Soft Gingerbread Squares with Rum-Butter Glaze

January 6, 2020 By Korena in the Kitchen 4 Comments

It’s already the first week of January, and as usual, I missed the boat on posting about all the Christmas cookies I made – because somehow this year, I ended up doing three separate rounds of cookie baking madness: one for the Food52 Holiday Swap (which I actually *did* manage to post about, whew!), the second a few weeks before Christmas to take to a family celebration in Vancouver, and the third in the days before Christmas when I decided I wasn’t happy with my existing cookie selection. This third bout of cookie baking madness included these soft gingerbread cookies from Tartine, which is a recipe I’ve had bookmarked for ages. Last year I made a similar cookie from the book Sweet which included a rum-butter glaze that was absolutely to die for, however the gingerbread itself wasn’t my favourite. So I kept the glaze and instead put it on the Tartine cookies, and holy cow, these cookies won Christmas! Nate and I both loved them. The spice level is perfect – cinnamony and gingery with a hint of molasses and black pepper – and they have a lovely soft texture. And that glaze! *heart eyes*

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Black Sesame-Espresso Shortbread Pinwheels

December 2, 2019 By Korena in the Kitchen 1 Comment

I first made and loved these black sesame-espresso shortbread pinwheel cookies months and months ago and knew I’d be including them in my 2019 Christmas Baking, which, now that it’s December, has begun! I made these as part of the Food52 Holiday Swap – swirly cookies have a special place in my heart at Christmas (see these chocolate peppermint pinwheels), as does shortbread (see here, here, and here), and these are a sophisticated take on both with their smoky black sesame and espresso flavours and perfectly crisp, light texture.

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Raspberry Almond Shortbread Sandwich Cookies

March 30, 2019 By Korena in the Kitchen 2 Comments

A few years ago I bought a humble little sandwich cookie at the cafe in the building where I used to
work, and its almondy-raspberry-crumbly-shortbreadiness has been in my head ever since. I meant to finally re-create this cookie and post it in time for Valentine’s Day (hence the hearts), but, well, it’s the end of March now, so you can see how that went. But these are definitely better late than never, and like most good cookies, are much more than the seemingly simple sum of their parts: two almond shortbread cookies perfumed with lemon zest, sandwiched with tart yet sweet raspberry jam, drizzled with creamy white chocolate.

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Lemon Cream Pistachio Sandwich Cookies

December 31, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 2 Comments

I realize I’m posting Christmas cookies a week after the event, but I can never seem to find time to blog about anything in the midst of my annual pre-Christmas baking madness. And it’s still technically Yuletide until tomorrow, January 1, so it’s not too late for Christmas cookies! Especially when they are as good as these ones.

About eight Christmases ago I made a lemon-pistachio sandwich cookie filled with lemon frosting that Nate particularly liked, and he’s been asking me to make them again ever since. I remember being less impressed with them: I found them too sweet, not lemony enough, and their roll-and-cut construction meant they were finicky as heck to make. But I agreed that the concept had potential, so this year I set out to re-engineer them into the cookie of my dreams.

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Tahini Chocolate Shortbread Bars

December 15, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen Leave a Comment

Shortbread is one of those quintessential Christmas cookies, and while traditional shortbread is always delicious, I like finding recipes with interesting flavours. I came across these tahini chocolate shortbread bars in this year’s Canadian Living Holiday Baking magazine while searching for some delicious-yet-study cookies to send in the mail for the Food52 Holiday Swap (I also made a dark-chocolate-almond-orange version of my favourite biscotti, because biscotti ships well). I love that tahini is showing up in baked goods everywhere (tahini swirl brownies, anyone?) – it’s like peanut butter but a little more grown-up – and I had a feeling it would be excellent in shortbread. Spoiler alert: it is!

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Dorie’s Cocoa-Tahini Cookies with Sesame Crunch

June 10, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 2 Comments

I first made these cookies back in October and couldn’t wait to post about them because they were so delicious: a double chocolate cookie (cocoa powder plus chocolate chunks) amped up with nutty tahini paste, and then kicked over the edge with the addition of candied sesame seed brittle. Then when I sorted through all the photos I’d taken (long after all the cookies were gone, unfortunately) I wasn’t happy with how any of them turned out and decided against posting them. But I couldn’t stop thinking about these wonderful cookies, and so when I made them again this weekend, I not only kicked myself for waiting eight months to do so, I also looked through my old photos and realized that they were actually fine. So here we are! Sorry for taking so long 😉

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White Chocolate Cranberry Almond Biscotti II

February 14, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 1 Comment

Confession: these white chocolate cranberry almond biscotti were in fact part of my Christmas baking. I make them every year for holiday gift-giving, and they are by far the crowd favourite. I personally only bake them at Christmas, but there’s no reason they can’t be made at any other time of the year. For example, Valentine’s Day. Because homemade biscotti is a sure-fire way to say “I love you”.

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Hungarian Kifli

December 31, 2017 By Korena in the Kitchen 7 Comments

Christmas took me by surprise this year – December flew by in a blur of work projects and deadlines, and then suddenly it was December 25 and just as suddenly, it’s now the last day of 2017. Not that this stopped me from my regularly scheduled annual Christmas Cookie Madness – it just stopped me from telling you about it until now. These Hungarian Kifli were a new addition to my Christmas cookie menu, brought about by the twelfth and final instalment of Around the World in 12 Plates, destination (you guessed it) Hungary.

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BraveTart’s Homemade Oreos

December 7, 2017 By Korena in the Kitchen 5 Comments

It’s been years since I ate a real Oreo, but I can say with 100% certainty that BraveTart’s Homemade Oreos are BETTER!

In the summer, I joined the Food52 Baking Club on Facebook, and every month we all bake out of a selected baking book and share our results and experiences with the recipes. It’s pretty fun, especially for a baking nerd like me, however I’ve fallen a little behind (a new book to bake from every month gets a bit overwhelming) and had committed to working my way through some of the past month’s cookbooks that were already on my shelves (including Dorie’s Cookies, Classic German Baking, and Tartine). Then November’s cookbook came around: the recently released BraveTart by Stella Parks, a trained pastry chef who writes a blog of the same name and is also an editor at Serious Eats, where she shares her knowledge of food history, baking science, and pastry technique. Basically, she really really knows her stuff – case in point, these Oreos, which are phenomenal. I wasn’t going to buy this month’s cookbook, but after making these cookies from the recipe posted on Serious Eats, it is now on my list (and no, this is not a paid advertisement).

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Maple Pecan Shortbread Bars

November 22, 2017 By Korena in the Kitchen 4 Comments

Our American neighbours have a certain important holiday involving turkey and pie coming up tomorrow, and I wanted to share these maple pecan shortbread bars because they would make the perfect last minute addition to a Thanksgiving (or other) dinner menu. I actually made these for Canadian Thanksgiving back in October (along with this pumpkin roulade) because I wanted something like pie but I couldn’t manage rolling out a pie crust with my busted elbows (which have both now healed and I’m back to full force in the kitchen – now there’s something to be thankful for!).

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