Salted Caramel & Chocolate Rice Crispy Squares

April 7, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 10 Comments

Salted Caramel & Chocolate Rice Crispy Squares | Korena in the Kitchen

Two weekends ago I went on a canoeing/camping trip in the Gulf Islands, where I was specifically tasked with bringing dessert for one of the evenings. My plan was to make “campfire fondue”, which consists of melting a handful of chocolate chips in a little package of foil beside a campfire, and then dipping fruit (oranges and banana chips in this case), squares of pound cake, and toasted marshmallows in it. Alas, we ended up waiting out high winds for two nights on Portland Island where fires are not allowed, and then had to cut the trip short by a day because the wind was only supposed to get worse (it was a very exciting journey home!), so unfortunately my campfire dessert never happened. Which meant that I had a whole bunch of marshmallows and chocolate chips on my hands after the trip.

Salted Caramel & Chocolate Rice Crispy Squares | Korena in the Kitchen …

Fudgy Cocoa-Quinoa Brownies

February 25, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 20 Comments

If I told you that some of the best brownies I’ve ever made were gluten-free and didn’t actually contain any chocolate, would you believe me? (I wouldn’t lie about something like this, I promise.)

Let me explain. A few weeks ago, I came across Alice Medrich’s Cocoa Brownies on Food52, which are made with a hefty dose of cocoa powder rather than chocolate – helpful because if there is chocolate in the house, I usually eat it before I can bake with it, whereas cocoa powder is much less pleasant to eat straight. Then I saw Christina’s red wine cupcake version of that dynamite quinoa chocolate cake (seriously, if you haven’t made it yet, what are you waiting for?), and I started wondering if you could make brownies with quinoa, being that it makes such a rad chocolate cake. I turned to the Google machine and found that yes, it’s been done, but that all the recipes very closely resemble the quinoa chocolate cake rather than a true brownie, and while the quinoa chocolate cake is an awesome cake in its own right, it’s not a brownie. So I set off to experiment with Alice’s cocoa brownie recipe and some cooked quinoa to come up with my own formula.

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The “Why Bother” Cake

August 19, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 23 Comments

Since I was about 7 or 8, my Mum has had food sensitivities to wheat and dairy. This was over 20 years ago, before being gluten-free and drinking soy or almond milk were “mainstream” like they are today, and food choices back then for pretty much everything were extremely limited. At some point, we started to refer to anything wheat-free and dairy-free as a “why bother?” because most often, without both wheat and dairy, whatever you were eating was barely worth it – especially when it came to dessert.

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Banana Protein Muffins (Gluten-Free!)

October 16, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 12 Comments

On weekdays I leave the house before 7 am to commute to work, and while I used to favour some kind of egg-and-toast combination for breakfast, I simply don’t have the time to coordinate that kind of thing anymore before rushing out the door. Toast and jam just weren’t cutting it – I needed something with a little more nutritional oopmh to start my day. I’ve been reading Christina‘s recent nutrient–packed muffin posts with great interest, and prompted by several rapidly blackening and fruit fly-attracting bananas in my fruit bowl, I came up with these bad boys. I added (quite a lot of) whey protein powder, and used oats (blended in a food processor) and rice flour so they just so happen to be gluten-free (which was a happy coincidence, as my wheat-free Aunt was visiting when I made them). And with only 1/3 of a cup of sugar for 16 muffins, I can honestly say these are probably the healthiest baked good that has come out of my kitchen in, well, a long time….

Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

April 11, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 22 Comments

Third post containing chocolate in a row, my goodness! Actually I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner…

Have you made those peanut butter cookies that are just peanut butter, egg, and sugar? These almond butter cookies are like that, but better. Chewy, crisp, and buttery (but made without butter or flour), they also have maple syrup, chocolate chips and chunks of toasted almonds. Yum. They were so good and so easy!…

Christmas Baking 2011: Eggnog Macarons

December 25, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 5 Comments

Merry Christmas! Here’s another way to enjoy some festive eggnog ;).

As I have previously mentioned, my first encounter with macarons was in Paris with my aunt when I was 18. I immediately fell in love, but I resigned myself to the fact that I would probably have to come back to Paris to ever taste them again, which would either be a) never, or b) a very very long time off. It never even occurred to me that I could make macarons at home – they seemed like some kind of impossibly complicated, intricate pastry that only the French could create – until I started noticing them popping up on food blogs a few years ago. However, it was also noted that the homemade macaron was a highly temperamental creation, and that the very techniques and methods that some people swore by were the same techniques and methods that others blamed for their macaron disasters.

Armed with the knowledge that macarons were possible in my own kitchen, I set out to scour the internet and learn as much as I could about making them. This may have been a mistake. Sometimes it’s better to go into things a bit blind, because you aren’t aware of every little thing that can go wrong and therfore totally paranoid about them. The whole process became overwhelming and a bit intimidating, so I put off making macarons for fear of failure.