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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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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Daring Bakers: Chocolate Peppermint Whoopie Pies

December 27, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 14 Comments

The December Daring Bakers’ Challenge had us all cheering – the lovely and talented Bourbonnatrix of Bourbonnatrix Bakes was our hostess and challenged us to make fun, delicious and creative whoopie pies! Delicious little cake-like cookies sandwiching luscious filling in any flavors we chose… What else is there to say but “Whoopie!”

So, I’ve been meaning to post about Christmas cookies for the past two weeks… but I’ve literally been too busy baking the things to post about them at all. Now that Christmas 2013 has passed (MERRY CHRISTMAS, by the way!), when I finally do get around to writing about them, you can consider it extremely early preparation for next year… ;)…

Christmas Baking 2013: Almond Roca Shortbread Squares

December 16, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 6 Comments

At my staff Christmas party on Friday, three of my gentlemen co-workers made it clear that they were extremely disappointed in the amount of Christmas baking that I had brought in to work this holiday season, ie: zero. Sensing that my reputation as “the girl who bakes” was in jeopardy, I got down to it in earnest this weekend.

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A Trio of Chocolate Cakes

November 5, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 9 Comments

The past few months have contained a lot of cakes – chocolate cakes, to be specific. And not for me, but for other people, which is almost more fun because I get to bake my heart out without worrying about who will eat it all. 😉

Back in August, my lovely friend Tanya asked me to make some chocolate cupcakes for a baby shower, the theme for which was the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, so I did what I could to turn the cupcakes into teacups without resorting to fiddly fondant or store-bought teacup paper liners.

I baked the Cook’s Illustrated Ultimate Chocolate Cupcakes in some pretty floral cupcake papers to simulate china cups, filled the cakes with chocolate ganache, and frosted them with the rebar chocolate cream cheese frosting.

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Cranberry Orange White Chocolate {Sourdough} Loaf

October 21, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 40 Comments

I have become recently obsessed with The Great British Bake Off. As in, I spent most of Sunday watching episodes on the internet and searching through my cookbooks for the recipes that I would make if I was on the show. I know, get a hobby, right? (Wait, this is my hobby…) In the words of one Season 3 contestant whenever things got heated, oh my giddy aunt! I just love it – great baking combined with the typical British stiff upper lip and self-deprecating attitude, which is such a refreshing difference from the ridiculously ego-driven and sob-story-laden world of North American “reality” TV.

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Pumpkin Cheesecake Brownies

October 13, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 12 Comments

The first weekend of October was another epic Girls’ Weekend on Salt Spring Island with my best ladies. This time, along with talking, stuffing our faces, and drinking a lot of sangria, we also visited Salt Spring Vineyards for a winery tour and wine tasting.

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The “Why Bother” Cake

August 19, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 23 Comments

Since I was about 7 or 8, my Mum has had food sensitivities to wheat and dairy. This was over 20 years ago, before being gluten-free and drinking soy or almond milk were “mainstream” like they are today, and food choices back then for pretty much everything were extremely limited. At some point, we started to refer to anything wheat-free and dairy-free as a “why bother?” because most often, without both wheat and dairy, whatever you were eating was barely worth it – especially when it came to dessert.

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