Baking Therapy {Maple Pecan Butter Tarts}

February 10, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 10 Comments

maple pecan butter tarts While we don’t get the snow-covered winters that most people picture when they think “Canadian winter”, on Vancouver Island we do get an awful lot of rain. It’s cold, wet, grey, and DARK from November through to March or April (and then we usually get a repeat in June, or June-uary as we like to call it). I know that complaining about the weather is hardly what you came to read about on a food blog, but my point is that last weekend I got caught in one of those depressing downward spirals of adult worries pertaining to jobs and money, and the dark, depressing winter day outside wasn’t making it any better. So I did what I had to: I made butter tarts with maple syrup and pecans, because almost nothing makes me feel better than baking something does (except maybe for eating whatever I’ve just baked).

maple pecan butter tarts …

Bigleaf Maple Syrup Festival at the BC Forest Discovery Centre

February 7, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 11 Comments

Last Saturday was the Bigleaf Maple Syrup Festival held at the BC Forest Discovery Centre in Duncan. I was pretty excited to go last year, but I got my dates mixed up and missed it by a day. I was so sad. So when I saw this year’s festival advertised, I made sure I had the right date. Nate and I arrived just as the festival opened, and I’m glad we did because by the time we left a few hours later, there were line-ups to get in. Seems like everyone is as excited about maple syrup as I am!

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Daring Bakers: Schichttorte

January 27, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 19 Comments

The January 2014 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Francijn of “Koken in de Brouwerij“. She challenged us all to bake layered cakes in the tradition of Baumkuchen (tree cake) and Schichttorte (layered cake).

When I first read Francijn’s challenge, I thought I had no idea what I was getting in to. I’d never heard of Baumkuchen – a traditional German cake baked in layers on a rotating spit in front of a grill, whose final spiraling layers resemble the cross-sectional growth rings of a tree [see how it’s done] – but when I got to the Shichttorte – a layer cake made by baking very thin layers of batter one by one on top each other – I realized that I had in fact bookmarked a similar recipe in a cookbook, probably close to fifteen years ago! I thought the recipe was just an extremely complicated way to bake a cake, which is why I had never attempted to make it before – I had no idea it was a legitimate traditional method, and I was excited to finally give it a try.

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Montreal-Style Bagels

January 22, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 11 Comments

Montreal bagels in a basket

In the summer we started a little brunch tradition with friends, but in recent months have let it slide a bit. Now that another set of our friends have recently moved into the neighbourhood, January seemed the perfect opportunity to resurrect our brunch dates and put into action the homemade bagels I’ve have in my head ever since seeing this picture of a brunch starring the New York bagel. Only because I’m Canadian, my bagels would be of the Montreal variety, which, of course, meant looking up a million recipes in order to begin the agonizing process of picking the best one. I eventually came across a recipe on The Fresh Loaf posted by an alumnus of Vancouver Island University’s culinary arts program, who claimed that the formula was from the famed St Viateur Bagel bakery in Montreal, whose bagels are supposed to be the real deal.

brunch on the table …

The New Oak Bay Beach Hotel’s Afternoon Tea

January 15, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 11 Comments

Afternoon tea at the Oak Bay Beach Hotel

My friend Lynette and I are self-styled afternoon tea aficionados, and we like to keep tabs on the establishments that serve afternoon tea in Victoria – you know, for quality control. So when I discovered that the newly re-constructed Oak Bay Beach Hotel had such an offering… well, it was high time for a tea party with our friends Whittney and Katheryn. Pinkies up, ladies!

First, a little background on the location: the new Oak Bay Beach Hotel is actually the third incarnation of the hotel. The first hotel was built in 1927 and unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1930, when an exact replica of the hotel was rebuilt on the site. The hotel became immensely popular, and in the 1950’s Victoria’s first neighbourhood pub, The Snug, was opened on the premises, soon becoming a local landmark. Passing from owner to owner, the hotel and its popularity stood in it all its 1930s glory until 2006, when it became clear that the building needed such extensive renovations and updates that it would be necessary to re-build from scratch. So they did. They dismantled the old hotel, saving much of its architectural elements and furniture to be re-used in the new hotel, which opened in 2012. While I am unable to draw a comparison because I never visited the old hotel, the new one certainly is grand, and judging by how bustling it was with locals just hanging out in the lobby, pub, and coffee shop, I think it’s still got its old charm….

