Je suis alimentageuse

Oat Soda Bread

2012-02-23T02:03:00.002-05:00

I just have too many oats. I'm sick of date squares, I don't like oatmeal, and I'm not a fan of granola. I was searching ways to use up the kilo of rolled oats I have leftover from last summer, and I found a recipe with ingredients I already had. SCORE! It's a super dense bread, but it's soft and chewy, with a beautifully crispy crust. Oh yes.

If any of you have more ideas for using up rolled oats, let me know! I have half a giant bag left, and I'd be willing to explore new, oat-y things. Except for the aforementioned date squares, oatmeal and granola. I've had an on-off relationship with oatmeal. I tried it in high school and it was okay. But then I had it again in university, the texture was just ruined.

Recipe from 101 Cookbooks

Ingredients:

7 oz rolled oats (2 cups)
2 1/4 cups flour
1 3/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 tsp sea salt
1 3/4 cups buttermilk
1 tsp poppy seeds
1 tbsp rolled oats for sprinkling

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400F

Blitz rolled oats in a food processor until fine. Mix with flour, baking soda, and salt together.
Make a well for the buttermilk and slowly incorporate until you get a solid dough. Gently knead to get the dough to gather together. Don't over-knead because you don't want it to be tough.
Shape dough and place in a greased and lined loaf pan.
Use a sharp knife to make slits on top for the bread to expand. Use a pastry brush to slather some more buttermilk on top, and sprinkle with whatever seeds you want on top. I used poppy seeds and rolled oats.
Bake for 30 minutes on middle rack, then 20 minutes on the top rack to get the top nice and crusty. Remove from oven and take out of the pan so it doesn't over-bake. Cut and enjoy with pb and honey =) yummmmmmmm.

Purple Velvet Cake Balls

2012-02-16T01:21:00.004-05:00

So this is a last-minute post to get all of you to go to the Mental Health Campaign's Arts and Culture Night at Café Alt today, February 16 from 7 pm - 9 pm. I made these cake balls to sell for Do it for Daron, a description of which I will copy and paste below:

D.I.F.D. is a youth-driven program focused on raising awareness and inspiring conversations about youth mental health. Created by friends and family of Daron Richardson who lost her life to suicide at the young age of 14, D.I.F.D. is inspired by hope for a future where young people will reach out for help without fear or shame. D.I.F.D. supports programs and initiatives aimed at transforming youth mental health. The foundation raises funds for youth mental health and is a foundation of The Royal - one of Canada’s foremost mental health care and academic health science centres. For more information on Do It For Daron, please visit http://www.doitfordaron.com/.

I haven't known about this program for very long, but I think it's a great program, especially because I know what it's like to be young, to feel confused and alone. I won't go into details, but like almost every teenager out there, I went through a tough time where I didn't really know who I was, where I belonged, or what I was worth. Good mental health can be achieved through various ways: some people choose to run or play music as a catharsis, and then there are some like me who turn to food, cooking, and baking. (Should there be a semicolon there?)

So go to the Arts and Culture Night tonight to help raise money for a great cause, enjoy some music, and some delicious call balls ;)

These didn't turn out as purple as I thought they would, but it's still pretty purple. I used red velvet cake and replaced the red food colouring with purple, then coloured the cream cheese icing with a bit of food colouring too, to make the purple stronger. I highly recommend wearing gloves to make these cake balls, because food colour seeps into skin (and clothes... =( my white shirt...I really need to get an apron).

Let's get a-baking!

Based on Buddy Valastro's Red Velvet Cake recipe
Ingredients:
Sponge:

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
1/2 tsp purple food colouring (I used the paste)
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cup cake flour (not self-rising)
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
2 tsp distilled white vinegar (I dunno what the difference between distilled and undistilled was, so I just used the stuff my mom had in her cupboard)
1 tsp baking soda

Icing:

1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1 brick (250 g I think) cream cheese
1 1/4 cup icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp purple food colouring

Chocolate coating:

about a kilo of baking chocolate wafers (choose whichever colour you like. I couldn't find purple so I added purple dye to the white wafers)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F

To bake the cake, cream the butter and sugar until smooth.
Add eggs, one at a time, mixing to incorporate before adding another.
Add vanilla and food colouring, mix to incorporate.
In a separate bowl, sift together cocoa powder, flour, and salt.
Alternate adding the dry mixture and buttermilk to the butter mixture until completely incorporated.
In a bowl, mix vinegar and baking soda. Once baking soda is dissolved into the vinegar, add to mix and stir to combine.
In a 9x13 inch greased and parchment-paper-lined pan, spread the batter. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.
Let cool for 10 minutes in pan, then remove from pan and let cool completely.
To make the cream cheese icing, cream the butter and cream cheese until smooth.
Add the sifted icing sugar and vanilla and whip until light. Add food colouring and mix.
In a food processor, blitz the cooled cake sponge until you get crumbs of cake. Add that to the icing and mix to combine.
Start rolling the mix to 1-inch balls. Layer them in a dish/bowl, with plastic wrap separating them. Let them firm up in the fridge for about 20-30 minutes.
Melt the chocolate wafers in a heat-proof bowl over a pot of simmering water. Once melted, transfer to a small, shallow bowl.
Drop your cake balls into the chocolate and turn with a fork to coat. Pull out with the fork and let the excess chocolate drip back into the bowl. Scrape the back of the fork against the bowl and transfer the coated cake balls onto a parchment-paper-lined plate. Let cool in the fridge for about 5 minutes (the coating should harden)
Drop some purple chocolate coating in a parchment triangle, and drizzle over your cooled cake balls.
OMITY NOMITY NOM.

These squiggles were a bit messy because I was a bit pressed for time, had I had more time I would have also experimented with the squiggles a lot more ^^;

Homemade Pasta

2012-02-14T22:42:00.001-05:00

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY! Chris and I spent our Valentine's using our new pasta maker (which I probably shouldn't have bought but... I'm okay with it). We didn't want to go out for dinner because it was cliché and expensive, plus we couldn't decide on where to go even if we did go out. So we opted for a little bit of quality time making a delicious dinner together =).

Although this dinner was spent more on making the pasta and cleaning the flour off my pants than actually eating, it was really fun. I just made a regular pasta, but I think I may experiment with cracked pepper or maybe spinach next time. But I'll give you the recipe I used/modified for my own record's sake.

On another note, I have some exciting news! I'll be branding my blog soon, which means a logo, a banner, and business cards soon! A big thank you to Terra, who inadvertently convinced me to actually follow through with the graphic design of it. I've talked to some of my other designing friends before, but none of them seemed interested in my idea as Terra did, so I'll be using her services to make me a shiny new blog! If you want to look at some of the work Terra has done, check out this link! She's also going to teach me the wily ways of purchasing a domain name, so maybe I'll be getting one of those too.

Nifty!

But yes, pasta.

For the record, I have an Imperia pasta maker from La Bottega (Nicastro's) in the Byward Market. It was $12 cheaper than the one I found at Ma Cuisine (also in the Byward Market), and something about the fact that it was from Italy made me feel like it was a good quality one. But perhaps that's a stereotype. But I digress.

Ingredients:

2 cups (12 oz flour)
2 eggs
1/4 cup water (might have been more, it depends on the consistency)
(I think next time I'll add some salt or garlic powder to the mixture too. Maybe some cracked pepper to add a bit of a kick?)

Directions:

In a bowl of flour, make a little well in the middle and crack your eggs in there.
Use a fork to beat the eggs in the well, then gradually incorporate the rest of the flour into the eggs. I found that it was too much flour so I had to add about 1/4-1/2 cup of water.
Mix the mixture together until you get a nice, tacky dough. Let it rest in a bowl, covered in plastic wrap for about 20 minutes. (I think this is to get the gluten in the flour to relax so the dough will be stretchy and smooth.
Take 1/2 cup chunks of dough (put the rest of it back in the bowl covered in plastic wrap) and start pulling it through the pasta maker. Stretch the chunk of dough to an oval-shaped disk and flour lightly. On the thickest setting on the roller, run the dough through the pasta maker 6-8 times, reflouring when needed and folding the dough in half each time. This kneads the dough to get a nice, smooth sheet.

(You can see why you shouldn't wear black pants while baking)
Continue to run through the pasta maker, decreasing in roller size each time until you get a desired thickness. My pasta maker goes from setting 6 (largest) to setting 1 (smallest)—I assume this means mm thickness. I ran my pasta to setting 2 for some spaghetti.
Cut sheets into the length of pasta you want to make. I cut them into about 9-12 inch sheets.
Flour well, then run through whatever sized pasta you want to make. Let dry on a pasta rack (or in my case, on chopsticks held down by a Spanish verb book) until they feel leathery, but not dry.
Cook the noodles in well-salted boiling water for about 2-3 minutes (you'll see it expand). Drain and top with whatever sauce you like! (I used an avocado sauce, which I'll blog at some point later. It's just too delicious for me to stop and take pictures, I apologize =P)

Chris took this picture of me holding the stretched sheet of dough (yes, this was originally about 1/2 cup size of dough). Actually Chris took all of these pictures =P I wasn't planning on doing a post so I didn't take pictures, but I kind of liked these. Scuse my overjoyed face. I was being silly for the camera =P

Cracked Pepper Cheddar Scones

2012-02-12T20:47:00.002-05:00

These scones are a party of spices, cheese, and AMAZING in your mouth. There's a plethora of spices in this: mustard seed, paprika, and fresh, cracked black pepper. Topped with butter and parmesan cheese on top with surprise pockets of cheese inside. Don't forget the flaky, buttery taste. PLUS scones are also a vessel for butter. It's grand. Something about the smooth texture of cold, salty butter is so delicious, it makes me appreciate my metabolism for not letting me be a lardball...yet.

I love the food blog community: I learn so much from so many people. I learned different flavour combos from Lottie + Doof, particularly with ice cream (he did sweet corn and burnt orange. WHAT?!) I learned different ways to use quinoa (my latest food fad for lunch) though sometimes I don't rinse it enough then I get a stomach ache.

Anyway, these scones are so easy to whip up. Mix up the ingredients in 10 minutes, then bake in 15. EASY PEASY. Takes about half an hour from start to in your face.

Recipe from Nicole at Pinch My Salt

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups cake flour
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
1/2 tsp ground mustard (I only had mustard seed so I blitzed that through the Magic Bullet)
1/2 cup cold, unsalted butter, chopped into about 8 or 9 pieces
1/2 cup old cheddar cheese, grated
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
1/2 cup cold buttermilk
1 tsp sriracha sauce
1 egg
2 tbsp melted butter
1/2 smoked paprika (I only had normal paprika and it was still good)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425F

In a bowl, combine cake flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Use your stand mixer, pastry knife, or hands to mix the cold butter into the flour. You want to get it to a flaky, dry mixture.
Add in the black pepper, mustard, cheddar cheese and half the parmesan cheese. Mix until ingredients are evenly distributed in the mixture.
Mix the buttermilk, egg and sriracha sauce in a bowl until combined. Add to flour mixture until all the flour is absorbed into the dough.
Gently gather the dough into one ball. Split in half, and flatten into two, inch-thick disks.
Cut each disk into 6-8 triangles.
Melt the butter and mix with the paprika. Use a pastry brush to coat the tops of the unbaked triangles. Sprinkle the remaining parmesan cheese on top.
Bake for about 15 minutes or until the cheese on top is melted and browned.
Remove from heat and let stand for about 5 minutes.
Split in half and slather in butter.
Stuff your face of this spicy deliciousness. omnomnom.

VESSEL. FOR. BUTTER.

Chocolate Cake

2012-02-08T01:12:00.001-05:00

Yeah! Another cake for my portfolio. Chocolate cake is one of those things that are unbelievably simple, yet are so decadent. I don't like eating chocolate too much, but I love the sheen of melted chocolate, when it runs off the spatula in dark, shinny ribbons... gaw. Chocolate is beautiful. Actually whenever I see those Lindt chocolate commercials I want their fancy spiral whisks to spin around in chocolate.

I searched around for the perfect chocolate cake recipe. There were a bunch that wanted espresso powder or something, which annoyed me. I don't really drink coffee so I don't have any of that. Actually, last summer I bought a coffee maker ($20 or something) so that I would be able to brew my own coffee for whatever baked good needed it, but it turns out, I suck at brewing coffee. It either tastes too strong, or too weak, or I get grossed out by the film of oil that floats on top because of the beans. If I'm gonna drink coffee, I'll just get it from the Bridgehead or Tim's down the street. Way easier and tastier. But back on topic.

I iced this with roses because I REALLLLLY wanted to do a rose cake, but the people I had been making cakes for probably wouldn't have appreciated a rosey cake. This one is for my student association's Dirty Bingo tomorrow night, and the prizes are "dirty" themed/valentine's day themed, so I thought the roses were appropriate. I kind of ran out of icing though, so I could only add roses to the top and then did a border around the bottom. I used a 1M wilton tip for both the roses and the shells around the bottom. (I was too lazy to transfer the icing to another bag).

The recipe I found only asked for boiling water, but I read on other blogs that had chocolate cake that the coffee brought out the flavour of the chocolate, which made sense to me somehow. Now I don't quite understand but I'm over it.

Also, is it just me, or can you -smell- when whatever's in the oven is ready? I've noticed it a bunch lately, whenever I'm baking something, I'll just get a certain whiff and I'll know that I can take it out of the oven even if there's another 2-3 minutes on the timer or something. It happened today with the cake and the other day with the apple upside-down cake... it's really bizarre. But useful I guess, because I never time properly or my timer decides to get stuck in time.

Sponge adapted from Better Homes and Gardens
Chocolate Buttercream by Wilton

Ingredients:

Sponge:

3/4 unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup white granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup boiling water (I used Tim Horton's coffee) (I also just realized that it was only 2/3 cup in the original recipe, but I like how my cake turned out so I'm okay with it)
2/3 cup cocoa powder
2/3 cup buttermilk
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla (what? 2? I think I put in 1. Oh well)

Icing:

1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup cocoa powder (I used 3 oz melted semi-sweet chocolate because I ran out of cocoa powder)
4 cups icing sugar (I think I used 3 1/2 because it started to get too sweet because I was using semi-sweet)
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp milk

Directions:

Grease two round cake pans (I used 8x8) and line with parchment paper. Set aside.
Cream together the sugar and butter until smooth. Beat in egg, one at a time.
Add vanilla.
Dissolve the cocoa powder into the boiling water/hot coffee, and gradually add to the butter/sugar/egg mixture. If it's really hot, try to temper it (trickle it in) so it doesn't cook the egg. It'll look kind of curdled but that's okay. That's just the butter being silly.
In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt. Alternate adding the dry mix and the buttermilk to the egg/butter/sugar/coffee/chocolate concoction.
Mix everything together until incorporated, then divide evenly between the two pans.
Bake for 20-30 minutes until a toothpick comes out of the middle clean.
Let cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then remove and let cool on a wire rack.
Meanwhile, mix up the icing by creaming the shortening and butter. I suggest using an electric beater for this. Adds more volume to the icing.
Gradually add cocoa powder, then the sugar into the butter mixture.
Add the milk to soften the mixture, then add the remaining sugar until it tastes right to you. Store in the fridge until ready to ice.
To frost, trip the tops of the cakes so you have kind of a flat surface. For the bottom layer, put the cut side down, and frost the bottom of the layer (it'll become the middle).
Stack the second layer on top, and crumb coat it (a thin layer of icing to keep in the moisture)
Ice it to your heart's desire!
NOM NOM NOM.

Vegetarian Chili

2012-02-05T15:54:00.000-05:00

For me, chili is one of those things you HAVE to eat some time during the winter. It's fine to eat it during the summer, but I love me some chili after a nice skate on the canal. My style of chili is pretty much taking whatever I have in my fridge and cupboard that I can throw together. I also was afraid that without the texture of the ground beef, chili just wouldn't be the same. But alas, I found a nice hearty substitute that works well for flavour, as well as for texture.

BARLEY!

It fills in the spaces between the veggies the same way ground beef does. I love barley.

I also discovered the benefits of cheese and sour cream on chili. Cheese is just awesome on everything, but sour cream adds that extra dimension of temperature--a nice little contrast to the piping hot chili right out of the pot. I like crackers for a little bit of crunch too, but if you're one of those people that just likes plain ole chili, this batch tastes pretty delicious on its own.

I added some cinnamon because I love cinnamon, but you have to be careful with how much you add, because you want it to compliment the cumin and add that little touch of warmth, not make your chili taste like a tomato-ey cinnamon roll. I also don't like cumin a whole lot, but I recognize its part in this chili and I counteract it's distinctive flavour with the cinnamon.

I'll be making this at a cooking class hosted by the Food Bank at the University of Ottawa. Come out to the 90u lounge/kitchen on February 8 at 5:30-7:30 to learn how to make some chili and eat with 20 other people =) For more details, click here and email studentcookingclass@gmail.com to register! (It's free)

Ingredients:

3 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 can black beans
1 can red kidney beans
1/2 cup pearl barley
4-5 cremini and white mushrooms, washed and quartered
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 jalapeno pepper, minced (keep the seeds if you like a little spice)
1/2 tsp cumin
1/5 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp crushed chili flakes
1 tsp salt (this may depend on how you like the taste. I suggest tasting your chili before adding the appropriate amount of salt)
1 tsp pepper
To garnish:

Sour cream
Old cheddar cheese, shredded
Cilantro, chopped
Soda crackers, crushed

Other vegetables that taste great when substituted in this chili:

Zucchini
Carrots
Sweet potato (cubed)
Butternut squash (cubed)
Parsley (chopped)

Directions:

In a large pot over medium heat, cook onion, garlic and olive oil until onions are transparent and garlic is fragrant.
Add mushrooms and cook until softened.
Pour can of diced tomatoes into the pot and let simmer. Rinse and drain beans and add to pot.
Add red, green and jalapeño peppers and pearl barley, stir to incorporate.
In a separate bowl, mix together the spices: cumin, cinnamon, garlic powder, onion powder, flour, chili powder, chili flakes and pepper. Add to the pot and stir. Let cook for 3-5 minutes and give it a taste. Add salt to taste.
Lower the heat to 2 or 3 and let chili simmer for 30-45 minutes. You'll see all the vegetables cook and meld together and become some sort of uniform stew. The barley will need about 30 minutes to fill absorb the liquid. Stir occasionally to keep any of the ingredients from burning at the bottom.
Spoon out and enjoy! Chili gets better the next day because all the spices settle into everything. It makes things much more delicious.

Caramel Apple Upside-Down Cake

2012-02-05T00:07:00.002-05:00

So to move away from things with excessive amounts of icing, I decided to go towards a more classic cake. This adventure was brought on by the amount of apples in my fridge (thanks Greg!) and my inability to eat them raw because I'm allergic. Who can be allergic to apples you say? Well, me. As well as peaches, apricots, pears, cherries, kiwis, and blackberries. Though if these are preserved or cooked in any way, I can eat them, which I attest to some sort of chemical change. I must be allergic to some enzyme that goes away with heat.

I kind of took two recipes and mashed them together, I took the caramel from Canadian Living, and the cake recipe (and instructions) from David Lebovitz. I used the caramel from CL mostly because I tried making it à la Lebovitz, but for some reason, once it started to "bubble" as the instructions said, it promptly burnt as I took it off the stove. Burnt caramel has this sharp, carbon-y, black and sooty smell, which I'm not a fan of. Also for some reason, the butter I had originally melted with it kind of separated and it was just a weird consistency all over. I tried the CL caramel and it was more familiar to me (see: caramels).

Weirdly enough, I didn't use a candy thermometre for this. I just judged by colour and from past experience with botched caramel.

