Daring Bakers: Charlotte Royale

June 29, 2015 By Korena in the Kitchen 3 Comments

Rhubarb and Custard Charlotte Royale | Korena in the Kitchen

For the June Daring Bakers challenge Rebecca from BakeNQuilt.com challenged us to make Charlotte Royale and Charlotte Russe from scratch. Savory or sweet Charlottes were definitely tasty showstoppers.

As a kid, I remember seeing the Charlotte aux Bluets recipe in the Canadian Living 20th Anniversary Cookbook and thinking that it was the pinnacle of sophisticated and elegant desserts, so you could say that doing this month’s challenge was sort of like ticking an item off my bucket list. The Charlotte (Royale or Russe) is a chilled dessert based on Bavarian cream or mousse, either molded into a domed shape and covered in slices of jelly roll (Royale), or spooned into a loose-bottomed cake pan and fenced in around the edges by lady fingers (Russe). I had plans to make both versions this month, but only managed to get the Royale completed. Russe is still on my list!

Rhubarb and Custard Charlotte Royale | Korena in the Kitchen

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Sourdough Plum and Almond Cream Galettes with Thyme

June 21, 2015 By Korena in the Kitchen 9 Comments

Sourdough Plum and Almond Cream Galettes with Thyme | Korena in the Kitchen As much as I love making pies, the simplicity and ease of a galette is pretty hard to beat. No fancy equipment needed, no special skills or pastry techniques – just a good pie crust recipe and some perfectly ripe fruit. It’s still pretty early in the season for local fruit around here, so I used plums from California. I absolutely love the tart, jammy flavour of cooked plums, and they are just gorgeous when baked: the gradient from yellow flesh to reddish-purple skin is so pleasing. I added a little bit of fresh thyme (plums love thyme, believe me) and some almond cream underneath the fruit, because it helps to soak up some of the fruit juices that inevitably leak out of a galette, and also, YUM.

Sourdough Plum and Almond Cream Galettes with Thyme | Korena in the Kitchen

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Rhubarb Jam with Vanilla and Earl Grey

June 8, 2015 By Korena in the Kitchen 3 Comments

Rhubarb Jam with Vanilla & Earl Grey | Korena in the Kitchen

Every year I get so excited about rhubarb season, and then often don’t actually get the chance to make anything with it. I have a rhubarb plant in my garden but I’ve moved it ever single year since I got it three years ago (I keep planting it in less-than-ideal places), so it’s never really had a chance to get itself established, and I’ve never gotten a rhubarb harvest from it. But this year I was determined to do something with rhubarb – so I made jam.

Rhubarb Jam with Vanilla & Earl Grey | Korena in the Kitchen

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Sourdough Scones {Strawberry Nectarine Shortcakes with Balsamic Syrup}

May 20, 2015 By Korena in the Kitchen 9 Comments

Sourdough Scones and Shortcakes | Korena in the Kitchen

I love scones, and I love sweet baked goods made with sourdough starter. So how is it that I’ve only made scones with sourdough starter ONCE before? It was time, and the Sourdough Surprises challenge this month was to make sourdough biscuits (which I took to mean scones), so I had a good reason. I modified a buttermilk scones recipe to use mature/discard sourdough starter, which has a comparable acidity to buttermilk and therefor the action of the chemical leaveners is similar. These scones are tender and slightly springy on the inside and crunchy-crumbly on the outside. They’d be great served with butter, jam, and a cup of tea, but I decided to turn them into shortcakes for dessert with the addition of some fruit and whipped cream.

Sourdough Scones and Shortcakes | Korena in the Kitchen

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Mini Vanilla-Orange Creamsicle Cheesecake

May 12, 2015 By Korena in the Kitchen 7 Comments

Creamsicle Cheesecake | Korena in the Kitchen

This year for his birthday, Nate requested a creamsicle cheesecake. I’ll admit that the creamsicle combination of creamy vanilla ice cream with orange isn’t usually my first choice – especially when there is creamy vanilla ice cream with chocolate to be had instead – but since it was his birthday, I acquiesced. Compared to the chocolate caramel bacon insanity cake from his birthday a few years ago, it was a relatively simple request.

