Do You Know The Muffin Man?

Sweet and Sour Plum Sauce

2026-08-20T17:24:05-04:00

Regular readers will know that we have two plum trees in our front yard. This was the first year in recent memory that we got a great harvest from the smaller, Japanese-type plum tree. With such a great haul, we needed to use them up quickly.

What we ended up doing was making plum sauce! My favourite dip with fried foods, like spring rolls, tempura shrimp, chicken fingers, etc. is a papaya mustard from a Jean-Georges Vongerichten cookbook. But I also have a fun preserving book called Batch which featured this savory sauce.

Starting with a puree of pitted plums (skins on!), you add in lots of assertive ingredients: cider vinegar, honey, rum, soy, garlic, ginger. Then dashes of spices like cinnamon, cayenne and cloves.

It’s interesting how two cooks can “follow” the same recipe and end up with two different tasting end results: Dr. S’ version was more tart as she used cider vinegar as written. In my batch, I skipped the vinegar (I worried that the plums were too tart already) but mine used an older knob of ginger, so its flavour came out more.

Golden Challah

2026-07-31T16:41:39-04:00

It’s been a tough month, but I did find some time to make a challah for a meal we were hosting this Friday night. The addition of turmeric is what is supposed to make it golden, but this bread was a letdown.

The recipe is by Adeena Sussman, a food writer and author who wrote a cookbook we like, Sababa. I was very intrigued by the addition of this vibrant spice, but it didn’t really make much of a difference that I could see, which was disappointing. It certainly didn’t taste of turmeric, though, but that is actually a good thing.

This is a perfectly fine challah, but I guess I was expecting some kind of alchemy from turmeric. To get a nice golden loaf consistently, I’ve found using really orange egg yolks to be reliable.

Rhubarb Ice Cream

2026-06-26T11:34:19-04:00

We’ve been getting weekly deliveries of rhubarb in our weekly produce box. The usual baked crisps we make with strawberries have been a hit, and I even tried making a syrup to mix into sparkling water. But this ice cream really stood out.

After a particular delicious cup of rhubarb gelato from SOMA chocolatemaker down the street from my office, I kept thinking about how to recreate it. I found this recipe Extracting the rhubarb flavour is done by making a compote with a bit of sugar, cooking it gently until it breaks down, releasing all of its juices and colour. Pureeing it breaks down all of the stringy fibres.

The custard is straightforward, with a 2:1 ratio of cream to milk, and two yolks plus an egg. I skipped the vanilla. Also, I deferred the straining of the egg and dairy mixture until after I combined it with the compote.

Some rhubarbs are quite intense in colour, but mine was not. Just before churning, I added a few tablespoons of leftover, pulverized, freeze-dried strawberries. This boosted the pink colour without adding too much of its flavour.

What a wonderful ice cream this is, sweet and tangy at the same time with a unique tartness that is quite different than lemon. I love the egg-less Philadelphia variations, but the richness of a classic custard-base ice cream can’t be beat.

Mango Pudding

2026-06-09T20:29:06-04:00

Our last few mangoes from Iqbal Foods were past their prime, so I had to act fast. I combined the mushy insides from the remaining fruit with an unsweetened Kesar puree that I found at the supermarket. With a few other ingredients stirred in, I was able to make a classic Hong Kong dim sum dessert.

The recipe I landed on is not very complicated. Some call for both evaporated milk and condensed milk, coconut milk, mango puree, juice, whew! This one is pretty straightforward with just cream and milk providing the richness.

After topping each cup with a few pieces of fresh fruit, I let these chill and firm up. Scooping the first spoonful revealed that this pudding was set too firmly. The gelatin I used was just the standard Knox one from the supermarket. I definitely prefer a looser consistency and would use a bit less gelatin next time. But the fragrance of the mangoes came through.

If you go to the Asian grocery, you’ll often find a ready-to-make mango pudding via a box of Robertson jelly powder. But, with just a tiny bit more effort, you’ll have a far more delicious result making it from scratch.

Strawberry Rhubarb White Chocolate Truffles

2026-06-03T07:02:34-04:00

A big birthday bash for a milestone anniversary: my wife and her BFF were planning a joint party earlier this year. I happened to read this article about a dinner party concept where guests don’t initially introduce themselves, but just collaborate to make a meal. That sparked the idea to have an epic cooking gathering at our house.

“The Influencers Dinner” is something that behavioural scientist Jon Levy has been talking about since 2018, and he’s even written a book about it. Dr. S used that idea to produce a DIY cooking event for 30 people working on a dozen menu items. In the weeks leading up to it, I helped to make custom aprons with heat-transfer vinyl.

Since I had frozen leftover salted caramel from Little G’s bat mitzvah chocolates, I decided to make truffles for the party, to be given away as a surprise at the end. Given that we get rhubarb every week from our farm subscription, I was delighted to find this recipe as it would make for a perfect contrast for the boxes.

I chopped the rhubarb finely (don’t want any stringy bits in the ganache!) and cooked it down with the strawberries and sugar. I overreduced it, finishing with less than 12 oz of puree by volume. After stirring it into the cream and white chocolate mixture, it never really got very firm even after a few hours in the fridge.

My daughter scooped small portions, shaped them into rough balls, then rolled them in freeze-dried strawberries pulverized with icing sugar. We kept these in the fridge for a week, before putting them into boxes. The texture of these weren’t to my liking: slightly “chewy” and not firm enough. But we enjoyed the tanginess and pink hue though.