But this cake is -phenomenal-. Like seriously. The apples are perfectly caramelized, the cake is so moist it's unreal, and the edges of the cake have this perfect little crisp from the caramel bubbling over the edges in the pan. I highly recommend it.

Adapted from David Lebovitz and Canadian Living

Ingredients:

Bottom layer (Caramelized apples)

2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup unsalted butter
2 granny smith apples, peeled, cored, and sliced

Sponge

115 g unsalted butter (around 1/2 cup)
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk

Directions:

In a nice sturdy pot over medium heat, dissolve the sugar and water together. DO NOT STIR. If you do, it'll crystallize and you'll get chunks of hard gross sugar in your beautiful caramel. Let it bubble until it turns into a nicely browned caramel.
Take the caramel off the heat when you see it turn the perfect caramel-ly colour. Add the butter and stir it to melt in.
Add lemon juice and stir. Then pour into a round baking pan (I used an 8-inch round pan, but next time I'll use 9-inch). Set aside while you prepare the apples.
Arrange your cut apples in a spiral pattern.
Now prepare the cake batter. Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.
Add vanilla, and eggs. Mix until incorporated.
In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Alternate mixing in the milk and the dry ingredients into the butter/sugar mixture until incorporated.
Pour into the pan and spread evenly over the apples and caramel.
Bake for 45 minutes, or until the cake pulls away from the sides of the cake pan. The top will be a deep golden brown.
Take out of the oven and let it rest for about 15 minutes. You don't want the caramel to drip out when you turn it over and burn you.
Place a plate over the top of the pan, and turn over. I suggest wearing oven mitts or something in case any caramel drips out. Better safe than sorry =) Scrape off any of the apples that stick to the pan and eat them up, or put em back on your cake...but who wants to do that?
Cut and enjoy that lusciousness.

NOOOOOOM.

Chris' verdict? He had 4 pieces of cake.

'Nuff said.

Vegetarian Pizza

2012-02-01T17:40:00.000-05:00

I've been craving pizza so badly for the past couple weeks, but I can't justify going to a pizza place and getting mediocre pizza. I always thought that homemade pizza crust was really time consuming but the recipe I found was super easy and only took half an hour to rise. AND IT WAS DELICIOUS. Especially when I added garlic powder and italian seasoning to the crust.

I also had some leftover spaghetti sauce from making lasagna and TONS of cheese because ever since I went vegetarian, I replaced all my meat intake with cheese...which isn't great for my digestive system. Or my weight XD

One thing that I didn't have for this pizza that would have made it super delicious was a pizza stone. Oh, and maybe cornmeal. That would have made my crust super crusty and amazing. I think maybe one day I'll invest in a pizza stone, but for now, the regular circle pan thing is just as good. (Yay for not knowing baking terminology).

So yes, the recipe that I used didn't originally have all the flavouring I put in it, but I added it in after reading some of the suggestions from the comments. I definitely recommend putting in the extra herbs and spices, but I'm sure the dough is still pretty good without them.

Recipe adapted from allrecipes.com

Ingredients:

3/4 cups very warm water
1 package of active dry yeast (2 1/4 tsps)
2 cups flour + extra for dusting
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp italian seasoning (which includes dried oregano, minced garlic, basil and parsley)
2/3 cup spaghetti sauce (I used tomato basil)
Misc toppings (I used zucchini, green peppers and mushrooms)
Mozzarella cheese, grated

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375F

Activate the dry yeast by pouring it into a bowl with the warm water and 1 tsp sugar. Let stand until creamy looking (you may have to mix it after a minute or so).
In another bowl, sift together flour, remaining tsp of sugar, garlic powder, and italian seasoning.
Mix the flour mixture into the yeast, add olive oil, and knead until all ingredients are incorporated and you get a nice, tacky dough.
Let the dough rise in a covered, well-oiled bowl for approximately 30 minutes, or until doubled in size.
Roll out to the desired thickness of your crust. Lightly dust a pan/pizza stone with flour (or cornmeal if you have it).
Cover your pizza with sauce, cheese, and whatever toppings you deem worthy of your creation.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until your crust is golden and your cheese is lightly browned by the crust.
Cut into slices and eat it up. NOMMMM.

I think eventually I want to try and make a thin crust pizza, but I think that kind of dough doesn't use yeast and requires a lot of rolling. Which I kind of hate. I felt like one of those stereotypical italians in American movies who sings and twists around the pizza dough. That's way more fun than rolling.

Red Velvet Cake Pops

2012-01-29T17:29:00.001-05:00

Okay let's face it, my favourite cake is red velvet cake. It's light, moist, and with the cream cheese icing, just the perfect degree of sweet. I had cake pops once before at a Volunteer Gala held by my student federation last year, but they weren't really cake pops, but basically weird super sweet icing balls covered in chocolate. They were really pretty, but way too sweet for my liking. These are definitely way better, I actually can't stop eating these. It's awful.

I first heard about these a few years ago when Bakerella started doing them. They looked far too complicated for me back then though, especially since I didn't really have access to an oven then or any solid experience in baking. Also, the ones I saw were super fancy with reindeer antlers and painted eyes. No spank you, that's too much effort for me now. Maybe later. AND NOW IT'S LATER.

But I didn't make it that fancy. I figured I'd master the basics first, yeah?

By the way, there's a new poll to the right over thurr ---> Please let me know when you read my blog haha. I find that the posts that I post on Tuesdays or Wednesdays (days where I have time to bake and blog) the maximum amount of readers I'd get were like 10-15 whereas I'd get anywhere between 50-100 on the weekends, particularly on Sunday night. Other trends I see are during exam season, where people like to procrastinate I suppose, which I find rather hilarious, because procrastination is what got me started here in the first place.

Before we begin, I'd like to thank Christopher for helping me out with the pictures. All the pictures of the process of making cake pops were taken by Chris, and the ones of the finished products were taken by yours truly. My hands were a bit greasy/cakey as you can see in the pictures.

Let's begin!

Materials:

1 baked cake of whatever flavour you desire (I chose Red Velvet Cake)
Half the amount of icing you would normally need to ice that cake (I'd say about 1 1/2-2 cups of icing)
25 lollipop sticks
1-2 packages of candy melts (those flat circles that come in different colours at Bulk Barn, sometimes they're called candy wafers or chocolate wafers too)
Parchment paper
Lots of room in your fridge!

Directions:

Bake your cake and let cool. I used a 9x13 inch pan to bake my cake but I only ended up using about 3/4 of it. I didn't have enough ingredients for a full batch of icing, nor did I think I would need it. Here's the remainder of my cake:
Make your icing and beat it until its really creamy. If you have a stand mixer, keep it on at the "stir" setting, and start breaking chunks of cake into the mixer. If you don't have a stand mixer, use a fork to break up the cake until it's reduced to crumbs. Fold in the icing until incorporated.
Start rolling them into 1-inch balls. I stored them in a mixing bowl, separating the layers of cake balls with plastic wrap. Store in the fridge for about half an hour, or until they're nice and firm.
Once your cake balls are ready to be dipped, melt your candy melts in a double boiler until completely melted. Like me, you may need to transfer the melts to a smaller bowl or else there is too much surface area. you'll need the mixture to be at least 1-inch deep to fully cover the cake pops.
Arrange your cake balls on a plate lined with parchment paper (or if there's enough room in your fridge, a baking sheet) This way you know the balls will stay flat on the plate and not roll around while there's a lollipop stick sticking out. OR, if you have some sort of holder to keep the cake pops upright, just ignore this step.
Start by dipping your lollipop stick into the candy melts. This will act as the glue/suctiony adhesive for your stick.
Stick it into the cake ball. You'll get a little pool of melted candy around the base, which will ensure that it stays on the stick.
Dip the cake ball directly into the mixture. Make sure it's straight on. Avoid twisting or shaking the cake ball at all, or else you may disloge the stick and you'll lose your cake ball =P
Tilt the cake ball kind of as you would a joystick until the cake pop is completely covered.
Either stick upright in a holder or on a plate like I did and let cool in the fridge for 7-10 minutes or until the outer shell is nice and hard. Then OMNOMNOM!

Feel free to decorate with sprinkles =)

Happy Belated Birthday to K-Rae!

Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce (Goi Cuon voi Tuong Dau Phong)

2012-01-22T22:55:00.002-05:00

After about a year doing mostly baked goods, I've decided to start posting my Vietnamese food. Though it's not as pretty as churros per se, but I figured I might as well learn/document it now before I forget everything. I never knew what these were called in English, the best description I've ever heard was from my best friend asking me why I was eating food wrapped in a condom. At the time, I think was pretty offended at that comment, but looking back at it, I think it's hilarious. But yes, apparently they're called fresh spring rolls, I guess because normally spring rolls are fried.

I'm currently still vegetarian and will continue to be for at least another month because my grandpa (my ong ngoai) just ordered another 10 bags of gross chinese herbal medicine. I still don't quite understand how chinese herbal medicine cannot be mixed with meat, but whatever... This is going to be another veg post. If you want to add some meat to this, just cook up some shrimp or you could fry up some fish. The mint and chives go really well with those two, especially in the peanut sauce.

On another note, I got a new haircut! I really wanted to dye my hair red, but my skin tone wouldn't support something like this, so my awesome hairdresser said to do a layer underneath my natural colour and do as she says "peek-a-boo!" I don't know what it is about red hair, but I love it so much. If I could be reincarnated, I'd choose to be a redhead (not like ginger ginger, more like Isla Fisher). I also discovered today that the my hair's natural undertone is yellow. WEIRD. For the longest time, I thought my undertones were red. Even my hairdresser thought so, until she noticed that my hair didn't take on the red as well as she thought it would after the first dye.

So apparently I'm never allowed to dye my hair blonde, because it will be super yellow. EW.

But back on spring rolls. I'll give you guys the rough recipe for the pickled carrots and the peanut sauce, but they're not totally exact because with cooking it's a lot more liberal than the science of baking. I always call my mom anytime I make Viet food because I never trust any of the online recipes for Viet food. Some online recipes use too much sugar (in like dinner food too, it's weird) or things that are not veg friendly. Some of them use random things I would never have in my pantry. Like caster sugar. Pfft. If yousa gonna dissolve the sugar anyway, what do you need caster sugar for!?

Picked Carrots:

4 medium sized carrots, peeled and cut julienne-style (long, thin strips)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup vinegar
1 cup water

Directions:

Place julienned carrots in a jar or container with a lid.
In a small pot over medium heat, stir the sugar, vinegar and water until the sugar is dissolved.
Pour the mixture over the carrots, use a spoon to push down any stray carrots that aren't sitting in the vinegar bath.
Cover and refrigerate for at least 12 hours.

Peanut Sauce from Rasa Malaysia:

1/4 cup smooth peanut butter
1 cup hoisin sauce
1 tsp chili (mashed with the garlic)
2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp rice vinegar (I don't think my mom ever used this but I liked it)

Directions:

With a mortar and pestle, mash together garlic and chili to make a paste. (Thank you ba ngoai for making this for me!)
Mix the paste with peanut butter until incorporated.
Gradually incorporate all the hoisin sauce until it reaches your desired consistency. Add water if you find it's too thick.

Spring Rolls:

Rice paper (the ones I have are either 10 or 12'' rounds)
Fresh mint
1 head green leaf lettuce
Chives, trimmed
1 package vermicelli, boiled and strained
Pickled carrots
Cucumber, julienned (I totally forgot to put these in and now I have two cucumbers in my fridge)
Large bowl with warm water
Large plate

Directions:

Dip cover a sheet of rice paper in water (you may have to turn it in the water). Tap off the excess and set down on your plate.
Add a leaf of lettuce just below the bottom half of the circle. Flatten it down and break the stalk a bit so it doesn't pierce the rice paper when you wrap it.
Add a bit of vermicelli.
Add mint leaves, cucumber, chives and carrots.
Wrap and dip! My method of wrapping is taking the bottom flap and curling it over the ingredients and tucking it underneath the lettuce a bit, then folding the sides in, then rolling it up. It takes some practice, and even after eating these for 21 years (OMG I'm 22 this year that's weird), I still suck at wrapping these babies.

I hope you like these! Fresh, light, yet filling =)

Banana Puffs

2012-01-18T00:30:00.000-05:00

That awkward moment where you buy bananas, then forget about them for about 3-4 days and they become too ripe. I forget if I've mentioned this before, but I've very picky with my bananas. I don't like them when they have spots on them--by then they're too sweet. I like them when they're perfectly yellow. That is the ideal banana. However, I'll eat them when the edges of them are tinged green, because that's before the tipping point of over-ripeness.

So this post is another way of using those pesky over-ripe bananas. Just like the banana chocolate chip cookies, banana cupcakes with honey frosting, or my very first post, Jamaican banana fritters.

These were super easy and super tasty, but I definitely messed up when I started scooping the batter and heated the oil. First of all, I let the oil get too hot, so the hunks of batter would fry really fast, but the batter inside wouldn't cook. So I took the oil off the stove, let it cool off for a bit, turn the heat on medium and start over with new hunks of batter.

At first I tried eating these with a fork and knife, but something about me chipping my tooth on the fork mid-bite deterred me from using that western utensil once again. So fingers it was! Plus, this is totally finger food. Dunk, take a bite, double dip. Mythbusters debunked that whole double-dip germ thing anyway.

Recipe from some random commenter when I searched "What can I do with over-ripe bananas"

Ingredients:

Batter

1 3/4 cup flour
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 over-ripe banana, mashed
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup water

Dip

3 tsp sugar
1 banana, mashed
2 egg whites

Directions:

Heat 2 inches of oil in a small pot over medium heat (approx 350F)
In your mixing bowl, mash your banana with the vanilla. Mix in flour, sugar, baking powder and add water until you get a nice, sticky batter.
Spoon out 2 tbsp balls of batter into the oil. Cook until it's an nice golden brown, it'll be nice and puffy. Remove from oil and let drain on a paper towel before eating.
Meanwhile, using an electric beater (OR YOUR NICE SHINY KITCHEN STAND MIXER =D =D =D) and whip the ingredients for the dip until it's tripled in volume.
Dip, and NOM.

(Thanks Jackson for compiling these three pictures because I currently lack Photoshop)

Carrot Cake

2012-01-14T19:15:00.006-05:00

This is my first cake order ever! So exciting =D No profit really, considering I'm used the money I got from it to pay for the ingredients, but it was really fun! This carrot cake is really simple and oh so tasty. I thought it would need some more spices like nutmeg or cloves or something, but no, just cinnamon! And I wouldn't have it any other way because it's delicious.

I used my new shiny turntable and I even covered my cake board in FancyFoil (foil that is anti-greasy, which is really useful because of the icing). I'm pretty sure I put like, extra extra icing on the cake because the cake board is a 10" cake board, and I used 8 " rounds, so really I should have about an inch around the sides. But as you can see from the picture, there is almost no space between the cake and the edge of the round, so...yeah. Don't know what happened there.

It's after this cake and the red velvet cake that I've decided that cream cheese icing is the best icing. It's super soft, creamy, and not too sweet. It's super moist and I never feel like I need a glass of milk to pair with it to counter the sweetness. This is one of the few things I will thoroughly lick off the beater/spatula/bowl. Omnomnommmmm.

Since I wasn't really able to take a picture of a slice of cake, I took the tops of the cake that I trimmed off to level the layers and made a mini-cake with some icing that I scraped off the cake. Why not make my own mini carrot cake? Plus, Chris was a little sad he couldn't get his own slice of the cake. So really, we had our cake and ate it too! As you can see, I was very generous with the icing on the mini-cake, and normally that would have messed up the cake : icing ratio, but with cream cheese icing, it's DELICIOUS.

Lets get started.

Cake recipe from Foods of Our Lives

Ingredients:

Sponge

2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (plus 1 cup chopped walnuts, further chopped a bit for garnish)
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
2 cups grated carrots (I think I used about 4 medium sized carrots)
4 eggs

Cream Cheese Icing (same recipe as the one from the Red Velvet cake)

1 cup butter
2 bricks of cream cheese (250g stuff I think)
2 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F

Prepare two 8" baking pans by greasing them, then lining the bottom with parchment paper. Set aside.
Sift dry ingredients together in a bowl (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon).
In a large mixing bowl, mix the eggs, sugar, and oil together. (The oil may not want to incorporate at first, but don't worry, carrots'll fix that)
Grate carrots and incorporate immediately into the wet mixture. Carrots dry out really fast and you want the cake to be as moist as possible.
Mix wet and dry ingredients together until just incorporated. Fold in walnuts.
Divide evenly between the two baking pans. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until the cake tester comes out clean.
Let cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes, then remove the cake rounds from the pan and let cool completely.
Meanwhile cream the butter and cream cheese together until smooth.
Gradually incorporate the powdered sugar. Add vanilla.
Mix until you get a smooth, creamy icing. Store in fridge until cakes are cool.
Once cakes are cool, trim the tops, add the layers together (trimmed side down so the top of the cake is nice and flat).
Do a crumb coat (cover everything in icing to seal in the moisture), refrigerate for about 20 minutes, then complete the rest of the icing.
Garnish with whatever, I chose ground walnuts on the side, but HOOOLY cow does that stuff fall off fast. Note to self: garnish with walnuts after a fresh layer of icing because otherwise it doesn't stick so well.
CONSUME! I'd say this cake will last 4-5 days if kept in the fridge.

Alex, I hope your friend enjoys the cake! Thank you for letting me making it =)

Caramelized Onion Tart

2012-01-12T00:17:00.000-05:00

So I know I haven't done a whole lot of savoury food, so here it is! I made this once with one of my friends/coworkers and I think I like the one we made together better than this one. I don't remember a whole lot about it, other than that there were onions, and it was kind of eggy. It tasted good, I remember that. This one was almost a quiche, but not quite. It was a little bit fluffier than I expected, but it was pretty good. I made everything from scratch! All in all, it's gonna be a very onion-y next couple of days for lunch.

I was looking at different blogs and I saw different methods for making pie crust. I watched a video of Gordon Ramsay showing how to make shortcrust pastry which I assume in Canadian English means pie crust. It's relatively easy, but he makes it look easy as well... pie.

I used a recipe for the pie crust from Barron's Golden Book fo Baking, and the filling recipe from the Food Network.

