Every Easter I see these pretty speckled robin’s egg cakes pop up all over the food internet, and I’ve been wanting to make one myself for a while. I’ve also been wanting to make a coconut layer cake, so I combined the two and here we are!
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10 Years! {Nigella Lawson’s Coffee and Walnut Layer Cake}
Korena in the Kitchen turned 10 years old in January! It’s amazing to think that this little blog has been with me through an entire decade, chronicling my life in food. It’s fair to say much has changed in that time – three jobs, two post-secondary credentials, a boyfriend turned fiancé turned husband, home ownership, and now parenthood – but the thing that hasn’t changed is my love of making delicious things and sharing them here.
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Any Fruit Biscuit Cobbler
Back in August, this was the first baking recipe I managed to make from scratch, start to finish, since Max was born, and this belated post is a testament to how hard it is to get almost anything else done when you are caring for a baby! I first discovered this cherry biscuit cobbler last year and couldn’t wait to make it again with different fruit fillings. The biscuits themselves are like perfect tea time scones, light and perfectly tender, and when combined with jammy fruit and optional but highly recommended ice cream or whipped cream, the whole thing tastes like a cross between a pie and a shortcake.
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A Birthday Cake for Max
My son, Maxwell, turned 3 months old last week. When the first contractions began the day before he was born, I started to make him a cake to distract myself from early labour: the famous Milk Bar funfetti Birthday Cake, a “birthday” cake in a very literal sense. I managed to bake the actual cake before things got too intense to continue and I had to put it unfinished in the freezer to deal with at some point in the future. A little over twenty-four hours later, I had a baby in my arms. Six weeks after that I had my feet under me enough to finish assembling the cake. And now, another eight weeks later, I’m finally getting around to posting about it – because newborns and postpartum and learning to breastfeed are NO JOKE!
Newborn Max, and 3 month old Max keeping me company on the couch while I work on this post 🙂
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Current Events + Sourdough Bread
I’ve had this sourdough bread post drafted for months now, but there’s a lot going on in the world and it has felt kind of futile to post baking recipes in the midst of it all. The cookies I made or the cake I baked seem to pale in importance against the current major civil unrest due to systemic racism and police brutality. As a Canadian, it’s tempting to sit back and smugly think that the rampant anti-Black racism we see in the US is not a problem here, but as a WHITE Canadian, I have to seriously check that impulse because we have our own terrible history and ongoing legacy of institutional racism and police violence against Indigenous, Black, and people of colour in this country.
Add all this to the fact that I am a little bit distracted at the moment because – SURPRISE! – I’m currently very pregnant and expecting a baby fairly imminently, and you might understand why I haven’t posted anything in a while 😉
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Whole Wheat Rhubarb & Spice Muffins
If the empty shelves in the baking aisle of the otherwise fairly well-stocked grocery store are anything to go by right now, there are lots of people dealing with the current global pandemic in same way I am: with lots of baking therapy. These whole wheat muffins stuffed with tart rhubarb, spiced with cinnamon, and topped with crunchy sugar are an extremely comforting thing to bake and eat, so they were the first thing I made when sh*t started to get real a few weeks ago. They are quick and easy to mix up, don’t require any special pantry ingredients, and unlike most muffins, which are best eaten the day they are baked and then decline from there, these are excellent two, three, even four days after baking, thanks to their nubbly whole grain ingredients which help keep them moist and fresh. They are also a great way to use up that bag of slightly freezer burned rhubarb from last summer that you discovered at the back of the freezer when doing a pandemic inventory of all the edible things in your kitchen.
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Mendiants {How to Temper Chocolate}
Mendiants are a French confection of chocolate topped with dried fruit and nuts, the name being derived from the Latin word for “begging” in reference to begging for alms by monks or friars of religious orders who have taken vows of poverty. The fruit and nut toppings are supposed to represent the four Roman Catholic monastic orders who partook in this activity. But beyond the history lesson, mendiants are a delicious and easy way to make chocolate candies – the only challenge is that you have to temper chocolate, which, if you’ve ever watched an episode of Bon Appetit’s Gourmet Makes when Claire has to temper chocolate, you might assume is an impossible task. Every time she hauls out the vacuum sealer and sous vide immersion circulator thing I cringe, because tempering chocolate is NOT THAT HARD, I swear!
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Soft Gingerbread Squares with Rum-Butter Glaze
It’s already the first week of January, and as usual, I missed the boat on posting about all the Christmas cookies I made – because somehow this year, I ended up doing three separate rounds of cookie baking madness: one for the Food52 Holiday Swap (which I actually *did* manage to post about, whew!), the second a few weeks before Christmas to take to a family celebration in Vancouver, and the third in the days before Christmas when I decided I wasn’t happy with my existing cookie selection. This third bout of cookie baking madness included these soft gingerbread cookies from Tartine, which is a recipe I’ve had bookmarked for ages. Last year I made a similar cookie from the book Sweet which included a rum-butter glaze that was absolutely to die for, however the gingerbread itself wasn’t my favourite. So I kept the glaze and instead put it on the Tartine cookies, and holy cow, these cookies won Christmas! Nate and I both loved them. The spice level is perfect – cinnamony and gingery with a hint of molasses and black pepper – and they have a lovely soft texture. And that glaze! *heart eyes*
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Black Sesame-Espresso Shortbread Pinwheels
I first made and loved these black sesame-espresso shortbread pinwheel cookies months and months ago and knew I’d be including them in my 2019 Christmas Baking, which, now that it’s December, has begun! I made these as part of the Food52 Holiday Swap – swirly cookies have a special place in my heart at Christmas (see these chocolate peppermint pinwheels), as does shortbread (see here, here, and here), and these are a sophisticated take on both with their smoky black sesame and espresso flavours and perfectly crisp, light texture.
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Blackberry Hazelnut Layer Cake
The end of summer is my favourite, still sunny and warm with long golden afternoons but also a sniff of cooler air and the promise of sweater weather (which apparently is here now – we actually lit a fire in the fireplace last night!) and apple pie around the corner. The best part is all the glorious late season fruit – raspberries and peaches and plums (late summer is plum cake season, after all) and my very favourite: blackberries. Weekends in late August and early September, you will inevitably find me crouched on the side of the road or in the ditch foraging for blackberries, coming home with scratched forearms and purple-stained fingers and a bucket of shiny black fruit tasting of summer nostalgia.
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