My son has been asking about apple ice cream for some reason, and this past weekend, I decided to make a batch. Unfortunately, we forgot to serve it at our extended family dinner, but that just meant more for me and the kids!
For our annual Hanukkah party, I always look for desserts made with olive oil. With a dessert menu that already included an apple cake, banana bread, and hot churros, Dr. S suggested something chocolatey. Flipping through a recent cookbook purchase led me to a cake that checke...
I’ve never eaten at Prune before, but my wife had brunch there last year, and brought me back a copy of the restaurant’s cookbook. It’s unusual in a few ways: it’s designed to look like a collection of hand-written sheets you might find in a kitchen, complete with splatters, ...
Cider is the grown-up version of apple juice. I like it in its pure, unadulterated, cold-pressed form, or in its boozy, hard rendition. So when I came across this Cook’s Illustrated cake calling for one quart of cider, I was intrigued. How was this much liquid going to get in...
As smoothie bowls have entered into our regular breakfast rotation, Dr. S and I need a regular supply of granola as one of the toppings. We’ve been pretty happy with the various granolas that have come out of our kitchen, but I’m always looking for new ideas. I found Tara O’B...
There’s a lot more orange-fleshed squash than pumpkin out there. This page lists a bunch of them. With hunks of leftover butternut and Kabocha squash in the fridge, I made this breakfast cake to rave reviews.
After our annual apple picking trip, I had a fridge downstairs full of Golden Delicious and Cortland apples. We were in the mood for muffins, and were pleased to discover that this recipe made a pretty decent breakfast treat.
Living so close to several Middle-Eastern groceries like Marché Adonis and Arz Fine Foods, and even closer to the restaurants of Greektown, it’s pretty easy to get baklava. But, my ideal baklava isn’t so easily store-bought: fresh, crispy, not too syrupy, and bulging with nuts...
This past week, I bought a 3L container of peaches from T&T which were unexpectedly good (I associate this Asian grocer with produce variety, more often than produce quality). My family really wanted a pie, but I kept procrastinating until finally I had to bake something. ...
Browsing through my Twitter food list, the first post to pop up was a crispy granola recipe. That was enough to catch my eye, but opening the article hooked me even further: soaking the rolled oats in buttermilk!
We store nuts in our basement fridge, as our copious Costco-sized supply would fill up an entire shelf in the kitchen. In addition to the featured nut in today’s cake, we have walnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, almonds, pine nuts, pistachios, cashews, and peanuts. Taking a break...
I knew that the Chinese term for figs is 無花果, but I didn’t know what it meant until I looked it up on Wiktionary. It literally translates to “fruit that doesn’t flower”. Apparently, fig trees don’t have blossoms like other fruit trees, and the fruit itself is an “inverted fl...
The next marker of summer for me, fruit-wise, is stone fruit: cherries, peaches, plums, apricots, etc. This year hasn’t been so great, in my humble opinion. The cherries have been a bit soft, the apricots have been typically mediocre, and many of the peaches I’ve eaten have be...
I’ve made treats and shared them with colleagues for as long as I’ve been working. There doesn’t always need to be an occasion, but it’s a motivating factor. For our quarterly Hack Days, I decided to make some cookies to snack on while hacking.
It’s not truly summer for me until the season’s first local strawberries are in the markets. This past weekend, we picked up a flat (that’s six quarts) of berries at a great price, and have already made a batch of our favourite strawberry ice cream. For a backyard barbeque w...
For my daughter’s birthday, she asked me to make her a rainbow cake. This gave me pause because most of the rainbow cakes you see on Pinterest are made with artificial food coloring, but I try to avoid that whenever possible. The natural colorings made from fruit or vegetable ...
When this bread first appeared in the Saturday Globe, I wanted to make it. Immediately. A savoury babka with bacon, cheese, scallions, sesame, and kimchi! But my dream of instant gratification needed to be put on hold, as I lacked a Pullman pan.
Around this time of year, I scan Twitter and other baking sites for desserts that don’t use any flour, as potential candidates for Passover desserts. Depending on your family beliefs, adherence to kashrut, and other “reasons”, some ingredients, such as cornstarch, may not be ...
Once in a while, I get a craving for a Chinese dessert soup. And during the recent lunar new year, it was as good an occasion as any to make one of my favourites. Despite years of encouragement and convincing, no one else in my immediate family has acquired a taste for a sweet...
I didn’t grow up eating hamantaschen, and have never really acquired a taste for it. Sometimes they’re buttery, sometimes they’re made with vegetable shortening, sometimes with cream cheese. The fillings range from Nutella (kid pleaser), to apricot (traditional) to poppy s...
I luurv citrus flavours, and probably my favourite muffin of all time is this orange one, which uses an entire raw orange, ground up in a food processor. I’ve also made Passover cakes that employed whole citrus that have been boiled first to get rid of some of the pith’s bitte...
What makes something a breakfast food, or a snack food only, or suitable for dinner, but not for lunch? Cultural norms? Family tradition? Advertising? Nutrition? On Sunday, some of those questions went through my head while eating these chocolate “waffles”.
A tahini frosting was not something I’d ever made nor eaten before, so this recipe was top of mind this week when I came across it. Even though this cake incorporates some of my favourite ingredients (bananas, dates), overall it was a letdown, and was not enjoyed by my testers...
For a school “parent party” we went to on Saturday night, we volunteered to make a dessert. I had several potential candidates in mind the night before, and settled on one of the most time-consuming recipes on Saturday morning. It was well worth the effort though, as this cake...
Near my office is a small “plant-based” restaurant that has a very delicious breakfast called a blue smoothie bowl. It’s topped with fresh fruit, seeds, and granola. While trying to recreate it at home, I came across this granola that I hadn’t made before.