I'll try a different pie crust recipe next time, and try to replicate what Gordon Ramsay did so freaking easily. But for now, I've got lunch for the next few days =)

Filling Recipe from The Food Network

Ingredients:

Crust

1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup butter, chilled and diced
1 large egg, separated
2 tbsp cold water

Filling

3 large onions, sliced
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp vegetable oil (I used olive)
1 1/2 cup whipping cream
4 eggs
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
salt and pepper (I used about 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp pepper)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F

In a food processor, pulse the diced butter, flour and salt together until you get kind of a meal. Don't use your hands because it'll melt the butter.
Pour the mixture into a bowl, and make a well in the middle. Add the water and egg yolk, mix with a fork before incorporating into the mixture.
Use your fingers to quickly work the wet mixture into the dry, just to get the dry mixture to absorb anything but try not to melt the butter. A quick, twist and squeezing motion is kind of what I adapted from Gordon Ramsay's video.
Once a solid dough is formed, wrap in clear plastic wrap, flatten into a disk and let rest in the refrigerator for about an hour.
Once chilled, remove from fridge and start to roll out the dough to line the greased tart pan. (Use the one with the removable bottom) Flour your work surface and rolling pin, and roll out the dough to about half a cm thick.
Mold the dough into the pan, and cover with tinfoil. Add pie weights (I used some dried chickpeas) to keep the dough from bubbling as it bakes. Bake for 15 minutes, then remove the foil and weights, then brush the egg white on the dough (to act like a seal) and bake for another 8-10 minutes until the crust is lightly golden.
Meanwhile, caramelize the onions in a large pot over medium-low heat with the butter and oil. Cover for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Remove cover, let caramelize until it reaches that dark, sweet caramelized onion flavour, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool.
In a bowl, mix the whipping cream, eggs, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Once onions are cooled, incorporate them into the mixture, and pour into the partly baked pie shell.
Bake for 35-40 minutes or until the top is nicely browned and no longer jiggles. It'll be all poofy at first, but it will deflate after.
Cut, and omnomnom =)

Chocolate Dipped Fruit

2012-01-08T15:42:00.001-05:00

Some of you know that I occasionally worked for Edible Arrangements during the busy holidays when I had time. That was one of the jobs that I really enjoyed and would totally be happy doing every day. Something about the smell of chocolate and being able to eat your mistakes, which is generally pretty healthy because sometimes I fail at cutting pineapples. But sometimes for friends birthdays (especially those who don't like baked goods as much), I would make a box of chocolate covered fruit with some of them dipped in coconut, some in crushed almonds. I recently had a couple friends ask me how to dip fruit in chocolate, so let me give you some tips =)

First, a special thanks to K-Rae, who took the next 3 pictures. I'm pretty proud fo the first and last one =). She let me borrow her macro lens for the first one and I luuuuurve it. Check out K-Rae's flickr here

Tools you'll need:

fresh strawberries
granny smith apples
bananas, on the green side. The riper the bananas, the harder they are to dip
pineapple, peeled, cored and sliced
skewers or a fork (depending if you want them to dry in the air or on a plate)
parchment paper and/or styrofoam (to either stick skewers of fruit or to lay them on a plate to dry)
chocolate chips (pick ones that taste good, and have a sharp snap to them, or else your chocolate will dry kind of soft on your fruit)

Melting chocolate:

The best way to dip chocolate is in a double boiler, but since you need the chocolate to be at least an inch and a half in depth (otherwise it'll be hard to cover all of your fruit) it's hard to have enough chocolate to dip in a double boiler. I opted to use the mug shown below. (Excuse the mess on my desk)
Microwave for 30 seconds, then stir, and repeat until the chocolate is smooth, shiny, and drips down really quickly and consistently. No globs! Be careful not to burn the chocolate. It'll be chunky and gross if it burns.

Dipping strawberries:

Make sure the strawberries are completely dry. The chocolate will just roll off them if they're wet.
Hold the strawberries by the hull plus a bit of the strawberry itself if its on a skewer.
When you dip the strawberries, wiggle them in the chocolate gently to get the chocolate evenly on the side (not like what I did in the first picture haha. I was running low on chocolate in the container for that one)
Try to shake off as much chocolate as you can because otherwise it'll just drip off in globs when you let them dry upright or they'll pool too much chocolate on the plate. You'll probably get 1-2 tsps of chocolate to drip off.
If you want to dip them in coconut or crushed almonds, do it before you let the chocolate dry. Simply dunk! Don't roll them around too much because then you'll get chocolate all over the coconut that you're not using.

Dipping apples:

I don't have any pictures for these right now but I'll you how to dip them =)
Cut the apples into 8 slices, make sure you cut out the seeds
Dry the apples -really- well, especially the skin of the apples.
Skewer the apple slices at the end, and tilt chocolate at a 45 degree angle.
Dip the apples in and cover the green of the apple slices about 1/3 of the way up the apple. Tilt the apple slice to the left to cover the flesh, and then tilt to the right. You'll make a V shape on the back of the apple.
Shake as much chocolate as you can off the apple. Again, you'll get about 2 tsps of chocolate to drip off. You can be a bit more vigorous when you shake these because the apples stay on the skewers better than the strawberries do.
Stick these in the freezer for about 6 minutes. Store in the fridge immediately after or else the chocolate will soften.

Dipping two-tone bananas:

These can be a bit more complicated, but these are so delicious. Peel, then cut the not-quite-ripe banans into 4-5 inch-long pieces.
Skewer the bananas first along the side that you cut. You'll be transferring them onto another skewer to the non-cut side like in the pictures later.
Again, tilt the dark chocolate at a 45 degree angle, and dip the bananas. You'll cover half the banana (the entire top part of the banana, and a little bit of the edge of the bottom cut part of the banana). Tap off the excess on the side of the container, be gentle or else the banana will fall off the skewer.
Take another skewer and stick it into the chocolate dipped part of the banana. The chocolate will stick to the stick and keep the banana on.
Stick these in the freezer for about 8 minutes, for the chocolate to get hard. Meanwhile, microwave the white chocolate.
Dip the other half the banana in the white chocolate to cover the entire banana. If you miss any part of the banana, it'll oxidize and get all hard and gross.
Stick them in the freezer again for another 8 minutes. Store in the fridge immediately after or else the chocolate will soften.

Dipping pineapple:

Make sure you dry these as well, chocolate has a hard time adhering to the pineapple if it's wet at all.
These you can just dip with your hand because pineapple falls off skewers really easily unless they're poking through the core.
Dip half the pineapple into the chocolate and shake off the excess. Set down on the parchment and stick in the freezer for 8 minutes.
I like dipping only half of the pineapple in the chocolate because otherwise, I find the flavour of the chocolate overwhelms the flavour of the pineapple.
Store in the fridge immediately after the freezer =)

That's all I've got for dipped fruit! You can dip oranges too, and they're probably one of my favourite chocolate dipped things to eat, but they're stupid and so juicy that chocolate is hard to get on them and make them look pretty at the same time. I don't like the flavour of clementines and tangerines dipped in chocolate because I find they're too sweet to be complimented by the chocolate.

It's harder to dip melon because melon is pretty juicy, however, dripping chocolate on them is pretty tasty =) You should try it out.

Lemon Cake

2012-01-04T00:13:00.000-05:00

Whee another cake! This one wasn't as tasty as the red velvet was, it was a really really dense cake and I omitted the lemon sugar syrup, which I regret because I think the cake could have used the extra kick. If you're going to make this cake, I recommend using a lemon syrup. I also preferred the cream cheese icing from the red velvet too, zOMG that was delicious. However, this buttercream recipe is still pretty delicious. Overall, a great success! I had so much fun piping all the different designs =)

So I used the following piping techniques on this cake:

Borders: Shells with Wilton #199 tip.
Roses with Wilton #104 tip and a size 6 Rose nail.
Leaves with #66 wilton tip (I may try the #352 tip next time)
Lettering and drop lines (the droopy lines on the side) with a Wilton #2

Obviously all these different types of piping make the cake too crowded. I originally was just going to do three roses with "Happy Birthday" written on it, but I had a ton of icing leftover and it wasn't like I was making this for a paying customer anyway, so I decided to practise a bit more with piping =D

The roses were actually really difficult to transfer, I wasn't sure how to do it without squishing it (since I didn't have any flower scissors), so I just quickly shoved a fork underneath and used the stick of the nail to gently push it off. But I had never really done any successful roses before, I was practicing with a batch back in Ottawa, but these were my first ones that were actually successful! I think it was the 104 tip I was using, which is slightly bigger than the 103 one I had back in Ottawa.

The drop lines were really fun. I didn't map them out or anything and I didn't think they were too bad. I got a little squished with them at one point but overall they were alright =) If you ever decide to do drop lines, I recommend using colder icing cause the warmer the icing, the easier it breaks as you're dropping the lines.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's a-okay. Last year I wouldn't have any idea what a rose nail or a drop line was. But if you want me to do a blog post just on piping techniques, let me know in the comments and I'll do one.

More on the cake: Like I said, this was a really dense cake, which had a lot of components. The cake itself had the batter normally, but then I had to whisk the egg whites by hand to stiff peak, which was not fun. Then I had to carefully fold it in. Then, there was english lemon curd to fill in between the layers as well as to flavour the buttercream. There should have been lemon syrup too but I was lazy, but I think this cake really needed that extra moisture. But considering this recipe is from a wedding cake bakery, the denseness of the cake is -really- good for structure.

A complicated cake. But pretty tasty, I must say.

Recipe from Wedding Cakes For You

Ingredients:

(Sponge)

3 cups all purpose flour
Zest from 2 lemons
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup butter, room temperature
4 eggs (separated)
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

(English Lemon Curd)

3 eggs
juice of one lemon
zest from one lemon
1/4 cup sugar
4 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces

(Buttercream)

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
4 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
(normally you'd add milk until its the right consistency, but add half the lemon curd instead)

(Lemon syrup)

1/4 cup sugar
juice and zest from one lemon

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl (flour, lemon zest, baking powder, salt), in a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
One by one mix in 4 egg yolks. Mix until incorporated. Add vanilla extract.
Alternate flour mixture and milk and mix until just combined.
In a separate bowl, whisk eggs until you reach the stiff peak form, but before the egg whites are dry
Stir in half of the meringue into the batter, then gently fold in the second half until just incorporated. Overmixing will make the cake really tough and not delicious. Don't do that.
Spread evenly into two prepared cake pans (9x9, greased, an lined with parchmet paper).
Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when you poke it in the middle.
Remove from oven and let rest for about 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and let cool completely.
Meanwhile, make the english lemon curd and sugar syrup.
Lemon curd: in a bowl over a pot of simmering water, whisk egg, sugar, and lemon juice until combined. With a wooden spoon, constantly stir until the mixture thickens to the consistency of hollandaise sauce. It'll coat the back of the spoon =)
Remove from heat, add butter and lemon zest and mix until the butter is melted. Let stand. The curd will thicken.
Next prepare the buttercream: cream the butter and shortening until smooth and creamy. Cup by cup, add the icing sugar until combined
Add the vanilla extract, and half the lemon curd.
Store in fridge while you make the lemon sugar syrup.
For the lemon sugar syrup, combine sugar, lemon juice and zest in a small pot and heat over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved. Set aside and let cool.
Once the sponge is cooled, cut off the tops so that the layers are level.
Spread some of the buttercream in a thin layer on one of the layers on the cut side, to adhere to the cardboard cake circle. Place on the cake circle.
Using a pastry brush, spread the lemon syrup on the bottom layer and sides, then spread the other half of the lemon curd on top of the bottom layer.
Add the second layer, cut side down. Spread the remaining lemon syrup on the top layer.
Carefully cover the cake in icing. Try not to pull on the icing too much since the cake is moist, it may break.
Decorate as desired, then OMNOMNOM.

Yummy and beautiful lemon cake =)

Buttermilk Lemon Blueberry Muffins

2012-01-02T20:23:00.002-05:00

After icing that cake, I really wanted to make another cake. I was toying with the idea of a lemon cake with lemon buttercream, but I didn't have anybody to eat it. My brother doesn't like eating sweets and my mom will eat maybe a slice. I didn't want to toy with the idea of eating 3/4 of a cake by myself. However, my supplies were limited to a lemon, a box of blueberries and buttermilk.

On an unrelated note, I'm trying to decide whether or not I like the Oxford comma. I think I like it. But 2 classes with Malcolm Williams has made me afraid of using it. (One of my profs, he doesn't mind the Oxford comma, but he prefers to be concise, aka not using it.)

Anyway, since we had some leftover buttermilk from the red velvet cake, I decided to use this recipe from Joy of Baking =P I'm not the biggest fan of blueberries anymore. I used to eat them all the time, but I don't know what it is now. They're more along the line of berries I tolerate rather than love.

Strawberries, on the other hand, I could eat every day of my life and I would be happy.

Anyway, I found these weren't very sweet, the blueberries were kind of bland, I think I underbaked them a bit and I wish there were a bit more lemon flavour in it. I think next time, I'll add more sugar, add a bit more sugar, use wild blueberries and add some lemon juice instead of just the zest. They were alright though, very moist. My mom likes 'em cause they're not that sweet.

Recipe from JoyofBaking.com

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cups sugar (I'll add 1 cup next time)
zest from 1 lemon
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk (It was actually kind of thick, so thin it out with about 1/4 cup milk)
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tsp vanilla
(I'll add the juice of one lemon next time)
1-2 cups of fresh blueberries

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375F

Sift the dry ingredients together in a bowl (flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, lemon zest). Set aside.
Mix wet ingredients (lightly beaten egg, buttermilk, milk, vanilla, canola oil). Fold in dry ingredients just until combined. (Overmixing leads to gross, tough muffins that you can use as hockey pucks).
Gently fold in the blueberries into the batter. Spoon them into a prepared muffin pan (lined with paper liners or greased).
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the middle.
Let cool for 10 minutes and then it's read to noooom.

Red Velvet Cake

2011-12-28T00:45:00.000-05:00

MY FIRST CAKE! (Not including the chocolate one. That one was kind of a gigantic brownie so it doesn't count). I originally wanted to pipe roses all over the cake but after scouring both the Bulk Barn on my side of the city, then the other side of my hometown(city?), unfortunately I couldn't find the Wilton 1M tip required. I had my other Wilton tip that I used for churros and piping the lemon cupcakes, but I left that in Ottawa. Drat.

On an unrelated note, I'm sorry for the lack of "Merry Christmas" post, I noticed that all the other food blogs I follow have one where they show their family or their pets being all Christmas-y. The closest thing I have to that is my brother posing by our gingerbread house, which I might add is the most beautiful gingerbread house I've ever decorated. My brother insisted that we make it look like the one on the box, and I'm not going to lie, they're pretty much identical. I piped the icing, my brother put on all the decorations. Are you impressed by my seven-year-old little bro bro? You should be.

He even piped a little icing to glue the coconut on the board.

So to anticipate a post I'm probably going to forget to do: Happy New Year!

So scared for this year. D8 Quarter life crisis!

But back on the red velvet cake. I haven't had much experience with red velvet, actually I haven't even eaten a red velvet cake before. I made Red Velvet Cookies, which were basically chocolate cookies with some red food colouring. (On a sidenote, I just looked at the picture for that post and I shuddered a little bit. Such baaaad white balance).

All I know about red velvet is that after watching tons of Cake Boss and DC Cupcakes, that red velvet is really popular, that it's a very moist cake with a bright red sponge with a hint of cocoa. I read some "history" about the red velvet cake, which may or may not be true, but basically the reason why it's described as velvet is because it has such a soft, velvety texture. Hopefully I've acquired this. From the extras that I trimmed and the icing that I deemed necessary to taste, it was pretty velvety. But the colour used to be achieved by adding beet juice, which I think is kind of gross.

This recipe is apparently Buddy Valastro's (Cake Boss), so I was really excited to try it. I know the vinegar and baking soda is supposed to give the cake that little extra bubble and make the colour pop a bit more. I didn't realize that 2 tbsp of food colouring would take basically an entire bottle of food colouring, but I still wasn't totally happy with the colour in the end. Maybe it was the lighting that I saw it in, but it didn't seem as red as I would have liked. I think I'll just dump the entire bottle of food colouring next time, because I had about 1 mL left over in the bottle.

Also, as I was looking for the ingredients at Bulk Barn (my mom doesn't have many baking supplies at home), I bought a cocoa powder that kind of had a reddish tint (it was called "Ruddy Red Cocoa Powder"), so I was excited to see if that colour came out at all in the cake. To be quite frank, I couldn't even tell.

So let's get started.

Oh I forgot to mention, this icing was DELICIOUS. Like I couldn't stop eating it. It's not too sweet, and it was oh-so-creamy.

Right. Baking.

> Original (Buddy Valastro's) Recipe <

Ingredients:
(Sponge)

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
2 tbsp red food colouring (or the whole bottle ^^;;)
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cup cake flour (not self-rising)
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
2 tsp distilled white vinegar (I dunno what the difference between distilled and undistilled was, so I just used the stuff my mom had in her cupboard)
1 tsp baking soda

(Cream Cheese Icing)

1/2 cup butter
2 bricks of cream cheese (8 oz per brick, I think 500 g in total)
2 1/2 cup icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F

Cream the butter until it's smooth. Add sugar and cream together until incorporated.
Add eggs, mix until incorporated, one egg at a time.
Add the vanilla and food colouring. Mix until incorporated
In a separate bowl, sift the flour, cocoa powder and salt together. Add 1/3 of the dry mixture at a time to the wet mixture, alternating with 1/3 of the buttermilk. This way you don't overwork the ingredients trying to incorporate them all at once.
In a separate bowl, mix baking soda and vinegar and let them react. Add the mixture to the cake batter
Prepare two 9-inch round cake pans by greasing them, then lining the bottom with parchment paper.
Divide the batter between the two pans. Jostle them until the cake batter is evenly distributed in the pan.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when poked in the middle.
Meanwhile, make the icing by creaming the butter and cream cheese until smooth.
Add the vanilla and icing sugar, and mix until smooth. Taste test to make sure it tastes delicious ;)
Store the icing in the fridge when not in use.
Remove from the oven, and let rest for 10 minutes in the pan.
Remove the cake from the pan, remove the parchment paper liner and let cool completely, right-side up.
Once completely cool, trim off the top of the cake to make it flat. (I didn't do a very good job of this)
Stack the cakes, cut side down on a cake circle (or plate, or cake platter, whichever you have). Add a bit of icing to the bottom to make sure the cake doesn't go anywhere as you ice the cake.
Spread icing on the middle, at the top layer, cut side down, and "dirty ice it" as Buddy Valastro says, or do what's called a crumb coat. Just a coat to cover the cake and keep the moisture in. Refrigerate for about 20 minutes before you complete the rest of the icing.
Ice the cake to whatever way pleases you. For the ruffles, I used a Wilton 104 tip, the thicker side closer to the cake and the thinner side facing outwards, and just went back and forth to make that ruffle effect. I ran out of icing to finish the top, so maybe use a 102 or 103 tip to conserve icing. Another design you can do provided you have the right tip, is pipe roses all over. It's soooo pretty. You can see what it looks like here, but I think you'd have to use a smaller cake pan to achieve the right height for roses on the side.

I'll add a picture of what it looks like when it's cut after I bring it to my friends shindig tonight =)

Lemon Poppyseed Loaf

2011-12-19T00:35:00.004-05:00

Let's step back and admire how fluffy that looks. You can't see it, but there's also the most delectable lemon syrup glaze all over it that gives this slice of heaven that nice citrus kick with every bite. It keeps it moist, tangy, and oh so delicious. I mean, come on, you know by now how much I loooove lemon. I'm pretty sure I'll be attempting a batch of lemon poppyseed macarons soon.

So you may be asking yourself, why is she making something lemon-flavoured and not holiday flavoured? I could be doing something candy-cane or gingerbread flavoured...maybe some Christmas cutouts of cookies?

Well, I'm doing this to procrastinate the following:

Completing my takehome due tomorrow (I've done the rough draft, don't worry. I'm 80% done overall)
Packing for going home tomorrow
Cleaning my house before I head out for the holidays

So here we go.

> Original Recipe <

Ingredients:

3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup milk
195 g flour (1 1/2 cups flour)
150 g white granulated sugar (3/4 cups sugar)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp lemon zest (from one lemon)
3/4 cup margarine, (I also use margarine when I don't want to soften the butter)
30 g (3 tbsp) poppy seeds
1/4 tsp salt

For the glaze:

1/4 lemon juice (strained)
1/3 cup sugar

Directions:

Preheat to 350F

Line a loaf pan with parchment paper and grease it with either spray or butter.
In a bowl, mix together the eggs, vanilla extract, milk.
In a separate bowl, beat the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, zest and poppy seeds until combined.
Add the butter and half the egg mixture and beat for 1 minute. (Get some air into the mixture to make your loaf super fluffy and delicious). Scrape down the sides.
Add the remaining half of the egg mixture and mix until everything is incorporated. Have a little taste test. It should be just ever so slightly lemony, because the glaze is what gives it that citrus kick).
Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smooth out the top.
Bake for 50-60 minutes, until a toothpick comes out with moist crumbs or clean.
While that's baking, prepare the lemon syrup by combining lemon juice and sugar in a pot over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Set aside and let cool.
Once the loaf is all bakified, let cool on a wire rack and use a skewer to poke holes into the loaf. (For the glaze to seep into the loaf)
Use half the glaze to coat the top of the loaf, then rotate the loaf to cover the other sides with the remaining glaze.
Let cool before cutting, or if you're impatient like me, just cut anyway and disregard the pieces that fall apart and eat them crumb by crumb. Yum.

