Dorie’s Cocoa-Tahini Cookies with Sesame Crunch

June 10, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 2 Comments

I first made these cookies back in October and couldn’t wait to post about them because they were so delicious: a double chocolate cookie (cocoa powder plus chocolate chunks) amped up with nutty tahini paste, and then kicked over the edge with the addition of candied sesame seed brittle. Then when I sorted through all the photos I’d taken (long after all the cookies were gone, unfortunately) I wasn’t happy with how any of them turned out and decided against posting them. But I couldn’t stop thinking about these wonderful cookies, and so when I made them again this weekend, I not only kicked myself for waiting eight months to do so, I also looked through my old photos and realized that they were actually fine. So here we are! Sorry for taking so long 😉

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Rhubarb and Marzipan Pie

May 18, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 8 Comments

According to Instagram, it’s been rhubarb season since about January, judging by all the gorgeous rhubarb baked goods that have been showing up in my feed since then. I guess spring comes a lot later here in the Far North (ha) because even now that it’s mid-May, the rhubarb in my garden is not quite ready to harvest yet. But it has finally been showing up in the grocery store, and when I snapped some up a few weekends ago I knew exactly what to do with it: I had just seen a delicious looking rhubarb and marzipan cake, and my first thought was, “That would make a good pie.”

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Lemon Sunshine Layer Cake with Lemon Curd and Marshmallow Buttercream

April 26, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 6 Comments

I noted previously that I was having a moment with Stella Parks, aka BraveTart, and wanting to bake all of her stuff. Well, the moment continues, and this cake is the result. I got the BraveTart cookbook for Christmas and have been drooling over it ever since. The things I’ve made from it have been fantastic so far (including Oreos, oatmeal cookies, English muffins, and caramelized white chocolate blondies), and the recipes are wonderfully researched, tested, and always teach me something new about baking and pastry cheffing. So I figured I’d be in good hands using BraveTart recipes for attempt number seven in my quest for the perfect lemon layer cake. And – spoiler alert – while it wasn’t quite perfect, it was pretty darn good.

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Stella Parks’ Spiced Vanilla Hot Cross Buns

March 31, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen Leave a Comment

Guys, I’m having a serious moment with Stella Parks, aka BraveTart. By which I mean, I want to bake all her stuff. Luckily, “her stuff” includes a killer recipe for hot cross buns, so I’m back this year (after a brief hiatus last year) with HCB take seven on the blog. In the past I’ve dabbled in various combinations of chocolate, sourdough, cider, porter, honey, and tea infused HCBs, and this year’s version comes with a hit of vanilla and the unexpected addition of Greek yogurt. One of the things I love best about Parks’ recipes is the way she explains the science behind certain ingredients. In this case, the Greek yogurt adds softness and moisture to the dough, and its acidity also helps with gluten development (and now I understand what “The Lemon Juice Secret” is from the back of the Rogers Flour bag!).

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Coconut Lime Cupcakes with Raspberry Jam and 7(ish)-Minute Frosting

March 24, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 1 Comment

You know when you volunteer to bring treats to work, and instead of making it easy on yourself and preparing the various components of said treat over a few days, you procrastinate and something inevitably takes longer than it should and you end up frosting cupcakes at 11 pm with your kitchen looking like this? (Is this just me?)

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Franzbrötchen {Cinnamon Sugar Buns}

March 10, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 10 Comments

Imagine if a cinnamon bun and a croissant had a baby, only the baby was smarter, taller, better looking, and more popular than both its parents. This baby would be the Franzbrötchen, a cinnamon-sugar filled flaky pastry of German persuasion that is right up there among the best things I’ve ever baked.

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White Chocolate Cranberry Almond Biscotti II

February 14, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 1 Comment

Confession: these white chocolate cranberry almond biscotti were in fact part of my Christmas baking. I make them every year for holiday gift-giving, and they are by far the crowd favourite. I personally only bake them at Christmas, but there’s no reason they can’t be made at any other time of the year. For example, Valentine’s Day. Because homemade biscotti is a sure-fire way to say “I love you”.

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Grandpa’s 100th Birthday Cake {Chocolate Mocha Layer Cake with Vanilla Buttercream}

January 27, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 4 Comments

My Grandpa turned 100 in December – an occasion that deserves a celebratory cake if there ever was one! I asked him what his favourite kind of cake was, and when he answered “fruitcake”, I had a worrying flashback to the last fruitcake I encountered – which happened to be the cake at his own wedding 11 years ago when he married his sweetheart Daphne, where it took three people plus a cleaver and an axe to cut through the royal icing on the outside.

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Hungarian Kifli

December 31, 2017 By Korena in the Kitchen 7 Comments

Christmas took me by surprise this year – December flew by in a blur of work projects and deadlines, and then suddenly it was December 25 and just as suddenly, it’s now the last day of 2017. Not that this stopped me from my regularly scheduled annual Christmas Cookie Madness – it just stopped me from telling you about it until now. These Hungarian Kifli were a new addition to my Christmas cookie menu, brought about by the twelfth and final instalment of Around the World in 12 Plates, destination (you guessed it) Hungary.

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BraveTart’s Homemade Oreos

December 7, 2017 By Korena in the Kitchen 5 Comments

It’s been years since I ate a real Oreo, but I can say with 100% certainty that BraveTart’s Homemade Oreos are BETTER!

In the summer, I joined the Food52 Baking Club on Facebook, and every month we all bake out of a selected baking book and share our results and experiences with the recipes. It’s pretty fun, especially for a baking nerd like me, however I’ve fallen a little behind (a new book to bake from every month gets a bit overwhelming) and had committed to working my way through some of the past month’s cookbooks that were already on my shelves (including Dorie’s Cookies, Classic German Baking, and Tartine). Then November’s cookbook came around: the recently released BraveTart by Stella Parks, a trained pastry chef who writes a blog of the same name and is also an editor at Serious Eats, where she shares her knowledge of food history, baking science, and pastry technique. Basically, she really really knows her stuff – case in point, these Oreos, which are phenomenal. I wasn’t going to buy this month’s cookbook, but after making these cookies from the recipe posted on Serious Eats, it is now on my list (and no, this is not a paid advertisement).

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