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Banff Cobbler

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Yesterday was my first day back at work after four months off, and in answering the inevitable “what did you do this summer?” question several times, I realized that I had a jam-packed summer: a ten-year high school reunion, a trip to California, a concert in Vancouver, a stagette and two weddings (the wedding cake post is coming, I promise!!), and a road trip to Banff, Alberta, with Lynette – not to mention a ton of cooking and baking in between it all. No wonder it’s been a while since my last post!

The Banff road trip was an almost-2000 kilometer round trip across British Columbia and into the Rocky Mountains to visit our friend Tangle and her boyfriend Tyler.

Banff is really beautiful, even without the fancy iPhone camera filter

It was a beautiful drive (but looooong), and the visit was full Disney musical singalongs, mountain climbing, picturesque views, and great food courtesy of Tyler.

Dinner one evening

Breakfast the next morning (notice the icing sugar heart!)

On our last day there, we picked up some raspberries and blackberries at the Farmer’s Market, and the fruit guy threw in a slightly bruised peach for free. Another friend gave us some more raspberries from his garden (of both the red and pale yellow “Champagne” variety), and we decided that we needed to make some kind of berry dessert. Quite frankly, I was dying to get into the kitchen myself, and my uncle had sent me a link for a berry cobbler that I wanted to try, so I eagerly volunteered to make a raspberry-blackberry-peach cobbler as the dessert course to our meal of elk and bison steak.

A cobbler is sort of like a crumble, only the topping contains an egg and baking powder along with the flour, butter, and sugar, so you end up with a layer of cookie-crossed-with-biscuit on top of the fruit. The filling is just fruit and sugar but it thickens up during baking so that you end up with juicy (but not runny) fruit topped with a buttery, sugary, crisp pastry. The only thing that would have made it better was a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a drizzle of heavy cream. My advice is to make and eat this RIGHT NOW – it’s perfect for all the fruit and berries in season!…

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Daring Bakers: Fresh Fraisier

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Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

A fraisier is a French pastry consisting of two layers of cake soaked in simple syrup with strawberries and pastry cream sandwiched between. Essentially, it is a free-standing trifle, but the special thing about a fraisier is the exposed fruit around the sides. To make a true fraisier, you have to use strawberries (fraise = strawberry), so I’m not really sure what to call my strawberry-raspberry-blueberry combination – a baies mélanger-ier doesn’t really have the same ring to it. But whatever you want to call it, it was tasty!

I did this challenge while I was in California visiting my aunt and uncle, and it was extra challenging because I was baking in an unfamiliar kitchen and also contending with a wheat and corn allergy. But it turned out beautifully and just proves that you don’t need fancy equipment or lots of space to make a spectacular dessert. …

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Amazing Struesel-Topped Muffins

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These muffins are so good I made them twice. Once for myself, and again the next day for my friend Heather, who just had a baby girl. For the last seven and a half months of her pregnancy, Heather was sick every single day, and obviously had a really hard time eating anything. This would be my own personal hell. Thankfully, now that the baby is out, she can actually enjoy eating again. I visited her and baby Zephyra on the weekend, and when Heather told me to “bring food!” I was more than happy to oblige with these muffins.

The original recipe from Smitten Kitchen is for rhubarb struesel muffins, and I came across it about a week after I posted the recipe for strawberry rhubarb coffee cake made with whole wheat pastry flour – I had been dreaming of a muffin incarnation, and then this recipe appeared, using whole wheat pastry flour to boot! The first time I made them I used (frozen) rhubarb, and they were delicious: not too sweet, with a delicate, springy texture, a crunchy golden struesel layer on top, and a good tang from the rhubarb. Not to mention the fact that they smelled HEAVENLY while baking. The second time around, I used fresh strawberries and frozen blueberries, because Heather has two older kids and I figured berries might be more kid-friendly than slightly sour rhubarb. I also played around with yogurt instead of sour cream, and switched it up with the flours, using a combination of whole wheat and all purpose in place of whole wheat pastry flour. Both times, they came out perfectly, and I think I may have found my new favorite muffin recipe. I’m fairly confident that you could put any kind of fruit in these – fresh or frozen – and they would be fantastic. Thank you Deb at Smitten Kitchen for this recipe!!…

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Strawberry Rhubarb Coffee Cake with Ginger

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I’ve been on a rhubarb kick lately. I bought about 4 kilograms of local rhubarb a few weeks ago and it’s now in my freezer, waiting to be used in something delicious. Seeing as the strawberry rhubarb pie I made at Easter didn’t quite satisfy my craving for slightly tart rhubarb-y goodness, I decided to make a coffee cake instead. This is based on a recipe that I’ve had in my little recipe notebook since high school – I think it is from making goodies for the concession at a school concert or something, but I have no idea of the original source. I took some inspiration from this recipe from a baking group called “Tuesdays with Dorie” (they are baking their way through a cookbook by Dorie Greenspan, of Julia Child fame) and modified the coffee cake to use strawberries and rhubarb, with some ground ginger in the cake and candied ginger in the fruit and brown-sugar struesel topping. I also used whole wheat pastry flour, which gives the cake a slightly “toasty” flavour and stands up well to the more assertive rhubarb flavour. You actually wouldn’t even know it was made with whole wheat because the cake was still moist and light.

The candied ginger I used was marked “mild” and I could have easily used twice as much to get a better ginger taste. I could have also used more ground ginger in the cake batter, and the recipe below is how I would make it next time, ie: with more ginger! If ginger isn’t your thing, feel free to omit it, however it is a really nice addition to the classic strawberry rhubarb combination.

One thing to note: you can use fresh or frozen fruit, but don’t mix it together with the sugar and lemon juice until just before you are really to sprinkle it over the batter, otherwise you will end up with a bunch of liquid in the bottom of the bowl that you have to discard because it will make your cake soggy :(…

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Lemon-tastic: Birthday Cake with Lemon Curd Filling and Candied Lemon Slices

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Yesterday was Nate’s birthday, and I wanted to make him a cake. He suggested something lemony with cream cheese icing, so I came up with a layer cake filled with lemon curd and covered in white chocolate cream cheese icing. Sounds good, right?

In theory, it was good. It looked good. In reality, it could have been better in several ways. One thing is for sure, this cake was SWEET. Holy sugar headache, Batman!

Sometimes I get a little over-enthusiastic about trying something new, in that I start trying to re-invent the wheel. I Googled “lemon layer cake” and came up with several tried and true recipes (many of which used a 1-2-3-4 cake as a base), but did I go for one of them? Nope, I wanted to do it differently – better, I was hoping….

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All content © Korena Vezerian and Korena in the Kitchen, 2011 – 2021. Please contact me before duplicating any content, including pictures. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Korena Vezerian and Korena in the Kitchen with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.