Nothing like some pieces of lemon poppyseed loaf to devour on the road home =)
OMNOMNOM.

Soft Ginger Cookies

2011-12-14T00:51:00.000-05:00

So I just completed my third and fourth exam of the semester (out of five), and I'm honestly not sure how they went. *writing stuff then a ton of backspacing happened* I started writing out how I felt like they went, but then I remembered this is a food blog, not an LJ (oooh teenage angst). Anyway, as I'm sure you've all realized, baking is my method of relaxing and de-stressing....and procrastination, but that's basically de-stressing from exams...right? But more on cookies. I've made these a ton of times before. I don't really think they ever get old, cause they're super soft and delicious.

When you don't burn them anyway. (Oops.)

It happens to the best of us.

I didn't really take any pictures of how I made these cookies, just follow the instructions and boom! Cookies to shovel into your face-hole. =)

These cookies are great because they look so perfectly round and have those beautiful cracks between all the sugary goodness. Can you tell I love taking pictures of food? I also just love when my apartment smells like cookies, and when I walk out into the hall, my entire hallway just smells like cookies.

Original recipe from Better Homes and Gardens' The Ultimate Cookie Book
Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
(I accidentally put in 1 tsp nutmeg, and it was pretty good)
1 tsp baking soda
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
sugar to coat (try and get coarse sugar if you can)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F.

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and baking soda.
Add the egg and molasses and mix until incorporated.
Gradually stir in the flour until it forms a dough.
Roll out inch-sized balls and roll them in sugar.
Bake them on a parchment paper-lined sheet for about 8 minutes (take them out when you see them kind of stop cracking. Big cracks are beeeautiful. But take them out the second you see the bottoms start to brown. I didn't do that for the first sheet and they burnt. Sad panda.)
After you take them out, let them set on the baking sheet for about 2 minutes, they're really soft when they first come out of the oven so if you take em off they'll fall apart. After 2 minutes, let them cool on a wire rack.

Eat em up with a glass of milk and you're ready to get back into studying. Yum.

Oh, and,

OMNOMNOM.

(Sidenote: This post and the shortbread cookie post was shot with a 60 mm macro lens because my awesome friend K-Rae let me borrow hers to see what it's like. Basically...I need a macro lens. Unfortunately the 50 mm is like 300 loonies. The 60 mm is like 800, which was more than my camera, so that's not happening. But one day...in the near future. 50 mm macro lens will miiiiine.)

(Second sidenote: I also added a couple pictures from my lemon macarons to my Italian Meringue Macarons post. I didn't make an entire post of them, but they are by far the best macarons I've made yet. The best texture, best failure:no failure ratio, and I LOOOOOVE lemon, so obviously they're amazing. I think one my next endeavours will be lemon poppyseed loaf...or macarons! I saw Honey and Soy do these and they look AMAZING.)

That's all, folks!

Shortbread Cookies

2011-12-11T16:13:00.001-05:00

First things firsts: Happy Birthday to my cousin Leena! She asked me to make something for my food blog and post it on her birthday so here it is =) She asked for something with blue, so I made blue royal icing for shortbread cookies. I think everybody associates shortbread with the holidays, why is that? Is it because it's only socially acceptable to eat cookies that are basically 50% butter during the season where we gain all that weight anyway? Or is it because they take little to no effort to crack eggs or add milk and baking powder?

Either way, they're delicious. Like all cookies, I like them when they're slightly undercooked, so when you bite into it when they're cool, they're still soft and delicious. I find that when the edges are more than golden brown, they'll be too crumbly so just bake them to the point where you see one corner somewhere on the sheet that is tinted a golden brown and take it all out.

I iced these with royal icing because they're smoother and generally nicer for flat cookies anyway. I was going to use my Hello Kitty cookie cutters here, but the pastry cutter was good for cutting lots of cookies quickly because I was a little pressed for time. I think the royal icing was a bit too runny, and I could have added more sugar to make it thicker but it was already too sweet for my liking. Made me feel like Buddy Valastro and piping intricate swirls... but mine weren't nearly as intricate because the icing was too runny. Whoops.

> Original Recipe <

Ingredients:

2 cups (260 g of flour)
1 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt

Royal Icing:

1 egg white
up to 2 cups sugar (depending on how you like the way it tastes)
1 tsp lemon juice

Directions:

Cream the butter until smooth. Cream with the sugar and salt until incorporated.
Add vanilla extract and gradually incorporate all the flour.
Once you get a dough, gather it into a disc shape and cover with saran wrap. Chuck it into the fridge for about an hour until it's cold and firm. Better this than soft and squishy or else the dough will stick to the rolling pin.
Once it's cold, start rolling it out on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of about half a centimetre. Really however thick you want them to be really. They'll be softer if they're thicker.
Cut out your shapes with a cookie cutter/pastry cutter/etc.
Pop them in the fridge for about 10-15 minutes so that the cookies will keep their shape when they're in the oven. Put the uncut dough in the fridge too because it's easier to work with when it's cold.
While those are chilling, mix up the icing. Add whatever food colouring you want, and put that in a ziploc bag or piping back and put it in the fridge to chill.
Bake the chilled cookies for about 8 minutes or until you see one of the bottoms of the cookies start to brown. Take them out and let them cool on the pan (they'll break if you take them off before they're coolish to touch).
Ice them with royal icing (cut a really tiny tip to squeeze out the icing or else things will get out of control). I toyed with piping snowflakes but anytime that failed I just turned it into a solid block of icing. Tasty, and aesthetically pleasing as a cover-up =)
Wait for the icing to dry, or if you're like me, you "accidentally" smudge one and eat it. OMNOMNOM. =)

NYC-Style Chicken on Rice

2011-12-07T00:33:00.001-05:00

Today, I learned what exactly "halal" meant. Living in Ottawa, you see a lot of restaurants (generally shawarma) that have "HALAL" written in English (and I believe Arabic?) all over their windows. Call me ignorant, but I only vaguely knew it was similar to Kosher and Judaism. Barrie doesn't have a lot of diversity when it comes to religion so I honestly had no idea. Thus, I asked a fellow foodie and new AWESOME friend of mine, Maryam, and she answered allllll of my questions =D.

Basically, halal means that something is permissible to eat, and in terms of meat, meat is halal when the animal is slaughtered properly...by which I mean that it doesn't feel pain. Maryam showed me this video which is actually really cool, and it kind of explains a lot. (Don't worry, no animals are actually slaughtered in the video).

So I hope everybody now knows what halal meants! Yay for education about diversity!

Now onto why I made this:

When I was in New York City, all of these street vendors were selling this halal chicken on rice. After walking past it for two days, I'd just watch these guys cook this mouth-watering food and I finally decided to go for some of it. I mean, while it has that sketchy reputation, street meat is notoriously delicious. ESPECIALLY in NYC. Needless to say, I've been craving that stuff since I got back. (Flashback to guacamole)

Let's get started shall we?

I'll give you the link to the original recipe, which is kind of vague when it comes to exact amounts of ingredients, but my cooking is never exact anyway so it doesn't really matter. (Baking on the other had, sometimes has to be meticulously measured out). Anyway, I'll give you a list of what I used for my ingredients, and you can compare that to what was used in the original recipe.

> Original Recipe <

Ingredients:

2 cups Basmati rice, cooked

Tzatziki sauce (kind of? I didn't have any red wine vinegar)

1 tub of Greek Yogurt
1 English cucumber, peeled, seeded, and cut into smallish pieces
4-5 sprigs of dill
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 lemon, juiced

Chicken

1 club pack of chicken thighs (so about 15-17 bucks worth of chicken), sliced
1 onion, diced
4 tbsp of olive oil (maybe more?)
1 can of tomato juice (I used a pop can of V8 original. Turned out well =P)
3 tbsp cumin
3 tbsp curry powder (I recommend wearing a shirt you don't really care for. This stuff stains.)
Salt and pepper to taste (I used maybe 2-3 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper)
1 tsp paprika
about 10-15 dashes of Tabasco sauce (depending on how hot you like it)

Directions:

In a food processor, combine your greek yogurt, cucumber, dill, garlic and lemon juice until smooth and saucy like. Set aside.
Preheat your pan/skillet/wok/flat thing on medium-high heat while you prepare your chicken. Cut up your chicken thighs, trimming any fat. Coat and rub olive oil and about 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper all over the chicken.
Coat the pan in olive oil (about 1-2 tbsp), and start cooking the chicken.
Once the chicken starts to whiten (not long, provided you've preheated the pan), add in the diced onions and mix.
Add tomato juice, cumin, curry powder and paprika and cook for about 10 minutes.
Serve over a bed of rice and some lettuce, tomato and cucumber with tzatziki sauce drizzled all over it.

OMNOMNOM.

Makes me feel like I'm in NYC again.

Italian Meringue Macarons

2011-12-04T01:23:00.001-05:00

Oh baby they're back. And better. I've actually made a few batches of these puppies (well using a different recipe from the first post) but I was still using the French meringue (so with just sugar), while this recipe uses a sugar syrup instead. I think between the two, I like the Italian meringue version better because they instantly get that same chewy texture that the French ones have after they're refrigerated overnight.

Like I mentioned in my first macaron post, I read Bravetart's Macaron Myths and found that aging the egg whites, drying the almond flour and drying the shells made no difference whatsoever.

I now can honestly say that aging egg whites really doesn't matter at all, I've never dried almond flour, and I actually find they look nicer when the shells aren't dry. They puff up nicer and the make a dome, whereas when they dry, they kind of do a weird dome that is separate from the feet.

I can't stress enough that weighing your ingredients is ESSENTIAL here. It's UNREAL how much of a difference it makes (fail vs. non-fail).

I think between the two variations of meringue, although the Italian meringue is a little more high maintenance, the end result is way better, and the macaronage isn't as sensitive. (Macaronage is the method/process of mixing the batter to a specific consistency). The thing about this is making sure that the sugar doesn't crystallize in the pot (say there are 3 grains of sugar on the side, they collect more and more sugar and turn into rock candy. Le suck.). The best way to get around that is to get a pastry brush and wet the sides with water. If you're worried that the water will change the sugar:water ratio, don't be, because the sugar syrup needs to be at a certain temperature anyway, and that can only be at a certain temperature when the sugar:water ratio is correct.

Anyway.

I'll also post some of the pictures of the macarons I made before (orange chocolate! Tasty!)

Here are things I've learned about macarons:

Never add extract to the meringue as you're beating it. It'll deflate it instantly.
Always let the cookies cool completely before you fill them. If you squish the icing between them while they're still warm, sometimes the inside caves in cause it's still soft
If you find your oven burns the feet of your macarons, double stack the pans or add a silicone layer (silpat) underneath to slow down the heat transfer from the metal
Aging your egg whites don't matter
Better to overbeat your eggs than underbeat. Underbeating will make your batter too runny. It should be just stiffer than soft peak stage. But before stiff peak.
Always sift your sugar and almond flour. It's okay if there are bigger almond chunks, but when it's all in the food processor, you -think- it's all ground nicely, but those big chunks always surprise you.
Check on your macarons frequently when they reach the 10 minute mark. They burn quickly!
Using food colouring paste is better than the liquid. I find it doesn't alter the consistency as much.

So for this recipe, I used FoodGeek's almost foolproof macarons. Check it out! They have awesome pictures that are better than mine. =P

Ingredients:

150g icing sugar
150g almonds (I used blanched and sliced cause they're cheaper for me)
120g egg whites (divided into 60 and 60)
35g sugar, and 150g sugar
50g water

Click here for the simplest, yet the best recipe for icing I've ever used

Directions:

In a food processor, grind your almonds with icing sugar. Sift until you get the smallest pieces of almond possible. Then chuck in the stuff you're sick of putting in the food processor.
Add 60g of egg whites and whatever food colouring you want to that and set aside.
In a clean bowl, beat 60g egg whites and 35g sugar until you get soft/stiff peaks. Like stiffer than soft, but softer than stiff. If that makes sense. The picture I have down there, the eggs weren't stiff enough so it was a little runny. Second batch was more like the picture in the original recipe. Kinda like marshmallow Fluff. Anyway, set aside.
In a small pot and over high heat, cook 150g sugar and 50g water until 230F.
Slowly pour the sugar syrup into the meringue while constantly beating to temper the syrup in without completely deflating the egg whites. Careful not to get it all over your hand mixer like I did. That was not fun to clean. Beat until you get an even, glossy meringue.
Mix the meringue into the almond flour/egg mixture.
Fold the mixture until you get the ribbon consistency. It shouldn't be too runny. Make sure you incorporate ALL the meringue, or else those rogue streaks of meringue will make your cookies crack.
Pipe onto parchment paper-lined cookie sheets about an inch in diameter with at least a cm of space between each cookie or else you'll get weird morphy cookies. WHOA that just reminded me of animorphs.
Bake for 13-16 minutes at 320F (when you touch the tops of the cookies, they shouldn't wobble too much).
Remove from the oven, let cool on the sheet for a minute, then remove the parchment paper from the sheet and let cool over a wire rack.
Once completely cool, fill with icing =D (I made mint chocolate butter cream). Store in an airtight container in the fridge.

Here are the lemon ones that I made, the buttercream icing had lemon curd in it so it was tart and delicious and the lemon just kind of seeped into the shells in the fridge.

Here's a picture to show you the consistency of your macaron. The other recipe I used, I think I didn't beat the eggs enough because there would be a completely hollow shell because the meringue wouldn't set properly and would sink to the bottom of the cookie and be kinda gross.

These are the chocolate orange ones I made:

The shells turned out really flat and the feet were HUUUGE in the oven, but I think I like the Italian meringue method the best.

ALSO, my lovely co-worker, Hannah, told me her mom wanted to make these macarons after reading my blog. HI HANNAH'S MOM! THANKS FOR READING! =D I forget if I mentioned in my previous post, but you can make nut-free macarons with pumpkin seeds! So good luck =)

That's alllll folks. *cue Bugs Bunny music*

Spaghetti Sauce

2011-11-30T22:26:00.001-05:00

I was going to post about this yesterday but I lost both my SD cards somehow and I was VERY sad and thus unable to take any pictures of my food. But alas, in the mess that was my tiny room, I was able to locate my teeny tiny SD card. SUCCESS! But allow me to tell you about my personal experience with spaghetti.

Growing up, I mostly ate the most delicious Vietnamese food ever (love ya, Mom!). I rarely brought sandwiches to school, because sandwiches are dry and icky. My mom used to make me stir-fried rice, noodles, gaww my mouth is watering just thinking of it. Anyway. I was always kind of turned off by typical North America food (this includes but is not limited to hamburgers, pasta, chicken breast, steak, potatoes in any shape/form, etc.). My dad is kind of a vacuum when it comes to food, he doesn't care too much what it tastes like, so my mom use to make HUGE batches of spaghetti and just store it in containers for us to eat for like a week and a half.

I think this may be why I go through "phases" of food. In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, sometimes I go through certain "phases" of food. I've just come off of a Mexican food phase (flashback to constant need for beans, guacamole, and burritos), and I'm semi-through a Vietnamese food phase. But I'm never really over my Viet food phase. It's constant.

But I digress.

I was really sick of spaghetti, but I think it was because I mostly had that Prego sauce or Ragu. I decided to give my own spaghetti sauce a try and I think I did pretty well (I usually gage by Chris' reaction. Seconds = Good. Thirds = Very good. Fourths = zOMG)

He only went for seconds on this one (I made chili once, and he went for 4 helpings XD).

(This makes about 5L or so. Maybe more. I didn't really measure.)
Ingredients:

3 medium-large sized onions, diced
3-4 tbsp olive oil
15-20 cremini and/or white mushrooms. I used a mix of both
2 packages of lean ground beef (I don't know how much in weight. About $10 worth?)
2 cans of diced tomatoes (or use real tomatoes. I didn't have time to cut them all)
1 5.5 oz (small) can of tomato paste
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
2 green bell peppers, diced
1 jalapeño pepper, finely chopped (with seeds)
3-4 tbsp of italian herbs (oregano, basil, rosemary, etc.)
1 tsp ground black pepper
Salt to taste (I might have used about 2-3 tsps, I'm not sure. Taste test and adjust)
4-5 dashes of tabasco sauce
Shredded Romano cheese to garnish

Directions: (Sorry, no pictures, I was kind of pressed for time, and I lost my SD card)

In a large pot, cook the diced onions and olive oil until the onions get kind of transparent. About 3-5 minutes over medium heat (between 5 and 6).
Add the mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms look less raw and more cooked. Another 3-5 minutes. Stir frequently.
Add the lean ground beef and cook until a nice, delicious brown colour. This will give it yummy flavour. This might take about 10-15 minutes to cook all your meat.
Add the diced tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic, green peppers and jalapeño. Mix until incorporated.
Start adding some herbs. Add about 1 tbsp of the italian herbs, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1 tsp pepper. Once the mixture is simmering, do a taste test. Simmer over medium heat (4-5) until the sauce looks more like one concoction instead of an amalgamated pot of tomatoes, veggies and beef.
Frequently stir taste test over the next 30 minutes to add herbs and spices until it tickles your fancy.
Once it looks like spaghetti sauce and not individual ingredients, boil yourself some pasta. Generously pour the sauce over your noodles and sprinkle with Romano cheese.
My favourite step: OM. NOM. NOM. =)

I know it's not a really extravagant post or anything, I'm sure everyone has their standard spaghetti sauce recipe already. Chris and I were trying to figure out whether or not the sauce would be more delicious or disgusting with wine or beer, considering Chris isn't a huge fan of wine, and I'm not a huge fan of beer.

I'm sure there are lots of other ingredients that people can add, but again, I'm not too sure! Maybe I'll roast some garlic and mash that in? Let me know what other ideas you have =)

Thanks for reading!

Chocolate Brownie Cake - Gluten Free!

2011-11-25T20:08:00.001-05:00

I actually have no idea what to call this cake. The original recipe was called "Dark Goddess Cake" but I don't even know what that means. Think of a super dense, creamy and UBER moist brownie in cake form. But a coworker at the university was celebrating his 10 year anniversary at work, and I promised him a cake/some sort of baked goods over the summer. (Go phone reminders or else I would have completely forgotten!). I picked a gluten-free one because I didn't want him to be Pukezilla on his anniversary. Naturally.

When I had baked this cake, I was actually a little disappointed. I've never really baked a cake before (I know, I have a food blog and I've never made cake), and I was worried that it wouldn't work out. The directions said to bake at 350F for 50 minutes, and a toothpick should come out of the middle with a couple moist crumbs. When I did that, the toothpick (chopstick) I used came out caked in batter. So I left it in there after I did all the dishes from my cake-scapade (about 15-20 minutes). After that, the cake had doubled in size and I decided that it was time to take it out. The cake deflated in the middle but OMG it was delicious.

However, I was surprised by the amount of eggs in this recipe. I think there were about 8-10 slices in this cake, and depending on the size of the slice, you were almost eating one egg for each slice. It was bizarre but I'm DEFINITELY reusing this recipe in the future. It was unreal.

> Original Recipe <

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter
8 oz semi-sweet chocolate
4 oz 70% chocolate (I used 8 blocks of semi-sweet, 4 blocks of 70%, but I like dark chocolate)
7 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup almond flour
(1 tbsp vanilla) <=== I tooootally forgot this ingredient but it was delicious anyway.