Bread for a New Year

January 8, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 16 Comments

The Canadian Food Experience Project began June 7, 2013. As we share our collective stories through our regional food experiences, we hope to bring global clarity to our Canadian culinary identity. Visit Valerie’s blog, A Canadian Foodie, on the 15th for a round-up of this month’s posts.

This month on the Canadian Food Experience Project, Valerie has asked us to make a “Canadian Resolution”. I’m not a big resolution maker or goal setter (this article outlines my preferred method of forward momentum), but a little food-related one can’t hurt, right? So, my Canadian resolution for the year is to bake bread with Canadian grains, milled at home in my WonderMill grain mill when possible. This list of Canadian heritage wheat varieties is kind of astonishing – I had no idea there were that many varieties, and that’s only the wheat! I’m excited to see what’s out there, who’s growing what and where, and most of all, how it tastes. Bonus: one of the great local food discoveries I’ve made in the Cowichan Valley is True Grain Bread, a bakery that not only bakes gorgeous bread but also sells locally grown Vancouver Island wheat, both in grain form and as house-milled flour.

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Pear Ginger Muffins with Hazelnuts and Milk Chocolate

January 4, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 6 Comments

Happy New Year!

For my first post of 2014, I bring you muffins. Muffins fit in with all those well-intentioned New Year’s resolutions about eating better and being frugal – these muffins in particular came about from the need to use up three very tired-looking pears, which were made into an extremely delicious pear ginger sauce to put in the muffin batter. However, underneath their nubbly, virtuous-looking brown exterior, they contain a little bit of sin: chunks of hazelnut milk chocolate, a large bar of which I “won” in a present exchange game over the holidays. Truth be told, these muffins are more sinful than not – a muffin like this is basically just a rustic cupcake – but now that the Christmas tree is put away and it’s back to reality (ie: work), they helped ease the sting a little.

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Christmas Baking 2013: Salted Caramel Chocolate Truffles

December 31, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 9 Comments

I’ve been making chocolate truffles at Christmas for at least ten years, ever since a friend of my Mum’s let me know how easy it was – just make a ganache of melted chocolate and cream, let it cool, then shape and roll in cocoa powder. Some years I decide to get fancier and dip each truffle in tempered chocolate. I usually spike the ganache with some kind of booze, but this year I made the caramel version I’ve had bookmarked for years in one of my Canadian Living cookbooks. All it entailed was cooking sugar into a caramel syrup, adding cream, and pouring it over chopped chocolate to make the ganache filling – simple, yet delicious. Because of the extra sugar in the caramel, these truffles were very sweet, so I added a pinch of salt to balance it out and made them into tiny portions (in hindsight, I wonder about using some portion of unsweetened chocolate in the ganache… perhaps an experiment for next year!).

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Christmas Baking 2013: Chocolate Cardamom Orange Ribbon Cookies

December 30, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 4 Comments

Every year I spend several hours composing a list of the Christmas cookies I will bake, and inevitably once it’s “complete”, I come across a new recipe that I have to try, and the list gets edited once again. This was one such recipe. I love the orange chocolate combination as well as the chocolate cardamom combination, and these cookies contain both. Plus they are quite pretty with their stripes of different coloured dough. The flavours are subtle, but they have a great crisp texture and as I mentioned, they look really great. Definitely a welcome addition to this year’s Christmas cookie tins.

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Christmas Cookies 2013: The Round-Up

December 29, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 14 Comments

As promised, I’m back with cookies. Or more accurately, pictures of cookies, links to recipes, and more promises. I have recipe posts in the works for two of the following goodies, so stay tuned and bookmark this post as inspiration for next Christmas!

Christmas Cookies 2013 | Korena in the Kitchen

Christmas cookie sweatshop

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