German Apple-Quince-Almond Cake {Apfel-Quitte-Marzipan-Kuchen}

November 20, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen 4 Comments

I’ve been eagerly anticipating Luisa Weiss‘ new book, Classic German Baking, ever since she first started sharing her adventures in recipe development about a year ago. I have yet to get my hands on the actual book, but since its release, several recipes have popped up online, including one for a completely gorgeous apple-marzipan cake, which is described as “epic“. In the fall, I’m a sucker for anything apple, and almonds are quickly becoming my favourite flavour for almost everything, so this cake was immediately added to my weekend baking list.

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Apple, Pear and Quince Speculoos Crumble

November 16, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen Leave a Comment

I got Dorie Greenspan’s Baking Chez Moi for my birthday this summer and spent about three days straight reading it from cover to cover. By the time I was done, I had bookmarked so many recipes that it looked like this:

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Serbian Katmer Pie

March 1, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen 1 Comment

I’ve made a lot of different kinds of flaky pastry, and this month with the Daring Kitchen challenge, I made yet another. This version, shared by Milkica of Mimi’s Kingdom, comes from Serbia where it is used to make a dish called katmer pie. The pastry for katmer pie falls into the same sort of category as phyllo or strudel: thin sheets of dough brushed with butter, wrapped around a sweet or savoury filling.

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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….

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 …

Harvest Apple and Almond Tart

November 11, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 11 Comments

The Canadian Food Experience Project began June 7, 2013. As we share our collective stories through our regional food experiences, we hope to bring global clarity to our Canadian culinary identity. Visit Valerie’s blog, A Canadian Foodie, on the 15th for a round-up of this month’s posts.

As usual, I’m a few days late with this month’s Canadian Food Experience Project post… but it’s because I wanted to get this recipe right before sharing it. This month, Valerie has asked us to talk about the Canadian harvest and what it means in our lives. For me, the harvest means apples. For as long as I can remember, autumn has brought with it falling leaves and a large box of apples sitting in one corner of the kitchen, perfuming the house with their sweet-tart scent, until either my Mum finally got around to making apple sauce or apple crisps, or I baked them into pies. When I was young, the apples came from my grandparents’ trees, and in more recent years they came from friends of my parents. This year, I scored some truly gigantic Bramley apples from a co-worker’s trees.

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Apple, Cilantro & Pecan Quesadillas

May 30, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 7 Comments

Sometimes the weirdest-sounding combinations turn out to be much better than expected. I once had a pizza topped with cilantro pesto, apples, pecans, and smoked mozzarella, which I thought would be totally weird, but was actually very very good. The other day I happened to have corn tortillas, cheese, and cilantro in the fridge, an apple in the fruit bowl, and pecans in the baking cupboard, and I figured that a quesadilla is sort of like a Mexican pizza, right?…