Directions:

Chop the chocolate and butter so that it melts evenly and quickly.
Over a double boiler, melt the chocolate and butter until almost smooth, then remove from heat and stir to melt the remaining chunks. Set aside and let cool. Stir occasionally to keep smooth.
Whisk eggs until light and frothy (about 2-4 minutes by hand). Add brown and white sugar and mix until smooth.
Temper the chocolate into the eggs by slowly pouring it into the egg mixture and whisk vigourously. (This way you don't cook the eggs with the heat from the chocolate mixture). Switch to a spatula to incorporate the remaining ingredients.
Sift almond flour and cocoa powder into the batter and mix until incorporated. (My almonds weren't ground very finely so they're the chunks you see below)
Pour into a parchment paper lined (and then greased) 9" springform pan.
Bake at 350F until a toothpick comes out of the centre with a few moist crumbs. (about 50-70 minutes)
Let cool on a wire rack, then refrigerate overnight. This lets the chocolate flavour settle and get even more delicious. =P
Remove from pan. They'll be cracked but that's okay because it's delicious.
Dusk with powdered sugar to cover the ugly cracks...kind of.
Cut and OMNOMNOM that up.

This cake has changed my life.

Peppermint Patties

2011-11-22T19:14:00.001-05:00

One thing I absolutely LOVE about the holiday season is all the peppermint flavoured stuff. I love candy canes, peppermint patties, peppermint hot chocolates... gawww so delicious. Every year, I go on some sort of peppermint patty kick. The Pivik sells these 3-inch ones (Cadbury? Pep?) that last me about a week because they're so rich, but I just nibble on a bit of it every day.

Anyway, these are delicious, super easy, and are soooo pretty. That little "snap" the chocolate makes when you bite into it is so satisfying, that I procrastinated an assignment due tomorrow to make em. As usual.

I've included the original recipe, but I think I'll add some changes to it because I found it wasn't pepperminty enough. I also had a hard time trying to find something to cut the circles out because obviously cookie cutters are kind of ridiculously large, and all my glasses were slightly too large. OH MY GOD I JUST THOUGHT OF SOMETHING. I have shot glasses hiding somewhere. Okay. Note to self: Use shot glasses to cut out the circles next time.

Wow. Idiot.

Anyway. As you may see below, I started using the lid for my face cream (which I washed, obviously). It worked and because I could squish the cap, I could pop out the patties super easily!

LET'S GET CRACKALACKIN.

> Original Recipe <

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups icing sugar (plus some to dust like flour)
1/2 tsp peppermint extract (I think I'll use almost a tsp next time)
1 1/2 tbsp clear corn syrup
1 1/2 tbsp water
1 tbsp shortening (I don't think I like the taste though. I may try butter next time)
250 g of 70% chocolate. I used 2.5 (I ate some =P) Lindt bars. (100g each)

Directions:

In a bowl, combine icing sugar, peppermint extract, water, shortening, and clear corn syrup. Mix until incorporated.
Knead into a clump on a piece of parchment paper.
Roll the "dough" between two sheets of parchment paper until it's about half a cm thick. Or do whatever you want really. Stick it into the freezer for about 15 minutes until it's firm.
Before you start cutting, dust both sides with powdered sugar or else you'll have a hard time peeling them off the parchment paper. Then use your cutter-outer-face-cream-lid/shot glass to cut out circles.
Put those into the freezer to chill. The colder/stiffer they are, the easier they are to dip into the warm chocolate. Otherwise it kinda sticks to your fork.
Melt your chocolate in the microwave (30 seconds, stir, 30 seconds, stir, 10 seconds, and you should be good). Cool down the chocolate a bit by stirring it, and then start dipping yo patties. Just kinna throw those white circles of pepperminty goodness into the chocolate and flip them with a fork. Shake off the excess chocolate.
Set the dipped patties on parchment paper and chill them in the fridge until they're all matte and not melty anymore. Then OMNOMNOM.

I suggest storing them in an airtight container between layers of parchment paper or else stuff will stick. Then you'll get clumps of peppermint patties, which is UNFORTUNATE but ultimately delicious.

Guacamole

2011-11-20T15:01:00.001-05:00

Ever since I got back from NYC, I've been craving Mexican food pretty much every other day. So much so that I've been buying those No Name burritos from Pivik (it's a convenience store at uOttawa) to get my fix. While those burritos are surprisingly delicious, I decided to find me a good guacamole recipe that'll hit the spot.

I think Chipotle is widespread in the U.S. the way Thai Express is HUGE here. Unfortunately, while the U.S. has Tim Hortons now (*cries*), Canada is still lacking a decent Mexican fast food chain. I know Mucho Burrito exists but it's not nearly as popular as I know Chipotle is.

Anyway, the reason I mentioned Chipotle was because I had some of their guacamole when I was in NYC and OMG. Heaven. I had no idea what they put in that stuff because a) it was mushed into my gigantic burrito, and b) I was eating it too fast to try and figure it out.

I found this recipe that was supposedly like Chipotle's Guacamole recipe, and I liked what I saw, but I decided to add my own twists to it. Here's the recipe that inspired my post. I adjusted the amount of ingredients and added me some garlic, and voilà! DELICIOSO.

Tips/Things I learned:

I procrastinate too much with food.
How to chop an onion (Gordon Ramsay almost looks high in this though. The camera is like jumping around him all sporadically) <--Oy Meskey, I use that word cause of you. Oh memories.
Lime = delicious. Also helps keep the avocado from oxidizing.
When storing the guacamole, use some clear plastic wrap directly onto it to keep it from oxidizing. Squeeze out all the air and then cover with a lid. Yay no brown stuff!
While chopping the cilantro, I felt like I was at home. Mmmm so much Viet food has cilantro <3

Ingredients:

3 ripe avocados
1/2 cup finely diced red onion
1 lime, juiced
Half a jalapeño, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup cilantro, finely chopped
(I would have added salt, but the chips I was using to dip were really salty so I left it out)

Directions:

First, cut the avocados in half, and spoon out the delicious green superfruit into a bowl. Mash until it's kind of a chunky paste.
Add lime juice and mix until incorporated.
Add all the other ingredients. (Okay, so if you cut your stuff small enough, you could just eat it from here. But I don't like big chunks of onion, so I busted out the food processor).
Put the mixture into the food processor and "chop" it until the desired consistency. I didn't want it to be baby food, I just wanted to make the cilantro and onions smaller.
OM NOM NOM.

Funnel Cakes with Vanilla Ice Cream

2011-11-13T21:52:00.001-05:00

DOUBLE POST! So this past week has been the best week ever. I had a steady flow of work instead of having four things due all at once (this coming week, however, not so much). I went on a little macaron spree. I baked orange macarons with chocolate buttercream, then green macarons with mint chocolate buttercream. It was delicious. But they failed a little bit so I'll be posting a Macarons 2.0 post soon to divulge on that little adventure. But more on funnel cakes. And ice cream. OMG. So delicious. Yeah I went a little baking crazy this week =P

This week, I tried to get some of my posts on Foodgawker, and I was rejected. I was so sad! I tried to put up my crepes, Space Invaders cookies, and s'mores bars, but they said that the pictures were either overexposed or underexposed. But I'll do it one day. If you look back at some of my earlier pictures, the lighting is AWFUL and the composition is just mediocre. But like I said, I'll do it one day. My pictures have been getting better and better. Right?

But enough about my bruised ego.

Lets get STARTED. First, with the ice cream. (This was taken after it was in the freezer for about an hour. It was still pretty soft. But I just love the specks from the vanilla bean seeds!)

I really wanted to make some Fior di latte, one of Chris' absolute favourite flavours of gelato from Pure Gelato down the street. I gotta admit, that stuff is preeeetty tasty. It just tastes like fresh cream at a frozen state. It's freaking delicious. What I ended up making was vanilla ice cream but WOW that was probably the best vanilla I had ever tasted. It was unreal.

> Original Recipe <

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups heavy cream (whipping cream)
1 1/2 cups whole milk (I interpreted that as 2%)
1 cup sugar (I think next time I'll only use 1/2 or 3/4)
1/2 a vanilla bean, split lengthwise (to expose the seeds)

Directions:

In a pot, mix the cream, milk and sugar. Heat over medium heat (I put it on like, 5/9, where the 9 is technically "max")
Stir until the sugar dissolves, and keep stirring occasionally until the mixture heats up to a more tepid temperature (little bubbles will start to foam on the side).
Remove from heat and add the vanilla bean. Scrape the little seeds from the seed into the mixture. Iss gonna look soooo pwiddy.
Let stand for about half an hour, the mixture should cool to room temperature. Then put it in the fridge to chill for about 3 hours.
Remove the mixture from the fridge and take out the vanilla bean.
Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer's directions. See the consistency you want below. The ice cream will almost double in volume and it will look soooo delicious. I froze it to the point where if I scraped some ice cream out with the spoon, the ice cream didn't immediately start to melt from the temperature of the spoon. Taste tests are a must here ;)

Just look at that. It's so beautiful it makes me want to cry. Or eat it all.
Once frozen, put into a freezer-safe container to stiffen it up. (Obviously I ate some right away because it was sooooo good.)

Next, the funnel cakes.

Sorry about the lighting on that one. A little dark, but I'm too lazy to fix it.

So what is a funnel cake? These pastries are pretty much like Beavertails, minus the whole wheat. The batter was pretty similar to churros too, except funnel cake batter is much runnier. Sorry, getting off track. Funnel cakes are basically squiggly donuts covered in powdered sugar and cinnamon. DELICIOUS. They're called funnel cakes because the batter is put in a funnel, and then the baker lets go of the bottom and lets the batter run down into a squiggly circle pattern in hot oil. And like all things that are fried, they taste the best when they're fresh. They're hot, crispy, and are super delicious when topped off with cool whipped cream or even better, fresh, homemade ice cream =).

Believe it or not, it was really hard to get people to come to my house and eat these. I got my friends Andrew and Laura (and Chris, naturally) to come and eat my funnel cakes. Out of the 20 people I texted, maybe about 7 answered, and 3 came over! WHAT IS THIS!? I'm giving you people FREE food. C'MOOON.

Anyway, I had a hard time getting the consistency of the batter just right. I've seen funnel cakes get made before--the batter just seems to flow right out of the funnels. If you want the cakes to fry evenly, you're gonna have to make sure that batter gets from point A to point B fairly quickly and fairly evenly. I added about an extra cup of milk than the original recipe asked for, as well as a little more sugar because I didn't think it was sweet enough. But anyway, let's get started.

> Original Recipe <
Ingredients:

4 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white granulated sugar (I just wanted a bit of that refined, sugary sweetness)
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
about 3 cups milk, I might have had 4 in there by the end.
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (I think I used about 1 tsp)

A mixture of cinnamon and powdered sugar to dust on top. (I'd say like, 12 parts powdered sugar to 1 part cinnamon)

Directions:

Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Add both brown and white sugar (make sure you break up all the brown sugar chunks first. I didn't, and that was a pain)
In another bowl (I used a pitcher), whisk the eggs.
Add milk and vanilla extract to the eggs.
Gradually incorporate the dry mixture into the wet mixture. It'll be super super lump and gross. Keep stirring until you get kind of a nice, thickish pancake batter that runs off the spatula pretty quickly. Add milk until you get the desired consistency.
(This is obviously after using a lot of the batter, but I wanted to show you what it looked like)
Heat about an inch of oil in a large pan/pot/frying thing. I put it on medium heat and it was just right. If I had it on the 6, it was too hot and it would burn the batter. When it was on 4, it wasn't hot enough and it would take forever for the batter to fry. Do a couple tests to see when the oil is hot enough.
Squiggle the batter into the hot oil into a circular pattern, but make sure to criss-cross the batter or else it won't keep together and will be hard to flip over. Once one side is fried to a nice, deep golden brown, flip it over and fry that side until its done. For this, I used a squeeze bottle.
I actually found the tips for those a bit too small, so I ended up just using the pitcher. I may cut the tops of those squeeze bottles further down to get a bigger spout next time though.
Drain on a paper towel for about 10 seconds, and then top with the powdered sugar mixture.

My friends thought it would be a good idea to add ice cream. So I did and OH MY GOD. It was excellent.

OM. NOM. NAWWWM.

French Macarons

2011-11-06T16:36:00.001-05:00

I've been a little obsessed with macarons lately. It all started when one of my co-workers mentioned them and I thought to myself, despite all the baking and eating I love to do, I've never ever tasted a macaron. WHAT IS WITH THAT. To be honest, I couldn't even fathom what they even tasted like. And with that, I did some research. Probably about two weeks of it, too. (Chris was not impressed). The first batch I made, total failure. Tasty, but faiiiiil.

Macarons are a famous French meringue cookie with ganache or buttercream sandwiched inside. With the crispy outer shell and soft, chewy inside, this cookie is a delicacy that causes many bakers, both professional and amateur alike, a lot of grief.

I read a lot of different recipes that said that the egg whites had to be aged at least 24 hours. This means that the whites need to be separated from the yolks and be sitting at room temperature for 24 hours. I read somewhere that the proteins in the egg whites unwind as they age, which affects the structure of the meringue. Stella's Bravetart Myths about Macarons talks about how the age and temperature of the eggs don't even matter. And drying isn't necessary. And she prefers that the oven -isn't- cracked. So I had some hope.

However, the first four batches failed terribly. My macarons were flat, bubbly, crispy and did not have feet. (Feet are the bubbly layer that sticks out from underneath the shiny domes)

There are about a bajillion things that different recipes say to do: you gotta age the egg whites, dry the almond flour, dry the shells at least half an hour, crack open the oven...

It's exhausting.

Finally, I caved. I aged my egg whites, I dried my shells, and I cracked the oven open (granted my new cookie sheets were slightly too big for my oven so I had to put them in sideways and the sheet propped the door open). AND THEY WORKED. Though I may experiment next batch, because I think the fact that I used a kitchen scale to measure made this batch actually work.

Here are all the blogs I read that helped me the most:

(N.B. The pictures are kind of different colours because they're taken from different batches... That's why some of them are more red than others =P)

Ingredients: (recipe from BraveTart)

144 g egg whites, aged and room temperature. (I only aged for about 12 hours)
230 g powdered sugar
115 g almonds (I used blanched and slivered) - finely ground.
72 g granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp cocoa powder (I made them "red velvet"-y so there had to be a subtle chocolate flavour)
a dab of red colouring paste

Cream cheese icing:

1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 a package of cream cheese, room temperature
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
(I added some food colouring because I felt like it)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 300F.

Pulse the almonds in your food processor/blender until fine. Add half the powdered sugar and pulse until evenly ground. (I added the cocoa here)
Sift until you see the bigger chunks. Throw back into the food processor with the other half of powdered sugar and pulse into fine again.
Dump eggs and granulated sugar into a clean metal or plastic bowl. Whip on low setting until the eggs get a little foamy (about 2-3 minutes). Bring it up to medium speed until the eggs get a bit thicker (another 3 minutes). Once the eggs get to soft peak stage (see picture below), add the vanilla extract and colouring paste. Whip on high until the colouring is evenly distributed.
Add half the almond mixture on top of the meringue. Fold the meringue and almond mixture together. After about 10 folds, add the second half of the almond mixture. Make sure you scrape the sides and incorporate it all in.
After about 30 folds, it'll be kind of a lumpy, droopy mass. Around 40 strokes, when you hold up the spatula and drip the mixture back, it'll be a flat ribbon that'll incorporate back into the mixture.
Fill a piping bag with half the mixture (all of it probably won't fit into one), and pipe equal-sized rounds onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.
Let them dry while the oven preheats. The shells should be dry on the edges in order for the shells to bake up instead of expanding in the oven (this is how the feet develop).
Bake them for about 10 minutes, or until the meringue is completely set. You'll be able to tell when you touch the top of the shells and wobble 'em back and forth. If they still are wobbly, bake for another minute or two. Once they're stiff and lift completely off the paper, they be ready!
Peel off the parchment and let cool on a wire rack. Once completely cooled, match the shells to another one that's the same size and whip up that icing. Put that stuff in a bag.
Pipe a dollop of icing on one side of the shells, and gently sandwich on top. (Don't press in the middle, use the edges to squish down the shell)
And then...
OM,

NOM,

NOM.

Strawberry Pomegranate Sorbet

2011-11-04T19:40:00.002-04:00

Things I learned today:

Capitalism is going to destroy my future/translation as a profession. (Get rich schemes, translation marketplaces, and companies that want mediocre/terrible translations fast and cheap vs really good translations at a normal price and human speed. See? I paid attention to the guest speaker in class today.)
Asians' lack of nose-bridges make wearing glasses really hard. I didn't realize it was affecting me this much until today. My glasses won't stay on my face =(
Sorbet is lactose-intolerant friendly and is usually vegan, sherbet, on the other hand, sometimes is not. Sherbet can contain dairy, egg whites, etc.

So... my recent indulgence in an ice-cream machine (don't worry Mom, it was 30% off! I researched =D) had its first chance to bust out of the box today and give me something to blog about! I've been eyeing an ice cream machine for a couple years, but I never really thought about actually buying one until this summer. This thought was brought to you by the gross, humid and unbearable heat waves in Ottawa. I spent too much money buying gelato from Pure Gelato down the street, Baskin Robbins in St. Laurent and ooey gooey caramel sundaes from McDonalds. Yeah I know, I went from super delicious ice cream to weird sugar milk that's used for both milkshakes and ice cream in a fast food restaurant.

But enough about ice cream, more about sorbet.

> Original Recipe <

Ingredients:

1 cup POM pomegranate juice (I would have juiced it myself but I was lazy/wearing white)
1 cup sugar (I think you can cut it down to 1/2 or 3/4 though, it turned out really sweet)
1 tbsp lemon juice (I used the fake stuff because I was lazy)
1/2 tbsp cornstarch
3 cups of strawberries, hulled, puréed, and strained (pretty much one box of strawberries)

Directions:

Over medium heat, dissolve the sugar into the pomegranate juice until dissolved.
Separately, mix lemon juice and cornstarch until combined. Add to pot.
Simmer mixture for about 5 minutes until thick. (I didn't notice it getting thick until I removed it from heat after 5 minutes and let it sit for a bit. It got to a weird no-splash consistency...if that makes any sense.)
Meanwhile, hull and dice strawberries. Purée in a blender or food processor until smooth.
Pour into a fine mesh sieve and strain the mixture (I did this because Chris doesn't like strawberry seeds, dump it all in if you don't have a Chris).
You'll have some chunks left over, chuck em back into the food processor and then strain again. But I think chunkier bits would be delicious.
Pour the pomegranate mixture into the strawberry purée. Mix until incorporated. Let cool to room temperature then chill in the fridge.

But I'm impatient. =P
Once chilled (or room temperature), put it in your ice cream maker and turn it on! (Or manually mix or whatever your ice cream maker says to do)
Half an hour later, it should look all slushy-like.
Scoop into a freezer-friendly container and freeze until the desired consistency. (I froze it overnight)

Crepes

2011-10-25T18:56:00.002-04:00

Ottawa's famous for a lot of things, like Parliament, the Rideau Canal, or the Chateau Laurier, to name a few. There's also the Byward Market, which has a vast array of awesome things. From organic foods, to Beavertails, and creperies. The only problem with the Byward Market is that its SO EXPENSIVE. Six dollars for a dinky crepe with 2 cut up strawberries and a drizzle of chocolate. SIX DOLLARS. I could make way more than one crepe with six bucks.

Box of strawberries: 2.99

Eggs, flour and milk I already have in my fridge: ...$0?

Nutella already in my cupboard: ....$0???

Bananas I got from my Good Food Box: approx $1?

Yeah. Take that Byward Market.

