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Lemon Meringue Coconut Macaroon Tarts

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Lemon Meringue Coconut Macaroon TartLemon curd. Toasted meringue. Coconut macaroon. What’s not to love?

(I told you there’d still be plenty of butter and sugar in these parts… no flour in this one though!)

In the course of making these little tarts, the only thing I didn’t really love was that for some reason, my meringue topping just would not whip up to stiff peaks. I started it off by hand with a whisk, because I thought how hard can it be to whip one egg white into a stiff meringue? Apparently it’s pretty hard (and I think I know the reason I’ve ended up with tennis elbow, or more accurately, baker’s elbow!), so I transferred it to the KitchenAid mixer, ending up with sticky meringue on half the utensils in my kitchen, and still only achieved floppy peaks. Nonetheless, the meringue toasted nicely under the broiler, which worked out much better than my failed blow-torch attempt.

I used my wacky creaming method for the lemon curd, and this I did manage to make successfully by hand. And then I made the coconut macaroon tart shells by hand, too. ;)…

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Leek and Bacon Quiche with Wholegrain Pastry

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Leek & Bcaon Quiche with Whole Grain CrustNate and I had a pretty quiet Easter weekend at home, so instead of a big Easter Sunday dinner, I made a quiche with leek and bacon, a dish of scalloped potatoes, and a green salad (and dessert, of course – that post is coming!). I was lucky enough to have dinner with my parents on Salt Spring on Good Friday, which included not only the traditional baked ham but also a huge pile of fresh crab, caught by a family friend. It was amazing, but after all that food I was quite happy to keep it lighter for the rest of the weekend.

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Whole Grain & Flax Buttermilk Pancakes

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Whole Grain & Flax Buttermilk Pancakes

I’ve ordered buttermilk pancakes in restaurants many times and I’ve never really been able to taste the difference between them and regular pancakes. But once again I had a carton of buttermilk in the fridge leftover from a baking project, and buttermilk pancakes seemed like a good way to use it up. When my aunt came to visit at Thanksgiving, she brought me a copy of the Cook’s Illustrated 20th Anniversary All-Time Best Recipes, which contains a recipe for the Best Buttermilk Pancakes. This is where the Ultimate Chocolate Cupcakes recipe came from, and they certainly weren’t exaggerating about that one, so I figured that these pancakes would be pretty good.

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Chocolate Porter Sourdough Hot Cross Buns

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Chocolate Porter Sourdough Hot Cross BunsHappy Easter! I hope the Easter Bunny brought you all lots of chocolate. :)

This Easter I wanted to make some special hot cross buns (as in, more special than these or these). I was thinking something along the lines of “hot cross bunnies” (haha, I’m so punny… bunny… sorry) but then I came across these spiced stout sourdough beauties from Lauren Bakes (she recently posted a chocolate chip version, too), which stopped me dead in my cutesy little bunny tracks. Her recipe contained dried fruit soaked in tea plus a sourdough levain made with Guinness, which I swapped out for chocolate porter because, well, I’ll take any excuse to buy it, really….

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Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream Frosting, Take 2: Success!

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Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue ButtercreamAlmost two years ago, I made a wedding cake for my good friend and frosted it with cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream. The cake turned out great, but the frosting was another story. Turns out that cream cheese doesn’t work so well as a replacement for butter, which I realized after having made two giant batches of frosting, posting about it, and then having it go all weird and curdled when I actually tried to frost the cake with it. It was so unsuccessful that I wouldn’t recommend the recipe to anyone, but it is obviously a topic of interest to many because that post generates a lot of traffic for my blog….

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Daring Bakers: Beet Red Velvet Cake

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Beet Red Velvet CakeRuth from Makey-Cakey was our March 2013 Daring Bakers’ challenge host. She encouraged us all to get experimental in the kitchen and sneak some hidden veggies into our baking, with surprising and delicious results!

OK, here comes the FOURTH cake post this month! My goodness.

I’ve been mildly obsessed with red velvet cakes for the past little while – you know, the American Southern classic bright red cake spiked with cocoa powder and frosted with cream cheese frosting – only upon looking through several recipes, there was one ingredient that put me right off: red food colouring. We’re not just talking a few drops here – we’re talking a few tablespoons or ounces! I figured there had to be a way to make this cake without all the food colouring, so I started searching. I found a post with a recipe for a red wine velvet cake (yes I’ll be trying that soon!) and a really interesting history of the red velvet cake as we know it (ie, chock full of food colouring). Apparently, way back when, “velvet cakes” were called that because of their velvety texture, and red velvet cake would have been appreciated for that rather than for its colour. In this particular cake, the acidic buttermilk caused a chemical reaction with the small amount of cocoa powder in the batter, making the resulting cake a slightly reddish brown. As well, the cake was usually made with brown sugar, which at the time was known as “red” sugar. The bright red velvet cake we know today didn’t come about until the enterprising owner of a food colour-producing company decided to boost Depression-era sales by creating a recipe for red velvet cake that included two whole bottles of red food colouring.