Creamsicle Cheesecake | Korena in the Kitchen

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Daring Bakers: Tarte Tatin

March 27, 2015 By Korena in the Kitchen 19 Comments

Tarte Tatin | Korena in the Kitchen

For the March Daring Bakers’ Challenge, Korena from Korena in the Kitchen taught us that some treats are best enjoyed upside down. She challenged us to make a tarte Tatin from scratch.

This month I was excited to host another Daring Bakers’ challenge, for which I chose the tarte Tatin. This classic French dessert is basically the apple pie version of an upside-down cake: apples are caramelized in sugar in a saucepan, covered with pastry and baked, and then inverted on a plate to serve. It’s a great example of the magic of caramelized sugar: the apples take on a deep, rich mahogany colour and become infused with the complex flavours of a well-cooked caramel, and the crisp puff pastry base also becomes practically candied with caramel at the edges, resulting in a fantastic mix of soft, crunchy, and chewy textures.

The tart is named after the Tatin sisters, who ran a hotel near Paris in the 1880s. Apparently, one day one of the sisters forgot to put a bottom crust on her apple pie, but instead of the disaster she was expecting to pull out of the oven, she ended up with a dessert so loved by the hotel guests that it became the hotel’s signature dish. However, this sweet story conflicts with the fact that a similar upside-down apple tart called tarte Solognotte (named after the Sologne region in France) existed long before the tarte Tatin, suggesting that the Tatin sisters’ creation was actually just an updated and improved version of the tarte Solognotte. Either way, it is a stunningly delicious yet simple and rustic dessert….

Lemon Curd Macarons

January 2, 2015 By Korena in the Kitchen 14 Comments

Lemon Curd Macarons | Korena in the Kitchen

Happy New Year, friends! Here’s to 2015 being the sweetest year yet, and what better way to start a sweet year than with a lemon curd macaron? Given that you can buy lemons and oranges year round in any grocery store, it can be easy to forget that citrus is in fact a winter fruit. However, the explosion of different varieties of lemons, oranges, and grapefruits during the colder months of the year proves that nature still works on a schedule, and that schedule clearly states that citrus coincides with winter, making a lemon curd macaron a perfectly Christmas-y (I made these as part of my Christmas Baking) or New Years-y thing, indeed.

Lemon Curd Macarons | Korena in the Kitchen …

Maple Cheesecake with Roasted Apples

November 14, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 11 Comments

Maple Cheesecake with Roasted Apples | Korena in the Kitchen Now that fall is here, ’tis the season for everything pumpkin-pie-flavoured – but I have a confession to make: I don’t actually like pumpkin pie all that much. I make it every year for Thanksgiving because tradition, yo, but it’s probably my least favourite kind of pie. I’d much rather eat cheesecake, so this year for Thanksgiving (which in Canada was back in October), we ate both. I made this maple-flavoured beauty and topped it with thin slices of maple-cinnamon roasted apples. It was a big hit at our family dinner, and judging by how quickly the leftovers were eaten versus how long the remaining pumpkin pie languished in the fridge, it was the clear winner of that dessert battle.

Maple Cheesecake with Roasted Apples | Korena in the Kitchen …

Blackberry Cinnamon Buns

October 2, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 7 Comments

Blackberry Cinnamon Buns | Korena in the Kitchen

Several weeks ago we were invited to Nate’s aunt’s house for a “bun throw”, which, as it turns out, has nothing to do with actually throwing buns – it’s more of a family brunch. Nevertheless, I figured buns were appropriate, so I made cinnamon buns. But not just regular cinnamon buns: I added blackberries.

Blackberry Cinnamon Buns | Korena in the Kitchen …

Triple Berry Apple Pie

August 22, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 8 Comments

Triple Berry Apple Pie | Korena in the Kitchen

Blackberry season – my very favourite season – is here, and with it comes the urge to bake pies. This one in particular came about as the result of a very successful trip to the local blackberry patch – aka, a ditch just up the road from us – plus the discovery of a few apples in the fruit bowl that were getting soft and some local strawberries and blueberries in the fridge.

Triple Berry Apple Pie | Korena in the Kitchen …