Strawberry Rhubarb Skillet Clafoutis

July 3, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 16 Comments

The move is over and we have settled into our temporary new home – temporary because (fingers crossed!) we have plans in the works for bigger, better things. I have not really taken the new kitchen for a spin yet, but I’m looking forward to it. It’s bigger and better laid-out than the kitchen in our last place, which was a galley-style layout that could only accommodate one person and had barely any usable counter space:

The kitchen on a good day (there was usually a dish rack taking up valuable real estate above the dishwasher).

Not that I’m knocking small kitchens – I know you can do a lot in them and I’ve survived in an even smaller one – but a little extra space is so nice. …

Daring Bakers: Battenberg Cake

June 27, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 63 Comments

Mandy of What The Fruitcake?! came to our rescue last minute to present us with the Battenberg Cake challenge! She highlighted Mary Berry’s techniques and recipes to allow us to create this unique little cake with ease.

Traditionally, a Battenberg cake is pink and white and covered in marzipan (and perfect for a tea party, I might add!). Nothing wrong with traditional, but when given the chance, it’s pretty fun to switch things up. Mandy gave us a recipe for the original pink-and-white cake as well as a walnut and coffee version with coffee buttercream, which sounded amazing, plus, as a substitute for marzipan, a recipe for something called “chocolate plastique”, which is chocolate mixed with corn syrup so that it can be molded or rolled out. Moldable chocolate? That had my name all over it.

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100% Sourdough Bagels

June 20, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 23 Comments

This month’s Sourdough Surprises project was bagels, yet another item that just so happened to be on my “summer to-make” list. The recipe comes from Susan at Wild Yeast, a fantastic blog and resource for all things concerning bread and the home of YeastSpotting, a weekly round-up of user-submitted blog posts featuring bread and yeast (to which this post has been submitted!).

You should really head over to read Susan’s original post of this recipe, because not only is it witty, it is also very informative. I’ve never made bagels before, but I do agree with many of her opinions, including the one that the only good bagel is a chewy bagel. This means kneading the heck out of the dough, and unless you have arms of steel and a lot of free time, you’re going to “knead” a stand-mixer. (Sorry, that was terrible.)…

Sourdough Danish Pastries, Part III

June 9, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 14 Comments

This is the last post in a series of three – click to read Part I and Part II.

Here’s what I did with the rest of the sourdough Danish pastry that I tucked away in the freezer: Chocolate Chip-Cream Cheese Spirals and Cinnamon-Sugar Scrolls. Both super easy and pretty darn tasty!

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Mark Bittman’s Amazing Brownies

June 5, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 11 Comments

I am currently navigating my way through some silly government bureaucracy, and if you’ve ever had the misfortune to be in that position, you probably know that (regardless of which government you’re dealing with) it can seem like an endless string of hoop jumping, inordinately long waiting periods, and many frustrating encounters with a wretched automated phone menu….

Daring Bakers: Challah Back Y’all!

May 27, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 77 Comments

May’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge was pretty twisted – Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to make challah! Using recipes from all over, and tips from “A Taste of Challah,” by Tamar Ansh, she encouraged us to bake beautifully braided breads.

After this challenge, I can’t say “challah” without thinking “holla!”. I had so much fun with this one!

I made three different kinds of challah: plain honey white challah, whole wheat challah filled with apples, cinnamon, and maple syrup, and sourdough challah. Even more fun than all the different varieties were the different braiding techniques that Ruth, our host, encouraged us to try. I went for a six-strand braid, a five-strand braid, and a four-strand braided round. If you’ve never shaped bread like this before, challah is a great way to start: the dough was really easy to work with and good for braiding….

Sourdough Danish Pastries, Part II

May 24, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 39 Comments

This is the second post in a series of three – click to read Part I and Part III.

As promised, here’s the follow-up to my last post on Danish pastries: how to shape and fill the Danishes. So fun!

I got really excited about the different Danish shapes I was going to make, so I tried a whole bunch of them. They were all pretty successful so I’m confident that I can pass along my skillz ;). I only used half the batch of dough to make these (I couldn’t justify making sixteen Danishes for only two of us) so I will be experimenting with the rest of the dough sometime soon… stay tuned for Part III! ;)…

Sourdough Danish Pastries

May 20, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 76 Comments

This is the first post in a series of three – click to read Part II and Part III.

In my last post, I was extolling the virtues of making something simple from scratch. Now I am going to extol the virtues of making something rather complicated from scratch: Danish pastries using sourdough starter. Yes, we are doing this!

At the end of April, I wrote a list of stuff I wanted to make for this blog over the summer, and Danish pastries was on it. I had my first taste of making laminated dough when the Daring Bakers made croissants a while back, and I wanted to try it again. But I was kind of putting it off because it’s a lot of butter and a lot of work: all that rolling and folding and rolling and folding and resting and waiting. Then, during the Daring Bakers reveal last month, I came across Sourdough Surprises, which is another baking group that a few Daring Bakers members have created to bake together once a month using their sourdough starters. And their recipe for May was sourdough Danishes! Well, it seemed like fate. I was in….

Lemon Meringue Birthday Cake

May 9, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 14 Comments

Recently Nate had a birthday, so naturally, I made a birthday cake. Last year I made him a lemon-tastic cake which didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted, so I gave it another go this year. I came across two amazing-sounding lemon cakes: one with black tea-flavoured Italian meringue frosting by Honey and Jam, and the Tartine lemon meringue cake (lemon butter, caramel, chiffon cake, and torched meringue) at The Way the Cookie Crumbles. I decided to use the cake and frosting recipe from the first, and the lemon cream and caramel fillings from the second. I also intended to torch the black tea meringue frosting, but I’ll get to that in a minute……

Strawberry Cheesecake Banana Bread

May 6, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 17 Comments

It is finally strawberry season here, and by that I mean that there are local strawberries in the stores. They are a bit more expensive than the ones trucked up from California (which seems so totally backwards!) but they taste amazing because they are so perfectly ripe and fresh.

I knew I wanted to make something special with these berries but I couldn’t decide what until I remembered the strawberry banana bread I’d seen on Joy the Baker a while ago. I wanted to jazz it up even more so I added a cream cheese swirl. The result is an incredibly moist, decadent, not-to-sweet bread with a pleasant strawberry flavour and cheesecake-y tang. The banana is not overpowering at all and mostly just contributes sweetness, and the hint of cinnamon in the batter goes really well with the strawberries….