Maybe not two-bottles-of-food-colouring red, but still pretty red.

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Breakfast at The Old Fork in Duncan, BC

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Huevos Rancheros at The Old Fork

Since moving away from Victoria, Nate and I have bemoaned the fact that there were no great breakfast places in the area. “Going for breakfast” is a Big Deal in Victoria, which is home to many breakfast joints, all of which have lineups out the door by 9 am on weekends. We were pretty stoked when we saw an ad in the paper for a new restaurant in town that featured breakfast – and not just any breakfast, either: The Old Fork‘s Deep South inspired all-day breakfast menu boasts ridiculous biscuits and egg bennies, pulled pork combinations, and insane sounding French toast. They only opened at the beginning of March, but we heard great things about the food from Nate’s parents, so we decided to give them a try yesterday morning.

The restaurant is located in the Silverbridge Motor Inn but feels completely unlike any motel restaurant I’ve ever been in. The interior has been totally re-done and has a sort of barn/industrial feel, with rough planks on the walls and decorative metal pieces. This might not sound like the coziest decor, but it really works and is actually very inviting and funky. There were only a few other people there when we arrived at 9 am (no line up – just one perk of not living in the city!), so we were seated immediately. The staff was very friendly and attentive, the coffee was plentiful and delicious, and everything on the menu sounded so good, it was hard to choose. Nate finally settled on the Heuvos Rancheros (with homemade enchilada sauce) and I got the Praline Bacon French Toast.

Praline Bacon French Toast

Praline Bacon French Toast

The food arrived quickly and we dug in happily. Nate wished the Heuvos had more cheese and he missed the crispiness of the tortilla that he’s used to, but the ingredients were tasty and fresh. He said the shredded hash brown on the side was the best part – crispy and golden but not oily. My French toast was as decadent as I was expecting: thick French bread dipped in egg batter with praline’d pecans embedded in the sides, topped with bacon and melted cheddar. I was initially unsure of the cheddar, but it balanced out the sweetness of the dish and the whole thing was really good.

We were finished our meal within 30 minutes, and our bill was less than $30.00, which is a steal compared to the $40.00 we were used to spending on breakfast in Victoria! We will definitely be back to try out the rest of the menu, which includes some equally delicious-sounding lunch and dinner items (including house smoked focaccia bread. OMG!) 🙂
The Old Fork on Urbanspoon

Sourdough Banana Bourbon Upside Down Cake

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Sourdough Banana Bourbon Upside Down CakeThis might be the most unattractive cake I’ve ever made, which is both disappointing and hilarious.

Disappointing because the pictures from the recipe I based it on are quite pretty, but somehow it didn’t translate (more on that later).

Hilarious because, as my darling Nate pointed out when he went to cut himself a piece, the bananas look like penises (yup, I just said that).

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Friday Night Pizza

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Cheesy Sausage, Jalapeño and Fresh Tomato PizzaEvery couple Fridays, Nate and I make homemade pizza for dinner. This is one of the rare times we are actually in the kitchen making dinner together (something I would like to do more often), me stretching out the dough, Nate shredding cheese and slicing toppings, deciding together what to put on each pie. We always do one Blue Hawaiian, and the second is usually a mish-mash of whatever else we have on hand – salami, olives, sautéed mushrooms and onions, chopped bell peppers… Last week at Aaron’s birthday pizza dinner, Nate and I shared the pizza special of the day, which was topped with crumbled homemade Italian sausage, fresh sliced Anaheim peppers, and cherry tomatoes on a creamy, cheesy base. It was such a good, simple combination of flavours that I knew I wanted to add it to our homemade pizza topping arsenal. I feel a bit silly posting an actual “recipe” for a pizza because I never follow one myself, so instead here’s the basic rundown for this cheesy sausage, jalapeño and fresh tomato pie.

Stretch out your favorite pizza dough onto a lightly oiled baking sheet (I love this pizza dough – I use a little bit of whole wheat flour and freeze half the dough for our next pizza night). Drizzle it with a few tablespoons of heavy cream (spread it around) and shower it with a good amount of freshly grated parmesan cheese and a few shreds of mozzarella.

Scatter it with some cooked and crumbled homemade Italian sausage, some sliced fresh jalapeños (or Anaheim peppers, if you can find them), and a few quartered grape or cherry tomatoes.

Sprinkle with a bit more mozzarella (less is more in this case – I find too much cheese keeps the crust from cooking properly) and bake in a hot oven until the crust is golden and the cheese melted and browned. Let it rest for a few minutes, then sprinkle with more parmesan and some black pepper before cutting into wedges.

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All content © Korena Vezerian and Korena in the Kitchen, 2011 – 2021. Please contact me before duplicating any content, including pictures. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Korena Vezerian and Korena in the Kitchen with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.