Merry Christmas (cookies)!

December 25, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 9 Comments

Christmas Cookies I hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas with family and friends, and if you aren’t celebrating Christmas today, that you are having a great day and that somebody made you cookies. 🙂

From top left: Plain and Chocolate Cherry Shortbread, Salted Caramel Macarons and Mexican Chocolate Macarons (recipes coming soon), Chocolate Hazelnut Sourdough Biscotti with Orange and Cinnamon, White Chocolate Cranberry Almond Biscotti, Speculaas (recipe also to come) and Seven Layer Cookies.

Merry Christmas, friends!

Guinness Gingerbread with Tangy Orange Cream

December 23, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 3 Comments

Guinness Gingerbread with Tangy Orange Cream The holiday season provides great opportunities for baking things other than cookies, so I’m taking a break from Christmas cookie posts to share the delicious gingerbread cake I made last week for a work potluck. I’ve had this in mind for a few weeks since being inspired by Frugal Feeding’s gingerbread cupcakes, so I went searching for a gingerbread cake recipe and this one made with Guinness caught my eye. The last time I made a gingerbread cake, I remember it being dry and uninteresting, but this one was exactly the opposite: moist and tall and flavourful with the addition of molasses, Guinness, and fresh ginger.

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Chocolate Hazelnut Sourdough Biscotti with Orange and Cinnamon

December 20, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 24 Comments

Chocolate Hazelnut Sourdough Biscotti with Orange and Cinnamon Christmas Cookie Post Numero Dos!

I’ve only ever made one kind of biscotti before: white chocolate cranberry almond, which I make every year from Christmas. The Sourdough Surprises project this month was sourdough cookies, so I decided to try the suggested sourdough biscotti recipe and ended up with these dark chocolate, hazelnut, orange, and cinnamon lovelies.

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Shortbread, Two Ways

December 17, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 14 Comments

Shortbread, 2 ways Every year at Christmas, I go a little bit cookie-crazy. This year is no exception, so here comes Christmas Cookie Post Numero Uno. Stay tuned for many more.

Shortbread is kind of synonymous with Christmas. I don’t have one shortbread recipe that I re-make every year (unlike this biscotti), but I always make shortbread in some form or another. In the past this has included piped coffee kisses and hazelnut shortbread, both of which are totally delicious, but I wanted to emulate the more traditional chunky rectangles of Walker’s shortbread this year.

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A Non-Traditional Black Forest Torte

December 15, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 12 Comments

Black Forest Torte A good friend of ours celebrated a birthday last weekend, and after some not-so-subtle inquiring, Nate and I discerned that his favorite cake is black forest. Which made me happy because I have been looking for an excuse to make this fantastic version with Grand Marnier soaked cherries, espresso whipped cream, and chocolate ganache. It may not be the most photogenic (or maybe it’s just because I was photographing at night, which is no fun) but it is SERIOUSLY good.

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Olive Tapenade & Sourdough Lavash

December 12, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 10 Comments

Third savoury recipe post in a row – this might be some sort of record! I promise I will be back with the sugar-and-butter-laden baking posts soon – there’s a lot of Christmas baking going on these days, plus there was a birthday cake last weekend…

In addition to being THE time for eating cookies and chocolate, Christmas is quite often THE time for entertaining. A platter of crunchy lavash and flavourful olive tapenade will go a long way to making your entertainees happy, plus you can play the super-host/hostess card by letting it slip that you made it all from scratch. Just don’t tell anyone how easy any of it was!

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Three-Cheese Tomato and Sausage Pasta Sauce

December 4, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 20 Comments

Happiness is a bowl of pasta.

Top it with rich, cheesey tomato sauce spiked with homemade Sicilian sausage and you’ve got euphoria, as far as I’m concerned.

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Whole Grain Levain for Bread Baking Day #54

November 30, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 9 Comments

For a while I’ve been searching for a “country style” rustic sourdough loaf with some whole grain in it to bake as our daily bread, and after lots of trial and error, I finally settled on this formula, based on a recipe from Chez Pim. I was already planning on sharing it when I discovered that November’s theme for Bread Baking Day #54 is overnight bread, which is perfect, because this bread, being of my favorite no-knead, long-rest variety, fits right into that category.

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Daring Bakers: Christmas Cookies

November 27, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 51 Comments

Holiday season is the time for sharing and Peta of Peta Eats is sharing a dozen cookies, some classics and some of her own, from all over the world with us.

Christmas cookies have a very special place in my heart. I’ve written about this before, but suffice to say that the Christmas season starts with me buying the latest Canadian Living Holiday Cookie magazine, making list after list to refine my exact cookie offering, baking and baking and baking until I have stacks of Tupperware containers full of cookies, and then finally, packaging the cookies into tins and boxes to give away to family and friends. This month’s Daring Bakers challenge, which was all about Christmas cookies, fed right into my obsession!…

Salted Butter Caramel Apple Strudel

November 24, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 21 Comments

Almost every fall, I end up with a whole bunch of apples from my Mum (usually from the tree of a friend of hers), and more often than not, those apples end up in one of my very favorite things to make: apple pie. For me, fall is not complete without an apple pie or two.

But sometimes it’s good to change things up. My friend Sibella feels the same way about apple strudel as I do about apple pie, and when I saw her recipe – complete with homemade strudel dough that you stretch and stretch until it is see-through-thin and big enough to cover your entire kitchen counter – I changed my tune from apple pie to apple strudel.

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