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.

…

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!

…

Cranberry Apple Cinnamon Danish Swirls

November 26, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 3 Comments

When Dale Carnegie wrote his famous self-help book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People“, he listed six ways to get people to like you. I’m here to present you with a seventh way: make these cranberry apple cinnamon danishes and share them with whomever you are hoping to befriend.

…

Salty Honey Pie

November 12, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 1 Comment

The Beatles said it best:

“Honey pie,
Honey pie,
Honey pie,
Honey pie,
I love you.”

I first made this salted honey pie from Four and Twenty Blackbirds back in the summer and we loved it so much I made it again for Canadian Thanksgiving in October. Initially our dinner guests were a bit disappointed there was no pumpkin pie (not my favourite, and one of the perks hosting is you get to choose the menu 😉 ) but after the first bite of this salty-sweet confection, all complaints were erased.

…

Blackberry Basil White Chocolate Tart

October 1, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 8 Comments

Blackberry season almost completely passed me by this year. Normally I’m out scouring the neighbourhood ditches and roadsides for blackberries the minute I notice they are ripe, but somehow I missed the signs and nearly forgot. Luckily, once I remembered, the blackberry item I had in mind only required a small handful of berries, which is how I ended up foraging for blackberries in the rain at the very tail end of the season and came up with just enough for this pretty little tart.

…

Cinnamon Apricot Pie with Crème Anglaise

September 8, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen Leave a Comment

This is another pie from The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, and boy, do they really know their stuff. In fact, this may be the tastiest pie that I’ve ever made. I’ve never done much baking with apricots and holy smokes are they ever delicious here! I loved their tart floral flavour next to the warmth of the cinnamon. I finally found Angostura bitters in the grocery store (I guess I didn’t look hard enough last time!) and I like what they added to this pie – the flavour I got from them was almost like allspice, and it was really good with the apricots.

…

Strawberry Balsamic Pie

September 1, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 3 Comments

Recently, the Food52 Baking Club had The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book as our cookbook of the month, which means that I now have three gorgeous pies to share with you. I don’t own this cookbook and couldn’t justify adding to my collection (but that might change… #cookbookhoarder), but I managed to find several recipes online, and after making two of their pies I was convinced to finally join our local regional library so I could get my hands on the actual book!

…

Pistachio Petit Four Cake

August 6, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 4 Comments

Every year I carefully plan what kind of birthday cake I’m going to make myself, and this year I was imagining some kind of over-the-top creation with chocolate and peanut butter. But my chocolate cake craving was satisfied when I made a Devil’s Food Cake with Marshmallow Frosting (OMG) for a co-worker’s last day potluck, and then I changed tacks completely when I came across this little pistachio layer cake beauty, boasting not only pistachio sponge but also apricot jam, thin ribbons of marzipan, chocolate ganache, and flowers. And as a cake project lover and general fussy-pastry enthusiast, it seemed like the perfect birthday present to myself.

…

Mini Mile-High Lemon Meringue Pie

July 13, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 3 Comments

How is it that I had never made a lemon meringue pie before now? In fact, I’m not even sure I’d ever actually eaten lemon meringue pie before I made this half-size one – which is surprising, because lemon things are second only to chocolate things on my dessert hierarchy. I’ve eaten many a lemon curd tart, but not a lemon meringue pie. What is the difference, you might ask? Well, according to me, the differences are:

A lemon curd tart has a sweet shortcrust pastry (like a shortbread cookie), whereas a lemon meringue tart uses a blind-baked flaky pie shell. It should be noted that this particular blind-baked pie shell was the best I’ve ever made, owing to a few tips courtesy of Stella Parks, aka BraveTart: the first being her low-and-slow blind-baking method using sugar as a pie weight, and the second being the use of bleached all purpose flour, which has a more predictable profile of starch to protein than unbleached all purpose flour and results in a more tender and flaky pastry. (I have been an unbleached flour user for as long as I’ve been buying flour because the alternative sounds scary and chemical-laden… but once I read about the difference and about the bleaching process (which doesn’t actually use bleach), I realized that it’s not scary, it’s just chemistry, which is what successful baking relies on.)

…

Pistachio, Rose & Strawberry Buns

June 25, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 1 Comment

I came across this recipe for brioche buns filled with pistachio cream and strawberry jam and brushed with rose-flavoured syrup in the Food52 Baking Club on Facebook, where we are baking from the book “Golden” by Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer for the month of June. Despite not being too sure about rose-flavoured things (the last time I baked with rosewater I ended up with sugar cookies that tasted like they’d been made with old potpourri, ie: not good), after reading a few enthusiastic reviews, I decided to try them myself. All my uncertainty was for naught, because THESE – these are amazing!

…