Big announcement time: Nate and I bought a house!!
We moved in the middle of August and have settled in pretty quickly – we love it here. We are in Shawnigan Lake, about 40 minutes from Victoria where we both still work, but we traded up for lots of privacy and green space. 🙂 Plus the Cowichan Valley has a seriously thriving local food scene, which I am very much looking forward to exploring!
…
Kat of The Bobwhites was our August 2012 Daring Baker hostess who inspired us to have fun in creating pâté à choux shapes, filled with crème patisserie or Chantilly cream. We were encouraged to create swans or any shape we wanted and to go crazy with filling flavors allowing our creativity to go wild!
Challenges like this are the reason I joined the Daring Bakers: ridiculous, whimsical, finicky, cream-filled pastries. I LOVE IT!
Seriously though, why NOT make cream puff swans? They are super tasty and anyone who sees them will be very impressed. They won’t be able to help it….
When I saw that this month’s Sourdough Surprises project was pie dough, I got very excited. So excited that I actually made this pie back at the end of July because I just couldn’t contain myself. Fruit pies are one of my very favorite things to bake and I was stoked to see a recipe for a pie crust using sourdough starter. And after making and eating this pie crust, I can officially say that my favorite way to use my sourdough starter is in sweet pastries, such as pie or danishes. The starter gives such a richness and complex flavour to pastries that for some reason I don’t taste as much in other applications, and the smell of it baking in the oven is mouthwatering….
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….
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….
I have a banana bread weakness. Whenever I see a new and interesting recipe, especially one that has been raved about, I can’t help myself: I have to make it. I stockpile over-ripe, frozen bananas in my freezer (I think that’s a form of enabling) just so that I can bake banana bread whenever the mood strikes me, as it did the moment I read about this sugar-topped coconut version.
I had most of a can of pineapple in the fridge and thought it would be a good addition to the loaf. It was. And while the coconut and pineapple add texture and sweetness, the sugar on top adds crunch, and the dark rum adds a bit of luxury, my favorite part of this banana bread is the hint of nutmeg in the batter. Somehow it brings all the flavours together and makes them sing. I know this sounds awfully flowery for a loaf of banana bread, but MAN is it ever good!…
Our July 2012 Daring Bakers’ Host was Dana McFarland and she challenged us to make homemade crackers! Dana showed us some techniques for making crackers and encouraged to use our creativity to make each cracker our own by using ingredients we love.
Homemade crackers are one of those things I’ve seen recipes for and thought, “I should make those!” but never got around to actually doing it. Maybe because they’re not loaded with sugar or chocolate? (That seems to be what attracts me these days…) Or maybe because I don’t eat a lot of crackers on a regular basis? Whatever the reason, it’s now moot, because Dana’s challenge was to make not one, but two kinds of crackers, by two different methods: rolled by hand, by pasta machine, or by the slice-and-bake/icebox method….
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. …
Seeing local strawberries in the store is a sure sign that summer is here, but to me, it is the raspberries that signal its true arrival. Last summer I got nostalgic about blackberries, but really, it’s all about the raspberries. My mum used to grow reapberries in her garden and I loved eating them straight off the bush, still warm from the sun, sweet and tangy and so good, and now, they taste like summer to me. BC raspberries are finally in stores and I have been shelling out the $4 or $5 per pint to get me some summery goodness. The only problem is that they don’t keep and I needed to find something to do with them besides eating them by the handful. Enter: Raspberry-Lemon-Poppyseed Muffin Cakes….
A birthday definitely deserves a cake, so for my 29th birthday this weekend, I made myself one. Some people might think that it’s sad to make your own birthday cake, but quite honestly it is one of the best birthday presents I could get. Not only to I get to bake all day (which I love, obviously!), but I get to make the cake exactly the way I want it, AND I get to eat it. Totally a win-win situation for me. Because I’m a planner (at least when it comes to cakes, anyway), I’ve been thinking about my birthday cake for a while. At first I really wanted to make this Mexican hot chocolate-inspired cake, but then I came across Julia Child’s French strawberry cake, which seemed more seasonally appropriate. I also had my eye on this hazelnut cake, so I added some hazelnuts to Julia’s cake. And then I really wanted to make Swiss meringue buttercream, and this custard buttercream frosting caught my eye. So much for following one recipe as written, right? This time, anyway, it seems to have worked out and this cake was awesome!…