 lbs or so) of citrus from the Cushman’s store in West Palm Beach. We took home Honeybell’s (a tangerine-grapefruit cross also known as Minneola), red navel oranges, tangerines and pink grapefruit. There is no problem br...