Ingredients:

2 cups milk
5 tbsp melted butter, plus extra for the skillet
3 eggs, room temperature
1 3/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp sugar (optional for sweet crepes)

Different filling options:

Melted brie cheese with maple syrup
Bananas and nutella, dusted with icing sugar
Strawberries and bananas with nutella, dusted with icing sugar

Directions:

Whisk eggs and milk together until incorporated. Mix in flour, salt and sugar. Add vanilla extract.
Add melted butter and mix until completely incorporated. It's supposed to have the consistency of heavy cream, so add more milk if you find it's too thick.
Refrigerate for 2 hours for the bubbles to settle out of the batter.
Meanwhile, prepare your filling.
Once the batter is ready, heat your skillet over medium heat. Brush with a little bit of melted butter, you should be okay for butter after this first brush.
Pour the batter onto your heated skillet and tilt it until it's thinly spread around the skillet.
Once the edges of the crepe curve up, flip over the crepe and cook until there are browned bumps on the bottom.
Once cooked, put the crepe on a plate and separate with pieces of parchment paper. This'll make filling them easier cause they'll be easier to separate without ripping.
Fill with your choice of deliciousness and top it off with a light dusting of icing sugar

And then do as Chris does: OMNOMNOM

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

2011-10-17T02:05:00.001-04:00

We recently had a pumpkin carving event at the volunteer organization I work at and we picked out about four pumpkin's worth of pumpkin seeds. I decided to try roasting pumpkin seeds for the first time, and they were actually pretty easy. The only roasted pumpkin seeds I've ever eaten have been the bulk, hulled ones from Bulk Barn or in trail mixes. I started to eat them like I would eat a watermelon seed or a sunflower seed, but that took way too much effort because they don't have the same structural integrity as a watermelon seed.

So I just ate them whole. It was pretty delicious because that's where all the flavouring was anyway. Besides. Dietary roughage. Good for the poop-de-poop.

I can't remember where I saw the recipe, but the original measurements were for about 1 1/2 cups of pumpkin seeds and I probably had about 3 cups anyway, so here are the measurements I used. I also read in certain blogs that you shouldn't rinse the pumpkin seeds before roasting them because the pumpkin guts give them more flavour. I also saw a variation where you boil the seeds for about 10 minutes THEN roast them, which would give them a crispier texture. So feel free to experiment.

Ingredients:

3 cups pumpkin seeds (straight from the pumpkin, the stringy bits removed)
1 tbsp garlic powder (I might have used 2 tbsp...I don't remember)
2 tsp salt
1 tsp dried chili flakes
scant tsp ground pepper

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F

Mix all seasoning with the pumpkin seeds until evenly coated
Evenly spread seeds over a baking sheet
Bake until the seeds are golden and crispy. You may have to flip/move the seeds around every 7-10 minutes or so. I think I baked them for about 25 minutes.

Chocolate Mousse

2011-10-15T00:00:00.003-04:00

I always thought that mousse had to have raw eggs and a complex amount of heat and stirring. A vague memory of 14-year-old me in Southern-French exchange family is the cause of this assumption, but a wise food blogger commented once, "Mousse is a texture, not a set of ingredients". Because this mousse is made out of the following two ingredients: chocolate and water.

This mousse has a rich, velvety texture that just melts in your mouth despite how simple it is. I had this link saved in my "To Bake" bookmarks for the longest time, but I was only reminded of it from one of my classmates who was browsing Café Fernando beside me (it may or may not have been during class... haha).

A couple things to keep in mind:

If you use 70% dark chocolate, do taste tests to make sure that it's not too bitter for you.
The original recipe asked for 265g of chocolate, but I found it was really rich, so I think I'll only use 200g next time
Don't let the chocolate cool too quickly or else it'll stiffen before it's the right texture

> Original Recipe <
Ingredients:

265g of 70% dark chocolate
1 cup water
2 tsp sugar (optional)

Directions:

Chop your chocolate so it melts faster in a heatproof bowl
Over a double boiler, melt together the chocolate and water using a whisk. Don't keep the chocolate over the heat the entire time, just before it completely and smoothly melts, remove from heat and whisk until completely smooth.
Over a bowl of ice-water, whisk the chocolate to incorporate air. You'll feel the mixture thicken, and once it gets tougher to move around (kinda like below), remove from the cold and just whisk until it turns into a more mousse-y texture. I think I whisked it a little too much, now that I look at the original picture, maybe it shouldn't be that thick =P

Thanksgiving Dinner (Garlic Rosemary Roast, Stewed Carrots and Potatoes, and Gravy)

2011-10-12T17:13:00.000-04:00

I'm sure all of you had delicious, homemade turkeys with an array of Thanksgiving-y sides. I'm going to share my Thanksgiving adventure with you, because this was the first one I've ever attempted! As you can tell from the title, I made a garlic and rosemary beef roast with carrots, potatoes and mushrooms. I even made my own gravy! (I know it's simple, don't laugh at me. I grew up with canned gravy okay?)

A special thank you goes out to Chris for dealing with me when I was stressing about making all the food well and for peeling all the potatoes. And for mixing up the crepe batter for me (more about that later).

I did a lot of research for this roast (since I've never made one), and this included several blogs, how-tos, Chris' mom and friends. It turned out alright, it was kind of try despite being in the slow cooker, but that was my fault for putting in too many veggies.
Let's get crack-a-lackin.

Ingredients:

Roast and Potatoes

5 red potatoes, peeled and diced into 1-inch cubes
5 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
6-8 cremini and white mushrooms, washed and cut into quarters
1 box of Campbell's beef broth
1-3 tbsp of salt
1 tsp of garlic powder
1/2 tsp ground pepper
1 tsp of onion powder
5 cloves of garlic
3 large sprigs of rosemary, 2 sprigs for garnish
1 approximately 3 lb beef pot roast
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp of cornstarch (for the gravy afterwards)

Directions:

If you're removing the roast from the fridge, let it sit on the counter in the package for about 15-20 minutes to let it lose a bit of the coldness. It'll be juicier, so say the random articles I read.
Remove the roast from the package and rub in the salt and garlic powder and let it sit on a plate for about 30-45 minutes. The salt will break down the muscle in the meat and extract the juiiiices. Make sure you don't drain the juices, but kind of let them settle back into the meat. While the meat is getting salted, prepare the vegetables.
Peel and cut the potatoes, carrots and mushrooms. Set aside. Prepare garlic cloves and rosemary.
Melt butter in a preheated skillet over medium high heat, and start to brown the meat on each side. Browning brings out the flavour in the meat while you slow cook it, and it makes it look prettier. YAY.
Place your browned meat into the slow cooker and surround with the vegetables. (Surprisingly enough, root vegetables take longer to cook than the meat).
Sprinkle the onion powder and ground pepper over the meat. Pour the beef broth into the pot. The broth should go up at least half the side of the meat. Failure to do so will result in a dryer roast (this is what happened to me. Sadface.) Place garlic and rosemary alongside/on top of the roast/vegetables. Preferably submersed in the liquid, the garlic wil get kinna mushy afterwards but that's okay, because you can mash it into your gravy =)
As you can see, I didn't submerse my roasts (yes there were two) into the beef broth. That's bad. Don't do that.
Cook on low for about five hours, check the three or four hour mark to see the internal temperature of your meat. Here's an article that really explains the temperature:doneness ratio.
Once done to your liking, remove from the pot and let sit in a casserole and cover with tinfoil for about 15 minutes. This allows the meat to relax from the cooking and keep in its juices before you cut it.
Meanwhile, prepare the gravy.
Remove the vegetables then skim the gravy. I had weird grainy residue/fat stuff, so I skimmed all that out. Take the garlic from your mixture and mash it with a fork to add to the gravy.
Mix the cornstarch with about a cup of the liquid/drippings, then pour the liquid, garlic and the cornstarch mixture into a pot. Bring to a boil and let simmer until it's a desired gravy-ey consistency.
Arrange things to your liking on your table.
Cut the roast across the grain and not with the grain. I read somewhere that cutting with the grain that makes puppies die. Don't want that.
OMNOMNOM

P.S. You're going to have SO much gravy. You should make mashed potatoes.

So yeah. SOOO MUCH FOOOOD. Here's a sneak peek of a blogpost soon to come =)

Garlic Linguine with Spinach, Tomatoes, and Pesto Goat Cheese

2011-10-09T22:05:00.000-04:00

So it's pretty obvious that I blog my baked goods way more than I blog normal food. Obviously, I still eat normal food. I just find that it's not normally that pretty enough to blog. Or it's something I've already blogged. Or it's something like pasta and pesto sauce... But yes. I was at La Bottega and I saw this pasta that was fancy looking, and this delicious-looking goat cheese. I was wandering the produce isles and I was trying to figure out what goes delicious with goat cheese.

I figured it'd been a while since I posted something dinner-y so here it is! Goat cheese is delicious.

Ingredients:

2 handfuls of linguine (4 servings worth)
1 bunch of spinach
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
Grape tomatoes, cut in half
Goat cheese, sliced

Directions:

Prepare the pasta, drain and set aside.
Meanwhile, heat the olive oil on medium-low heat and cook the garlic cloves until they're a light golden brown. Be careful because if you burn the garlic, it gets really bitter. Gross. Toss the pasta into the olive oil/garlic mixture.
Prepare an ice bath.
Boil water, and then cook the spinach for about a minute/it goes soft. The spinach will turn a beaaautiful bright green, and the second that happens, shock the spinach by putting it directly into the ice bath. If you cook it too long it'll be a weird, dead green colour.
Shove everything together, and OMNOMNOM. =)

Banana Cupcakes with Honey-Cinnamon Frosting

2011-10-04T21:18:00.001-04:00

One thing I like to know about people is how they like bananas. My mom likes them when they're kind of on the brink of being green, Chris likes them when they're PERFECTLY yellow, my other friend likes them lightly ripe and I have another friend who likes them as ripe as possible. I personally like them in between green and yellow. I prefer perfectly yellow, but they're delicious if their edges are tinged green too. My point is, I bought a bunch of bananas and forgot about them--so naturally I had to bake something.

I'm also baking these for the Mental Health Campaign at the University of Ottawa, which has a Mental Health Fair TOMORROW! So you should all come to the Roaming Bake Sale and buy one of these cupcakes. They're pretty! And pretty good. Although the icings a little grainy because I ran out of icing sugar. Oops. Still delicious!

I don't know what it is about Martha Stewart recipes, but they always suck whenever I try them out. This is like that fourth time that the outcome hasn't been exactly what I wanted. But never fear! I had three test tasters for this food adventure, and all of them agreed that despite the grainy icing, it was still delicious.

> Original Recipe <
Ingredients:

4 overripe bananas, mashed
1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Icing:

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cup icing sugar (I did not have any. Huge fail)
1 tbsp honey (because I had a lot of sugar and not enough liquidy/viscous stuff, I added more of this and a lot of whipping cream.)

If all else fails, follow the original recipe. XD

Directions: (sorry these are rushed. I have to go! I'll edit this later I suppose)

Preheat oven to 350F

Sift all dry ingredients together. Make a well in the middle.
Add all wet ingredients. Mix until incorporated. Do not overmix--this will result in tough, chewy cupcakes.
Spoon into paper-lined cupcake baking pan.
Bake for about 15 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when you poke the centre of a cupcake.
Remove and let cool on a wire rack.
Meanwhile, cream the butter and sugar together, add honey and cinnamon and mix until smooth. (Or as smooth as it gets). Spread or pipe over cupcakes.
OMNOMNOM.

I couldn't really decide between the two shots I took so here's both! Thanks again Alex, Andrew and Chris for being my taste testers =)

Come out and buy one to support the Mental Health Campaign on October 5! UCU Concourse between 10 and 3!

Pumpkin Cheesecake Cupcakes

2011-10-02T12:22:00.002-04:00

In the past, I've always said that fall is my favourite season. However, after having experienced the transition from warm summer to chilly fall, I think I like winter much more. I'm more prepared for cold in the winter than I am for fall. Fall catches me off guard sometimes (e.g. yesterday when I wore a knee-length pencil skirt to work, which was fine; then I froze my butt walking home in the chilly rain, which was not so fine.) One thing about fall that is better than winter though, is the fall flavours. All of the pumpkin spice, the cinnamon, the first taste of delicious hot chocolate that warms you from the inside and seems to spread the warmth down to your toes... I love fall-tasting things.

What better than some pumpkin spiced cheesecakes to make me feel better about coming home and bundling in socks and sweatpants? This baking adventure was inspired by a combination of the canned pumpkin sale at the grocery store and an old post by Nicole from Pinch My Salt. And I guess Chris was getting mad at me for giving away all of my baked goods before he could go for thirds and fourths...AND I made some big life decisions this week and I needed to unwind.

LET'S GET STARTED.

> Original Recipe <

Ingredients:

Crust:

1 cup graham cracker crumbs
2 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp melted butter
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg

Cheesecake filling:

1/2 cup canned pumpkin (I probably used 2/3 cup though)
1 block of cream cheese (250 g)
1 egg, 1 egg white (lightly beaten)
2 tbsp maple syrup
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1 pinch of cloves (I might have used 2 pinches =P)

Whipped cream:

1 cup whipping cream (on sale! whee!)
2 tbsp powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F

1. Mix nutmeg, cinnamon, graham cracker crumbs, brown sugar, maple syrup and butter to make a moist crust. Spoon into a lined cupcake tray and gently pack down the crust with the bottom of a glass or the back of a spoon. Set aside.

2. Cream the cream cheese until smooth (or else you'll get small chunks of cream cheese like me. Oops. Things you learn.)
3. Add the pumpkin puree, beaten egg, maple syrup, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves and mix until smooth. I used an electric mixer because I was lazy. Then I had to use a whisk because I didn't cream my cream cheese first.

4. Spoon into the cups.

5. Bake for just under 15 minutes or until the cupcakes are poofy BUT not cracked. Cracked means cooked too much and the residual heat from the pan while it cools should cook it all the way.

6. Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack. They'll be poofy at first but then they'll shrink down to this size.
7. Meanwhile, prepare the whipped cream by whisking the cream until it's thicker. I added the sugar, cinnamon and vanilla halfway though and then whisk it until stiff peaks form. Yay for whisk attachment on my electric mixer! Took me about 5 minutes =)
8. Either dollop or pipe the whipped cream over the cheesecake cupcakes and then OMNOMNOM.

Tip: Cheesecake is always more delicious when refrigerated overnight because the cream cheese absorbs the flavour and makes it full of awesome.

Lemon Squares

2011-09-30T18:51:00.003-04:00

So it was only a matter of time that I posted these lemon squares. I've been using this recipe for over a year now. THESE. ARE. SO. DELICIOUS. I've probably made these at least 10 times in the last year because a) I LOVE lemons; b) Chris eats about three in one sitting; and c) these are so seriously addicting. I used to think that lemon squares were gross things that grandma's made...kind of what I used to think about date squares too. BOY WAS I WRONG.

These are actually the most delicious things ever.

> Original Recipe <

Ingredients:

Crust:

1/2 cup butter/margarine
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 cup flour

Top layer:

1 cup sugar
2 eggs
juice from one lemon (about 1/3 cup)
zest from one lemon (about 1 tbsp)
2 tbsp flour (although I forget to add this ingredient a lot. Don't do that.)
powdered sugar to sprinkle on top =)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F

1. Cream the butter into the powdered sugar. If you want a flakier crust, cut the butter, sugar and flour together with a pastry knife or a food processor. It'll look crumbly like so.

2. Press it into a parchment paper-lined 8x8 pan.

3. Bake for about 15-20 minutes until the edges are lightly browned. I like the crust to be a bit softer, so I do it so it's just slightly undercooked.

4. While the crust is in the oven, cream the eggs and sugar until smooth.
5. Add the lemon juice, flour, and zest and mix until incorporated.
6. Once the crust is done, pour the mixture on top and bake for about 15-20 minutes, the topping will be set. You'll know its set when the outsides of the square will be kind of puffy and there'll be small bubbles near the top.

7. Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack. Once it's cool, remove from the pan, and cut into squares (4x4 so 16 squares).
8. Dust with powdered sugar in a sieve, and serve warm. What I like to do is freeze them, and they are AMAZING straight from the freezer.

OMNOMNOM.

Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

2011-09-24T00:17:00.001-04:00

So I decided to go back to something sweet tonight. One of my coworkers ALWAYS brings overripe bananas that are perfect for baking. I'm a little sick of banana bread and banana muffins from making it too much a couple summers ago, so I opted for some banana chocolate chip cookies!

These are super soft with super yummy chunks of banana and chocolate. That's all I've really got to say about them =P

> Original Recipe <
Ingredients:

2 overripe bananas
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups flour
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F

Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.
Add egg and vanilla and mix until incorporated. Careful not to overmix.
Add bananas (now you can either lightly mash em and leave chunks, or you can smush them completely so they're completely incorporated into the cookie. I opted for the former).
Mix in the flour and baking soda.
Optional: add in the chocolate chips.
Spoon onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet about 2 inches apart and bake for 8-10 minutes (the edges will start to brown and the tops will stop looking so wet).
Let cool on a wire rack and OMNOMNOM!

Creamy Homemade Hummus

2011-09-18T00:49:00.004-04:00

So anyone who's been to Walmart or Stokes with me knows that I am obsessed with all kitchen appliances and accessories. I don't know what it is. Even before I was big into cooking, I remember going to Walmart with one of my floor mates in residence and having him whine about me spending too much time looking at grapefruit spoons. I don't know what it is, different sizes of spatulas and plate designs are exciting!

But more about hummus. I used to think the idea of hummus was gross. First of all, the aesthetics of the sound "hummus" just sound gross. It sounds like something you scrape off the bottom of a turtle's belly. Or your shoe, but that could also be called gum. Second of all, it looks like a chunky weird-coloured sour cream. Bleh weird consistency. But yes, it sounds super gross. How did I hear about it? Well, I remember being in grade 6 and my classmate was eating hummus and breadsticks, and she let me try it and my mind was BLOWN.

Something about the light, garlicky sesame taste with the slightly grainy texture makes it a chip dip that doesn't make you hate yourself. I've tried so many hummuses from different places: the grocery store, a lebanese shawarma place and Café Alt. They've ranged from being gross, to being alright, to be absolutely delicious. Actually in the same order that I mentioned them. But yeah. I StumbledUpon this recipe and it just looked so delicious...and easy. AND I also just bought a food processor and I was really excited to try it. So here goes.

> Original Recipe <

Ingredients:

2 cups dried chickpeas
2 tbsp baking soda, then 1/2 tsp for cooking
1/2 cup tahini
juice from 1 lemon
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
approx. 1 cup water
***Afterwards I added about 2-3 tbsp of olive oil
1 package of pitas

Directions:

1. Soak chickpeas in water overnight with 2 tbsp of baking soda.

2. In the morning, rinse the peas again and submerse them in a fresh bath. The peas should be doubled in size by the end of the soaking.

3. Skim the loose peels out and then transfer to a pot of water with 1/2 tsp baking soda. Cook until really tender. Regularly skim the top and loose grain shells. You'll see the water change colour and when you pop one in your mouth you'll just feel the grains melt =) This took about 45 minutes over medium heat.

4. Drain and transfer to your food processor. Process until pureed, you may need to add some water to help it mix. Add the olive oil, tahini, salt, lemon juice, cumin and garlic cloves. Puree until smooth and delicious. The recipe recommended to make it thinner than you want because it'll dry out really fast.

5. Preheat oven to 325F. Rip up pitas to dippable sizes and bake until they're dry and crispy-looking. Then omnomnom!

It makes so much. My food processor is just kinda tiny so I had to make several batches and then mix it all in a big bowl. Sorry I didn't take any pictures of it, it got a little messy with the scooping of stuff in and out of my tiny food processor.

But yes! Results were surprisingly delicious. Though the process was kind of time consuming, I'd probably make this again because it's sooooo cheap!