Nekisia’s Olive Oil & Maple Granola

2026-05-03T22:50:57-04:00

A conversation at The Good Egg, a wonderful cookbook store in Kensington Market in Toronto, led me to learn that Samin Nosrat’s first book, Salt Fat Acid Heat has a granola recipe. I was in the store picking up some books about candied fruit, unusual cookies, and creative cakes. At the cashier’s desk, the topic of granola somehow came up!

At home, I made the recipe almost exactly. Since I didn’t have enough sunflower seeds, I subbed in some hemp hearts instead.

This granola is pretty good. I do like the generous amount of Maldon salt in it. But my go-to these days is still the tahini one.

Flourless Layer Cake With Chocolate and Raspberries

2026-04-02T22:39:06-04:00

For this year’s Passover meals, we were in Montreal, and I made two different desserts ahead of time while in Toronto. One was an old favourite based on a Claudia Roden recipe involving boiling a whole orange. But this time, I used a mix of navel orange, clementine, and frozen yuzu peel. For night two, I tried something new.

The recipe for this layer cake is from the New York Times. It doesn’t have flour or dairy, so satisfies many diets and this particular holiday.

The baked and cooled cake layers were very delicate and hard to remove from the parchment, as warned in the directions. I had to cut them to fit the large box that I purchased.

Making the filling was interesting: after melting chocolate in a sugar syrup, you whisk the saucepan over ice until it thickens somewhat. Mine didn’t firm to a pudding consistency and was still pourable. But I carefully spread it to the edges of the layers.

My favourite part were the sweet-tart raspberries. I tore them up and tried to press them flat inside the cake. I had my daughter place the remaining berries on the top.

Quite a bit more work than an orange-almond cake, but I think it was worth it. It’s very chocolatey, but not cloying, due to the bright raspberries.

Quick Condensed Milk

2026-03-23T16:34:20-04:00

Sometimes, we end up with too much milk that has to be used. What to do? Well, we’ve enjoyed making our own condensed milk, especially a variation that my daughter loves for making a quick, hot drink.

The recipe is from Stella Parks’ BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts. Her “trick” is to incorporate some heavy cream into the mixture, to help prevent scorching. The milk-cream-sugar mixture needs to boil for a while, until it reduces down to the right amount.

After making this a few times, we’ve learned that we should bring it to a simmer using the 10 setting on our stove, then letting it go between 9 and 10 to reduce in the 20 minutes she calls for. (It always takes us longer though.) Fortunately, Stella’s recipes have precise instructions, so we just keep weighing the pot to know when to stop.

We love making the chai variation by adding whole spices to the mix, then straining them out afterward. I bash them up a bit in a mortar and pestle to extract maximum flavour. My daughter loves mixing up a tablespoon with some hot, decaf tea for an instant masala chai!

I made this two years ago, as part of making the Magic Key Lime Pie but never wrote about it separately.

Triple Citrus Bars

2026-03-18T08:49:07-04:00

For a bake sale at my daughter’s school, I went with one tried-and-true item, marbled tahini cookies, and also made something new, a more sophisticated variation on Key lime bars.

The recipe is from Cook’s Illustrated, apparently from July 2006! The attribution isn’t listed on the America’s Test Kitchen website, though, which is where I found it. Anyhow, as many other bloggers have admitted, I made the crust with graham cracker crumbs, omitting the sugar.

Juicing all the fruit, and grating the zest, was very satisfying: all of the bright colours and the heady fragrance was extremely enticing. Do remember to wash your fruit thoroughly to remove the exterior wax and to use fresh fruit. I find that old citrus is much harder to zest.

The filling was a snap to make, just stirring things together carefully to ensure no lumps. One tip: condensed milk is usually sold in 14 oz cans by weight and is what is called for in the (US) recipe. But in Canada, the product is marked as 300mL cans by volume, which translates to 10 oz by volume.

Hot out of the oven, the filling is firm and slightly bubbly at the edges, and may be still a little jiggly. But after cooling, and refrigeration, they come out pretty firm. I added the toasted coconut garnish, but that’s totally optional.

I love the citrus and dairy combination, and these squares were so satisfying. The combination of lemon, lime, and orange elevated them beyond the typical bars, and using a graham crust kept the familiar taste. Would make again (and I did, a week later, as they sold out at the fundraiser!)

Yuzu Cheesecake with Black Sesame Crust

2026-03-13T17:22:09-04:00

I came across this stunning dessert on the America’s Test Kitchen website, and it was definitely calling to me. After a shopping trip at Sanko, I was all set to go.

The recipe has three components: a crust, the filling, and a curd. Instead of graham or animal crackers, this one uses a blend of ground black sesame and AP flour. Since I love the graham crust of traditional cheesecakes, I subbed in a bit for the flour. I didn’t make mine thin enough, so it didn’t reach 1½” up the sides.

This cheesecake is relatively tall, so it needs a lot of cream cheese, and eggs. But what makes it unmistakeably yuzu is the ½ cup of pure yuzu juice. This is definitely an indulgent splurge: 200mL was $20 CAD. More of that juice is used in the curd, and the two egg yolks give it an intense, vibrant colour.

We didn’t have enough time to chill it thoroughly before serving it to guests, but wow, was it ever delicious. The nuttiness of the black sesame is immediately apparent, as is the tart, complex flavour of yuzu in the curd. Its fragrance reminds me of black pepper, and it’s got a different flavour than the zest (which I also bought, frozen, from the Japanese goods store). I froze the leftovers as individual slices, and now get to enjoy a piece over the next little while.

Highly recommended!