Salted Caramel Macarons and Mexican Chocolate Macarons

December 30, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 12 Comments

Macarons are definitely my current favorite thing to make: somewhat finicky, infinitely variable flavours, and SO TASTY and worth every minute of trouble. I made two kinds this Christmas: salted caramel and Mexican chocolate. Since making a salted butter caramel apple strudel not so long ago, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the caramel sauce, and the resulting macaron was probably the biggest hit of Christmas Baking 2012. Deeply caramelly, crunchy-buttery-sweet, and just so, so good!

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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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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!…

Black Bean Brownies

October 24, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 21 Comments

These have been on my “to-make” list for a long time since first seeing the recipe on 101 Cookbooks. Black beans in brownies? How could you not be intrigued?

Once I actually read the recipe through, I realized that it included agave syrup, which I didn’t have – but I remembered seeing a version using brown sugar on Christina’s beautiful blog De La Casa. The only changes I would make to the recipe for next time are to add a little bit more sugar (I like my brownies bittersweet, but I felt these could be just a little sweeter) and to toast the pecans to keep them crunchy and enhance their flavour.

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Neapolitan Macarons

September 8, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 9 Comments

Since making macarons for the first time last Christmas, I have been saving egg whites in the freezer to make them again. I promised myself before we moved (twice in 6 weeks actually, ugh!) that I would only bring those frozen egg whites to the new house if I made macarons ASAP. So I did.

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White Chocolate Blueberry Bars

September 2, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 16 Comments

Remember the amaretti that I made accidentally? When I made them, what I actually meant to make was amaretto cookies to turn into crumbs for the base of these white chocolate blueberry bars (which I made a few weeks back but am only just getting around to posting about).

My oven was being a beast and the amaretto cookies came out sort of burnt, and there was nothing particularly spectacular about the homemade version, so next time I’ll just use store bought (I don’t say that often – maybe I just needed a different recipe?). However, regardless of the provenance of the cookies in the cookie crumb base, these bars are fantastic and perfect to make in the summer because they are no-bake (especially if you don’t do anything silly like baking your own amaretto cookies) and they feature delicious summer berries. Press a cookie crumb base into a pan, scatter over some blueberries, top them with a white chocolate ganache, and chill….

Accidental Amaretti

August 15, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 13 Comments

I made these amaretti by accident.

Actually, I don’t think making something that tastes this good really qualifies as an “accident”, but I meant to make amaretto cookies to use in another recipe, not amaretti cookies. However, if you Google “amaretto cookies”, what comes up is a bunch of recipes for amaretti, and not knowing that there was a difference (there is*), I opted for the best sounding and easiest recipe. It wasn’t until after I’d baked them that I realized they weren’t the kind of cookies I was expecting….

Cocoa Shortbread Cookies

August 11, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 18 Comments

There has been an absence of chocolate around here lately, which is kind of surprising because I’ve found myself craving it often. I somehow have no chocolate in the house (probably because I ate it all the last time I was craving chocolate) other than the unsweetened baking kind and cocoa powder. Anyway, my point is: more chocolate….

Lemon & Olive Oil Sugar Cookies

July 16, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 15 Comments

These cookies were born of necessity; the kind that is born at 8:30 on a Wednesday night after you’ve eaten dinner and watched a movie (Fantastic Mr. Fox, so great!) and are feeling the need for something sweet. Of course there’s nothing readily available and you don’t feel like leaving the house. Someone suggests baking cookies, but alas, there is no butter. There is, however, a litre of olive oil. Cookies made with olive oil? A challenge! (Thank goodness for the Google machine.)

These are an adaptation of a recipe that originally included black pepper, rosemary, and red wine – I can’t quite imagine what those ones must taste like (I think I might need to find out), but these ones are really quite good. …