**Afterward edit: So after refrigerating it chilled to a weird consistency, so I put it back in the food processor with some olive oil and water. All better!

Caprese Pesto Sandwich

2011-09-15T22:05:00.001-04:00

So it occurred to me that most of my food doesn't have much very much colour, so I bought some stuff to make my posts a little more colourful. But on a food-related note, why caprese pesto you ask? Well at my university, there's a student-run café called Café Alternatif, which sells tons of delicious sandwiches on probably the best bread I've ever had. But the last time I went since they've opened for the new school year, they only had grilled cheese, and then "italian" grilled cheese. It had pesto, bocconcini and tomatoes. The bread was alright, but I really thought to myself that I could make a better one. So I did.

Super easy and cheap. It's pretty straight forward but I'll tell you what I used

Ingredients:

2 tbsp pesto
5 slices of Silani mozzarella cheese (the real stuff)
4 slices of tomato (of the one with the vine still attached in the tomato)
Tuscan Herb Thintini bread
Fresh basil

Directions:

Plug in that amazing George Foreman Grill and let it preheat nicely.
Layer up the ingredients and stick the sandwich into the grill until the cheese gets all melty.
Omnomnom <3

S'more Bars

2011-09-08T23:16:00.001-04:00

I know it's been over a week since I posted, but I have an excuse! I've literally been spending 90% of my awake time on campus flashing shiny promo things in first year's faces, or making sure they get home safe when they're drunk from going to Hull. I don't know what it is about this year, but my impatience for first year university students has seriously gone over the edge. I just don't understand how some of them got into university. I'm actually astounded.

But more about s'mores.

I know it's fall time now, and the time for s'mores is over. But I think I just wanted that final taste of summer before we can't enjoy the summer fruits and iced tea on patios anymore. Also I wanted to bake so badly and this is all I had. Because I bought the stuff to make this months ago.

XD

> Original Recipe <

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter (omit 1/4 salt if you used salted butter)
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/3 cups flour
3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
1 of those gigantic chocolate bars from the grocery store
1 normal sized chocolate bar
most of a jar of marshmallow Fluff

Preheat oven to 350F
Directions:
1. Cream together the butter, brown sugar and white sugar until its schmooooth.

2. Mix egg and vanilla extract in until incorporated. Don't overmix. Eggs are finicky lil buggers.
3. Add flour, (salt if needed), graham cracker crumbs and baking powder and mix until evenly incorporated

4. Press half of the dough into the bottom of a greased/lined 8x8 pan.

5. Set up a layer of chocolate =) I didn't anticipate having that empty space in the corner cause I thought it was a huge chocolate bar, but luckily I had a spare Aero bar kicking around. Random, but convenient.

6. Spread the marshmallow Fluff on top of the chocolate. I forgot to take a picture before I started putting on the top layer of dough...so there's some chunks there. Just ignore those.

7. Gently press the remaining dough on top of the bars.

8. Bake for 30 minutes until it's lightly goldened and delicious looking.

9. Let cool on a wire rack until completely cool. Then cut em up and OMNOMNOM.

French Onion Soup

2011-08-29T22:48:00.001-04:00

I'd like to proudly say that this is my first actual original recipe. I've tried out tons of other French onion soup recipes but so many of them call for wine, or they're too complicated with all these random liqueurs to put in them. I say, NOTHXGAIZ cause that requires extra money at the LCBO and I'd rather spend that money on flour or sugar for my next baking endeavour =P

I go through phases and lately my most frequent phase has been soup. That sounds weird. I feel like whatsherface from Juno who always smells like soup. I'm Soupy Sales D8 (<==that's a distraught face). My house has smelled like chicken noodle soup for the last little while (been too lazy to cook real food). One time I was out for dinner, one of my friends was thoroughly enjoying her French onion soup and it has sent me on the search for delicious French onion soup (that's right Stef, you have made me want French onion soup for -weeks-).

So yeah.

My recipe..? =D

Ingredients:

3 large onions, cut in half and then sliced
3 tbsp margarine (or butter)
1 tsp sugar
8 cups of beef broth
a pinch of dried rosemary
2 pinches of dried oregano
Sourdough bread, sliced
Mozzarella cheese, sliced, with some chunks to drop into the soup

Directions:

1. Cut up all the onions. (Mandolin ftw! No more crying! Contacts + onions = TEARS OF DOOM)

2. Over medium heat, heat up the butter until melted, then add the onions. Coat the onions in the butter and bring the heat down to about 3 or 4 and cover the onions with buttery goodness. After about 10 minutes, add the sugar in to help them brown. Cover the pot and stir occasionally.

3. After about half an hour, your onions will look like this. Yummm I could just eat those like that. Not a fan of raw onions, but caramelized onions...mouthgaaasm.

4. While those onions are cookin' away, prepare your beef broth with the dried herbs so that they seep into the broth. Once the onions are prepped, add in the broth and let that simmer on medium-low heat for about another half hour. Just so the goodness seeps in. So much goodness. Preheat the oven to broil at 350F.

5. When it's steeped with oniony sweet deliciousness, spoon it out into an oven-safe container, put chunks of cheese in the soup, then top with bread and cover the bread with more cheese. Broil until the cheese is browned and melty.
6. You folks know what to do.

...omnomnom.

Space Invaders Pixel Cookies

2011-08-28T14:15:00.002-04:00

PEW PEW! I decided to embrace the ultimate nerd baker in me this weekend by making these really awesome yet really time consuming cookies. It was like, let's take the inner child that still wants to play with PlayDoh, but make that PlayDoh delicious and edible. Not like Poseidon's salty sphincter. Happy Belated Birthday to Matt! I told you I'd make these for your birthday like ages ago...so, here they are! I have a dozen set aside for you. Cause you rock.

So like I said, these cookies took me about 2 hours to assemble. I also ran into some ingredient-related issues where I had a little but less than a cup of butter so I had to add extra cream cheese to make the dough still... doughy and not crumbly chunks of butter in flour. You're gonna need to dig out your old PlayDoh extruder (you know that thing you shoved PlayDoh into and then squeezed out long squiggles or squares) or buy one from ToysRUs.

Also, every time you work with the dough, its always -way- easier to work with when cold. Unbelievable difference. JUST SO YOU KNOWZ.

But let's get started.

This is the template for the space invader design. I was going to do the 1up mushroom from Mario, but that involved three colours instead of two and I didn't feel like trying to make black out of food colouring. So yeah. I think it worked out to 53 green squares and 43 normal coloured squares, so I divided the colours up to one chunk being ever so slightly bigger than the other.

Worse comes to worse, its better to make less green than too much, because you can always add food colouring.

> Original Recipe <

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cups sugar (use a food processor or a blender to make it super fine, this way your cookie isn't as grainy)
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks or half of one of those big bricks)
1/4 tsp salt (omit this if you used salted butter)
2 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp cream cheese (I used probably about 1/4 cup of cream cheese though because I didn't have enough butter)

Directions:

1. Cut the butter into the flour, salt, sugar until you get clumps of dough. Add cream cheese and vanilla until an actual dough forms. You may need to add more cream cheese or flour depending on the texture of the dough.

2. Divide your dough appropriately (if you're using the space invader design, basically split it half and half and then take a chunk of one and add it to the other. If you're afraid you're not going to have enough white dough, make more white dough than green, 'cause like I said earlier, you can always add more food colouring.

3. Add food colouring. I probably used about 8-10 drops green, and 2 drops yellow. Mix the colouring into the dough.

4. Wrap the two chunks of dough and flatten them into discs. Chill in the fridge for about an hour or two, the colder the better. The dough is easier to extrude and work with when its super stiff.

5. Start extruding the dough, start with the white first so that the green doesn't ~~contaminate~~ dye any of the white dough.

6. Start the first layer of your design on top of some saran wrap. It's easier to wrap it in the end if you start on saran wrap. Make sure you straighten it so that when you pull the saran wrap, the lines don't move.

7. Keep building =)

8. Once you get the final layer, stand back and admire. Then gape at the clock because at least an hour has passed by. But it's okay, because you were 5 again for an hour. Wrap it up in plastic wrap and gently flatten the layers together. This way you know all the "pixels" will stick together when you bake em. Once you have a good solid block, let it chill in the fridge again for another couple hours until it's a legitimately a cold, hard brick.

9. Use a sharp knife to cut them into cookie slices =) I made them pretty thin because I wanted a lot of cookies to share. I also wanted an army. =P

10. Bake in the oven at for about 7-8 minutes or until you see the edges start to look a little golden. Be careful though, the thinner they are, the faster they can get super crispy and not very tasty.
11. Remove and let cool on a wire rack.

12. Pretend to shoot them and then eat them. omnomnom.
The ends'll be a little special. =P

Clicky below to get me on StumbleUpon =)

Peanut Butter Cups

2011-08-20T16:55:00.001-04:00

Or should I say, Lisa's Peanut Butter Cups? Doesn't have the same delectable ring as Reese's though. I love the combination of peanut butter and chocolate about as much as I love lemon. I'm actually surprised I haven't done more posts using this delicious combination of flavours. But yeah, these were actually really easy to make. I thought that it'd be hard to coat the sides in chocolate evenly, but alas, it wasn't.

I did, however, discover that my hands have gotten really shaky lately. I blame my excessive gaming. But shaky hands + chocolate + tiny paper cups = chocolate all over your hands. But chocolate's tasty and that's what paper towels are for =P

Original Recipe

Ingredients:

3/4 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup icing sugar
2 tbsp graham cracker crumbs
1 box of semi-sweet baking chocolate (225g)

Directions:

1. Mix peanut butter, icing sugar, and graham cracker crumbs in a bowl until incorporated.

2. Transfer to a piping bag/ziploc bag. You don't really need a piping tip for this, just snip off a corner. Don't make the corner too small or else you'll have a hard time squeezing the mixture out; it's kinda thick =P

3. Line 24 mini-muffin tins with paper cups. Set aside

4. Chop the baking chocolate into smallish pieces. This way it takes less time to melt and you don't risk burning the chocolate. Set the knife over the chocolate and firmly press down on the back of the blade. This means less effort! Yay! No sawing through hard, dense, chocolate.

5. Transfer to a heat-proof bowl. Look at alllll that chocolate ^___^

6. Over a pot with hot water on medium heat, melt the chocolate until smooth. Once completely melted, removed immediately. Don't want to burn it, chocolate is pretty sensitive to heat.

7. With a small spoon. spoon about a tsp of chocolate into the cups and cover the liner with chocolate. It's actually easier to pick up the liner and do it in your hand but I lined the cups ahead of time so I didn't fumble with chocolate while trying to separate the paper liners. Put these in the freezer for about 4-5 minutes or in the fridge for 8-10.

8. I forgot to take a picture of piping the peanut butter into the cups but it's pretty self explanatory. Pipe 3/4 full.
9. You may have to reheat the chocolate so it's melty and delicious again, but only for about 2-3 minutes over medium heat. With a small spoon, cover the peanut butter mixture with chocolate.

10. Chill in freezer/fridge again, and then OMNOMNOM.

You know what to do.

Tips:

Keep in the fridge. They melt like nobody's business.
Consume with milk <3

Marshmallows

2011-08-14T11:31:00.002-04:00

I think one of my favourite things about camping are the s'mores. Graham crackers with melted chocolate and ooey gooey toasted marshmallow squished in between. Accompanied by a glass of cold milk. YUM. But yeah, when I first started baking, joyofbaking.com was basically my go-to-guide for baking. I really like that website because the creator, Stephanie, always puts really cool histories of the recipe into her introductions.

I just talk about what I like and why I started making it. It was a pretty time consuming process but I had my friend Deirdre help me out with these and we got some pretty amazing pictures! There's particularly one shot that Deirdre had that was EPIC! You guys can see it down below.

Original Recipe

Ingredients:

2 gelatin packages of 15mL
2 cups of sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup cold water
2 tsp vanilla extract
icing sugar for dusting

Directions:

1. Spray a 9x13 inch pan with non-stick spray and then line the bottom with parchment paper. Dust the entire pan with icing sugar.

2. You're going to have to use a hand mixer or stand mixer of some sort for this recipe, so in the bowl that you'll mix the ingredients in, combine 1/2 cup cold water and gelatin and let the gelatin settle. It'll turn into this weird grainy mixture.
3. In a small pot, combine the sugar, corn syrup, salt, and 1/2 cup water and stir over medium heat until it starts to boil.
4. Once it's bubbling, stop stirring and let boil until 240F. Make sure you actually go until 240F, I only went to 235F because I find that my thermometre reads slowly, but my marshmallows turned out really gooey.

5. At 240F, slowly trickle the hot mixture into your mixing bowl with your mixer on low.

6. Gradually bring it up to high to get it super fluffy! This'll take about 10 minutes to triple in volume.

LOOK HOW COOL IT LOOKS. Yay high shutter speed and whirring mixers =D

7. Once tripled in volume, add 2 tsp of vanilla extract. Thanks Deirdre for this WICKED shot!

8. Continue to mix on high until the vanilla's incorporated.

9. Spoon it out into your prepared pan.

10. Dust the top with icing sugar, then let sit for 12 hours to set. I know it sounds like a lot, but when I tried to cut it after 10 hours it was still super gooey. I actually probably waited for about 18 hours, cause waking up at 4 am was not an option for me.

11. Once set, run a butter knife around the edge to loosen it from the pan. Invert it onto a icing sugar dusted surface and use the butter knife to loosen the mixture off of the parchment paper.

12. Coat it in icing sugar and use a sharp knife or scissors to cut them into squares. Dunk them in icing sugar or else they'll be sticking to anything and eveeeerrrryyything. Mine were. Well they were super gooey anyway.

So yeah! They looked SUPER COOL and the marshmallow fluff was delicious from licking the spoon, but I found that the end result was actually REALLY sweet. If I ever make them again I would also suggest actually heating it to the correct temperature or you're get really gooey ones like I did. Oops!

Special thanks to Deirdre for helping me out!

Cucumber Avocado Soup

2011-08-10T17:54:00.002-04:00

Hmm. I'm going on a little bit of a food blog RAMPAGE right now. But it's because there are so many things I want to make! In my last post I talked about things I ate at the wedding I was just at; this soup wasn't at the wedding but it was something Chris' mom ordered at a restaurant. It seemed really intriguing and I wanted to try it. It was quite interesting, to say the least.

You're going to have to be a BIG fan of cucumber and avocado for this soup. I saw a recipe for just a cucumber one but it had too much stuff and I couldn't be bothered. I also just wanted to take pretty pictures of food with my shiny new 50 mm lens! Cheapest lens I've bough so far, and the COOLEST. LOOK AT ALL THE BOKEH (fancy photography term for blur). And I went to the dollar store for some cheap dishes for display. The margarita glass and gold plate were only a couple of several purchases. Margarita glass was not my idea though. I saw a couple different recipes with different displays, some with martini glasses, some in fancy dessert bowls... etc.

But lets get started, shall we?

Original Recipe

Ingredients:

2 field cucumbers, diced (I like field more than English cucumbers. I dunno why)
1 ripe avocado, diced
1/2 cup of chopped chives (I thought that green onions would be too strong)
1 lime, juiced
1 jalapeño, diced (I used only half the seeds, but I think I should have used it all. Not spicy enough.)
1 cup whipping cream
1 cup milk
a pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Peel the cucumbers, then cut in half lengthwise and use a spoon to scoop out the seeds. If you want to have fancy garnish and stuff, slice off a couple slices of cucumber and dice some cucumber before you de-seed it for some substance in the soup.

2. Chop the cucumber into small pieces so that your blender doesn't have to do much work, or if you just have a magic bullet like me... well, I did it because it wouldn't fit otherwise. Toss these puppies into whatever blending contraption you own.
3. Chop the chives and avocados and add 'em to your blending contraption. (No picture of avocado because they were too slimy and I didn't want to touch my camera =P)

4. Squeeze the juice of one lime into the concoction. WHEEE too much fun with this new lens.

5. Pour your whipping cream and milk into the mixture and top with just a pinch of salt. I kind of used two pinches. SO WHAT?

6. WHHHHRRRRRRRRR (thats the blendy sound).
7. Since I had to use two separate cups for blending, I poured the two mixtures into a bigger container to make sure everything was evenly incorporated. Mix that up, and let it chill for a few hours so the flavours get absorbed into the milk/cream.
8. Serve cold =)

So yeah. Final verdict?

You must really really like cucumber and avocado.
If you're a texture-iffy kinna person, I do not recommend eating this =P
Let the flavours settle before you actually eat it. I ate it immediately after and it kinda tasted like creamy milk with chunks in it. It was okay haha.
Use exactly one cup of cream. I had maybe like one cup and 1/8 cup. It was a bit too thick. If anything, use less. More milk. 40/60 ratio methinks.

If you're going to try this, go looking around for different recipes. PinchMySalt did a post on this and posted a lot of different recipes. Some required using the stove and some had a bunch of ingredients I had never heard of (tarragon being one of them.... funny enough, I've definitely eaten tarragon before).

Strawberry and Spinach Salad

2011-08-08T18:50:00.001-04:00

The thing about going to places where there's TONS of food (aka a wedding) is that I get to try so many different things that I want to eat. The wedding I was just at had probably the best potato salad I'd ever had, a variation of this salad, delicious cabbage rolls, the best chicken I've ever had, and strawberry shortcake! And somebody had cucumber soup, which really intrigued me. I think that may be my next adventure, but for my current endeavour, the strawberry salad I had was really good. The one at the wedding had a creamier sauce, but I was more interested in a light, oil-based one instead of cream-based.

I think the greatest thing about this salad is that it's PACKED with healthy stuff. I love strawberries about as much as I love lemons, and everybody who watched Popeye knows that spinach is a super food. Pecans add the contrasting crunch to this super tasty salad. And to top it off, LEMON JUICE in the dressing =P. I had to have lemons somewhere...

Original recipe

Ingredients:

Baby spinach
Strawberries, sliced
Pecans, chopped
Half a lemon, juiced
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tbsp honey
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Prepare the spinach, pecans and strawberries. Chuck 'em in some sort of eating receptacle. Set aside.
Mix lemon juice, olive oil, honey, and a bit of salt and pepper. (I put it in a jar and shook it until the honey was incorporated)
Drizzle over the salad
NOM NOM NOM.

Lemon Cupcakes

2011-08-05T10:16:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty sure you folks are well aware that I love lemons a lot. The crisp, sweet taste just makes everything better. I baked these cupcakes for one of Chris' cousin's weddings because I didn't know what else to give them other than a bottle of wine. And I really like piping?

So the instructions for this recipe weren't really that logical, so I've altered some of the steps to make for a better batter and stuff.

Original Recipe

Ingredients:

(cake batter)

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup softened butter (or margarine)
2 large lemons

1 tbsp zest (you'll need more for the icing)
1/4 cup lemon juice (strained)

3/4 cup milk

(icing)

1/2 cup cream cheese
4 cups icing sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp zest

Preheat oven to 350F

Directions:

1. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth.

2. Add eggs, milk, lemon juice and zest. Mix until incorporated.

3. Add flour, salt, and baking powder. Mix until completely smooth. (I have some lumps down there because the recipe didn't ask to cream the butter and sugar together first)

4. Spoon into muffin/cupcake liners 3/4 full.

5. Bake for about 20-30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean

6. Let cool on a wire rack for about 20 minutes.
7. Meanwhile, cream the cream cheese until smooth.
8. Add lemon zest and lemon juice and mix until incorporated.
9. Gradually add the icing sugar until you get a nice, dense icing.
10. Spread onto cooled cupcakes or put into a piping bag and pipe swirls on top.
11. NOM NOM NOM.

Chewy Oatmeal Cookies

2011-08-02T22:27:00.001-04:00

Be amazed that this picture actually did not require any editing whatsoever. Ignore the fuzzy mess in the background. I was pretty impressed by the awful lighting in my kitchen. My white balance isn't even that bad! And my little cup of perfectly white milk just looks grand beside this plate of cookies. I feel like this should be beside the fireplace for Santa or something. Why the baking rampage you ask? Today was a very sad day, so naturally, I baked cookies.

Original Recipe from Better Homes and Gardens, The Ultimate Cookie Book.

Ingredients

1 cup margarine
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3 cups rolled oats
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
2/3 cup butterscotch chips

Preheat to 350F

Directions:

1. Cream together margarine, brown sugar, sugar, baking soda and salt.

2. Add the eggs one at a time and mix until incorporated.

3. Mix in the 3 cups of rolled oats (yeah I know. A lot. I didn't notice how much until it was too late)

4. Mix in the chocolate and butterscotch chips.

5. Spoon rounded teaspoon sized balls of dough and place them on either an ungreased cookie sheet or a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
6. Bake for 6-7 minutes or until they edges are really lightly browned.
7. Remove from the oven and let it sit on the sheet for about a minute or so. Then remove the cookies and let them cool on a wire rack.

This recipe makes 72 small cookies, but I recommend halfing the recipe because this is just ridiculous haha.

Excuse the not so great quality picture. Lighting was not ideal.

Lemon Cheesecake Tart

2011-08-01T16:58:00.005-04:00

Yet another summer goal that has been completed! I had such a hard time trying to pick which tart I wanted to make. I saw this really pretty white chocolate mousse cake with strawberries on top, but that meant that I'd have to use a glaze, and then slice a bajillion strawberries, AND mousse uses a crapton of egg whites... I just couldn't be bothered. So I opted for the website that got me interested in baking in the first place: www.joyofbaking.com.

As I was making the tart, it seemed pretty easy... but now that I look back about 4 hours ago, it was actually pretty tedious. Le sigh. But I'm really happy with how things turned out. I took lots of pictures for you folks to see, in case you ever feel adventurous enough to make this =)

Original Recipe
Ingredients:

(Crust)

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
1/3 cup icing sugar
1/8 tsp salt (I actually forgot this...)

(Filling)

3/4 of a package of cream cheese (140 g)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp lemon zest
2 large eggs

(Whipped Cream)

1 cup whipping cream (35% fat)
2 tbsp confectioner's sugar

Preheat oven to 425F

Directions:

1. Spray an 8-9 inch tart pan (with a removable bottom) with non-stick spray. You could grease it as well but that's tedious with all the curves and stuff. To be honest, I didn't do this, and it came out of the tart pan just fine.

2. (You can do this step in a food processor. I don't have one... YET! I'm so excited =D) Use a pastry knife to combine the butter, sugar, and flour until a dough forms.

3. Press it into the tart pan. Try to make an even layer around the edges, and use the back of a spoon to smooth out the bottom.

4. Use a fork to poke holes all around the base of the crust; this prevents the dough from bubbling. You could avoid this step by baking with pie-crust weights but those things are hella expensive.

5. Chill in the freezer for at least 15 minutes. This is supposed to keep the crust from shrinking, but mine shrank in the oven anyway. (Preheat the oven while you wait for it to chill)
6. Remove once chilled and bake for about 15 minutes on a larger pan/sheet I think I only did for about 12 minutes because my oven is too hot, but I baked it until the bottom was kinda golden as you can see down thurr.

7. Let the crust cool on a wire rack while you prepare the filling.
8. Cream the cream cheese until it's smooth. Add the sugar and mix until smooth.
9. Add eggs and mix until incorporated. Try not to over-mix, because the consistency of the eggs might get weird. Eggs are weird like that. Maybe that's why Alex doesn't like eggs...
10. Add lemon zest and lemon juice, mix until completely smooth. (Cream cheese likes to stay in clumps...)
11. Pour into the prepared crust, you might not have to use exactly all of it.

12. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes, again on a larger pan/sheet. It'll get really puffy in the oven (kind of like cheesecake...this is basically cheesecake actually) Let cool on a wire rack until cool enough to touch. Then chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

13. Put your whisk and mixing bowl in the freezer for about 15 minutes before making the whipped cream. I suspect that it makes the process a bit faster.
14. Put whipping cream and icing sugar in the bowl, and start whipping away. Unless you have a hand mixer or a kitchen stand mixer (those things are so beaaauutiful. I waaant).
15. Don't get discouraged at how long it takes. It probably took me about 10-15 minutes.

16. It'll start to froth, you'd think it'd never turn into whipped cream.

17. Keeeep mixing... and it'll turn into this!

18. After maybe 30 seconds more, it'll get thicker, more whipped-cream-like. I'm pretty sure if you whip it too much it'll turn into some weird sugary butter. So... stop RIGHT after you get it to the right consistency =P

19. Spoon the whipped cream into a piping bag with a star tip, the same one that I used for the churros. (I find it easier if you put it in a cup because that way you don't have to hold it, and then the edges of the piping bag don't get all gross.)

Piping is fun!

20. Start piping stars from the edges and work your way in.

21. And voila! A beautiful tart! Chill in the fridge for a couple hours before serving so the flavours can get stronger. YUM. I can't wait to eat it.

To remove the pie from the tart pan, I used a smaller bowl and put it underneath. Then I held the edges of the pan and gently pulled down.

(Ugly but tasty) Bread

2011-07-31T01:42:00.001-04:00

I don't know what it was today but I was just super productive. I translated about 1/4 of what I needed to accomplish this weekend, I baked not one, but TWO loaves of bread today (the first was a fail), and I had myself a Lord of the Rings marathon; all accomplished by 7:30 pm today. (Well the marathon was 5/6 DVDs by 7:30, then I left my house and was social, then came back to DVD 6 at 10:30). But yeah! So productive. I'll tell you about my bread-making life lessons after you admire the ugliness that is my loaf of bread above.

Ooohh. Aaah. Yeah it's ugly. I know. I had some setbacks. The first batch of bread lacked sugar and salt because I'm a tool and I totally forgot to add those ingredients. The dough was then tough, not very elastic-y, and was not tasty. That batch went into the garbage pretty quickly (I know... wasting... but it was actually gross).

The second batch had the correct ingredients and I was really surprised at how much of a difference salt and sugar make. The dough was stretchier, seemed fluffier and rose so much more quickly than the first batch did. I wanted to see how high it would go and accidentally let it deflate because I waited so long. I made a GIF below of the rising process below. SO COOL. But yes. Lessons learned: read instructions, add proper ingredients, and don't get too excited about rising bread.

Halved from Original Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 package active dry yeast
1/4 cup buttermilk, heated until lukewarm
1/4 cup canola oil
3 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 400F

Directions:

1. Put lukewarm water and yeast in a bowl.

2. Add oil and lukewarm buttermilk.

3. Add flour, sugar, and salt and mix until a dough forms.

4. Knead the dough on a well-floured surface until the dough becomes smooth and completely well-incorporated. (8-10 minutes)

5. Form dough into a ball and place in an oiled bowl, then cover in saran wrap.

6. Let rise until doubled.

7. Gently punch down the dough and put in a lightly-oiled loaf pan. (not just once obviously, punch it down so that it's sort of the same size as the first dough ball)

8. Cover in saran wrap and let rise until doubled. CHECK OUT MY GIF!! Be careful that it doesn't deflate. =P I'd say this took about 2 hours... maybe 2 and a half. I'd say start preheating the oven afte 2 hours.

9. Lightly slice the top of the bread so that the bread can expand in the oven (kind of like a baguette), and gently place it in the oven. Jostling the dough around could make the dough deflate.

10. Bake for approx. 30 minutes or until the top is golden.
11. Remove from the oven and gently run a butter knife around the edges to loosen the bread.
12. Turn over the bread onto a cutting board and cut off a slice!
13. Add butter/jam.
14. NOM NOM NOM.

I really should invest in a bread knife though. I mean, my bread was deflated but not THAT deflated. It really looks flat because of my knife. But it tasted great! Fluffy yet dense, lightly sweet and ooooh so good with butter. NOM.

Date Squares

2011-07-25T00:56:00.001-04:00

I used to be repulsed by the idea of eating dates. Actually I currently still feel that way about prunes. Haven't quite crossed over to accepting prunes yet, but lately, the sweet but not -too- sweet taste of dates has started to grow on me. I think it's similar to how I feel when I want fruit instead of baked goods/ice cream for dessert (which I feel would be detrimental to my food blog... =P)

But yes, I never really liked the idea of date squares until Chris introduced me to them in first year at university. I associated date squares with lemon squares; both desserts as "granny" favourites because I thought they were boring. WRONG. First of all, lemon squares are pretty much the best thing in the world. Secondly, date squares are that sweet yet savoury snack (savoury because of the crust/crumble) and sweet because of the dates. Plus I just love crumble. I don't know why, but it's just delicious. Especially on blueberry muffins.

Let's move on.

Ingredients:

(Crust/crumble)

1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 1/2 cups pastry flour (I might have used all purpose, I'm not sure. Would pastry flour make your cookies flat? Because I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies that are flatter than *insert young female's name here*'s chest. Which I blame on me not labelling bulk barn bags of flour-like substances...)
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup softened butter (I used margarine...vegan margarine! So cool. Never had that before.)
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt (unless you used salted butter or margarine, then omit this)

(Filling)

3/4 pound pitted dates, diced (I don't have a scale, so I used 1 1/2 cups diced dates, probably inaccurate but I'm over it)
1 cup water
1 tsp lemon juice (I couldn't find any in my fridge so I used orange juice. Meh. Couldn't taste the difference)

Preheat at 350F

Directions:

Combine all the ingredients for the crust together until a crumbly dough forms.
Press half of the dough into a 9x9 inch buttered pan, or as I did, a 7x11 inch casserole and set that pan aside. Feel free to take pictures. Evidently that's what I did =P
Combine the dates and water into a small saucepan and mix over medium heat until it thickens.
Add lemon juice once thickened and remove from heat. Stir until slightly cooler, and spread over the crust.
Dump rest of crumble/crust mixture on top of layer of date filling.
Pat down the crumble evenly on top of the date filling so it doesn't fall off if you tilt the pan.
Bake for 20 min or until the top starts to go golden (though it's hard to tell because it's already 'golden-y', I just do it until it smells ready. That sounds silly but sometimes I can smell when it's 'ready')
Let cooooool until ready to cut into squares of deliciousness.
NOM NOM NOM. My favourite step.

Cheese and Spinach Lasagna

2011-07-22T20:41:00.004-04:00

When it comes to general western food, I'm not very good at cooking. I can cook macaroni and cheese, pasta, sure. Those are simple. The thing about pasta though, is that I don't really like tomato sauce. Maybe people's tastebuds change over time, but I used to be fine with tomato sauce. I love tomatoes. YUM. But ketchup, tomato sauce, even other stuff people generally like, such as bacon don't really agree with my tastebuds anymore. It's really weird. Anyway, I tried not to use any tomato sauce in this lasagna (which didn't turn out super okay. I would recommend adding tomato sauce next time). So yes. Here was my sort of okay failure of a lasagna:

Ingredients:

4 cremini mushrooms, sliced

4 white mushrooms, sliced

2 cups of cheddar cheese, grated

9 pieces of lasagna noodles, boiled and drained

Spinach (I'd say 2-3 handfuls)

Half a container of cottage cheese

Parmesan cheese

Italian herb seasoning

(1 jar of tomato sauce because I think it needs sauce =P)

Preheat oven at 350F

Directions:

1. Prepare all ingredients (boil and drain noodles, wash and chop/grate ingredients)

2. Lightly butter a casserole dish and layer it with lasagna noodes

3. Add a layer of cottage cheese (I'd suggest adding a layer of tomato sauce first, then cottage cheese)

4. Add a layer of spinach.

5. MUSHROOM MUSHROOM.

6. Cheeze.

7. Another layer of noodles.

8. (Add more tomato sauce), then cottage cheese. In retrospect, I should have added some Italian herb seasoning here.

9. More spinach and mushrooms

10. Top layer of cheddar and parmesan cheese. Sprinkle italian herb seasoning =)

11. Bake with a sheet of aluminum foil on top for 50 minutes, then bake without the aluminum foil for 15 or until the cheese is nicely browned.

12. Nom nom nom.

It actually ended up pretty good, although there was not much to the structural integrity. I blame the lack of tomato sauce =P But it was just super cheesy. I recommend sauce, maybe a deeper casserole, and using Italian herb seasoning in the layers instead of forgetting until all layers were formed...Whoo making western food adventureeeeees.

Lemon Sugar Cookies

2011-07-17T18:33:00.002-04:00

I know it's been a while since my last post. I've been going to a lot of Bluesfest shows =) Billy Talent, Steve Miller Band, Black Keys, comedy shows--just to name a few. I also haven't been cooking very much of anything for the past couple weeks. I don't really know why, but I just haven't.

As I mentioned before in the raspberry lemon squares post, I loooove lemons. I started writing out reasons why I love these cookies, but it was starting to get lengthy so I decided to put it in point form:

Lightly tastes of lemons
Crispy on the outside, and soft and chewy on the inside
Dangerously addictive
Delicious with milk

Lets get started shall we? (Note my discovery of bulletpoints? This is what happens when I switch from html to Rich Text)

Ingredients:

1/4 cup cream cheese
1 1/2 cup sugar (plus more sugar to roll the cookies in)
zest of one large lemon
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup canola oil
1 egg
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsbp milk
1 tsp lemon extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt (if you used salted butter, omit this)

Pre-heat oven at 350F

Directions: (Numbers! Oh Rich Text. How you make my life so much easier)

Whisk together zest and sugar and set aside (this way the sugar absorbs the lemony goodness)
Whisk together flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda and set aside.
Mix together cream cheese, sugar mixture, and melted butter.
Add oil, egg, lemon juice, milk, lemon extract and vanilla extract and mix until incorporated.
Gradually fold in the dry ingredient mixture until a dough forms (it's going to be kinda soft and you might think it's not firm enough, but it's going to be delicious, I promise)
Roll 1 inch balls of dough around in sugar until it has an even coat of sugary goodness. Arrange on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the cookies are lightly cracked and lightly golden on the edges.
Remove from the oven and let cook on a wire rack.
NOM NOM NOM

Click here for the original recipe =)

Two-Bite Churros

2011-07-02T21:51:00.001-04:00

As some of you may know, my degree-in-process is Spanish-French-English translation with a minor in Spanish. Despite taking all my Spanish courses, I'm not super educated on Spanish food. One example of such is the crispy, sugary, cinnamony churro.

It's actually surprisingly easy to make these. It's just mixing dough together and then piping them into hot oil. They're surprisingly addicting because I made them small enough that you can eat them in two bites. Something about the cinnamony crunch makes it sooo yummy, especially with milk. Or maybe even coffee.

Ingredients:

2 cups flour

2 cups boiling water

1 tsp baking powder

1 pinch of salt

2 tbsp olive oil

Vegetable oil for frying

1/2 cup caster sugar

1/3 cup cinnamon

Directions:

1. Mix flour, salt, water, oil and baking powder together until it forms a dough.

2. Meanwhile, heat oil on medium heat. The oil should start to bubble softly/the rippling through the oil will stop because the oil should be evenly heated.

2. Spoon dough into a piping bag with a large star tip. (if there isn't enough room in your bag for all the dough, just add the last blob in later, as shown below)

3. Pipe that delicious goo over the pot and use greased scissors to cut the dough.

4. Cook in the oil until its beaaautifully golden like so:

5. Remove from the oil and let it drain on a paper town and then coat in the cinnamon sugar =) YUM! Tap the excess sugar off.

6. Consume the deliciousness with milk or coffee. Try not to eat them all =P

Original Recipe Here

Raspberry Lemon Squares

2011-06-29T22:33:00.002-04:00

I have this thing for lemons. I don't know what it is about that super sour citrus fruit, but it's flavour is amazing when added to cookies, bars, salads, drinks, fruits, zOMG it's all delicious. I had a lemon square phase back in the fall, and this is a hybrid of the recipe I regularly use for lemon squares and a recipe I StumbledUpon called "raspberry lemonade bars". Although I thought the filling was a little too complicated, the egg whites and yolks didn't add up and I have no use for yolks otherwise. Not immediately anyway. So opted for changing it a bit.

Raspberries have been ridiculously on sale lately, the last time I went to the grocery store it was 4 half pints for 5 bucks. AMAZING. So naturally the raspberries are becoming common in my recipes =)

Ingredients:

(Shortbread)

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1/4 cup icing sugar

1 cup flour

1/8 tsp salt

(Filling)

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

Fresh lemon juice from 1 lemon (1/3 cup, strained, give or take)

Lemon zest from 1 lemon (approx 1 tbsp)

1/2 pint raspberries

4 tbsp flour

Preheat at 350F

Directions:

1. Cream butter and icing sugar until smooth, then add flour and salt.

2. Press into a parchment paper-lined 8x8 pan

3. Bake shortbread for 15-20 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned. Remove from oven and set aside to cool. Meanwhile that happens...
4. Cream eggs and sugar until smooth. Add lemon zest and lemon juice.
5. Puree raspberries and strain them through a fine mesh seive. Use a spoon to move the puree around until only the seeds are left in the seive.

6. Mix all ingredients for the filling and pour over the shortbread.

7. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the filling is set. You'll know when the edges are slightly darker (it's easier to tell with lemon squares). I judged by how jiggly the middle was, when the outer 3/4 of the pan is kind of puffy and the middle still jiggles slightly, the residual heat from the bars cooling will cook the middle.
8. Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack.

9. Once completely cooled, cut into squares and dust with icing sugar =)

I love these when they're frozen, the bottom gets cold and hard, and the middle isn't too soft and its almost more cakey. The lemon filling is deliciously tart and the raspberry adds a nice soft touch to the flavour. YUMMMM.

Original Recipe for Raspberry Lemonade Bars
Original Recipe for Lemon Bars

Sweet Sangria

2011-06-22T22:48:00.002-04:00

Some of you may already know that I'm not the biggest fan of the taste of alcohol. But one of my summer goals was to make some sangria, because its fruity and fun. And why the heck not. So when my local grocery store had tons of fruit on sale, I bought some fruit, some wine, cranberry juice, and VOILA. Sangria!

Now, I've had sangria before, sometimes its really wine-y which I'm not a huge fan of, and sometimes it's really juice-y which also makes it tastes kind of empty... So it was my goal to make it just right. =) Plus, I love the taste of sangria-soaked fruit. I dunno what it is, it just makes them better.

When it comes to choosing wine, I am definitely the last person to ask. I suggest asking the people at the winery you're buying the wine from. They generally know what they're talking about. My wine guy suggested a red wine: cabernet sauvignon from California.

Ingredients:

- bottle of cabernet sauvignon (use almost 2/3 of it, but not quite)

- about 1/2 cup orange juice (I just kind of splashed some in)

- 1 tbsp lemon juice (I used the fake stuff)

- Equal amout of cranberry juice as the amount of wine used (JUICE. NOT COCKTAIL.)

- 1 container of raspberries

- Half a pint of strawberries, hulled and halved

Directions:

1. Wash raspberries and prepare the strawberries. Put them in a clean pitcher (I prefer to use a glass one because plastic absorbs)

2. Pour in the wine. (Just use under 2/3 of the normal sized bottle)

3. Add orange juice, and cranberry juice.

4. Squeeze in some fake lemon juiiiice. Yumm.

5. Let this chill in the fridge overnight so the fruit has time to absorb the deliciousness.

6. Enjoy =)

I was told from some good ole friends that this was a really good ratio of wine and cranberry juice. Drink it up in a couple days or else the fruit will go mushy and spoil =) Best enjoyed after an aggressive lady calls or on a patio in the sun =)