Chocolate Porter Sourdough Hot Cross Buns

March 31, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 32 Comments

Chocolate Porter Sourdough Hot Cross Buns Happy Easter! I hope the Easter Bunny brought you all lots of chocolate. :)

This Easter I wanted to make some special hot cross buns (as in, more special than these or these). I was thinking something along the lines of “hot cross bunnies” (haha, I’m so punny… bunny… sorry) but then I came across these spiced stout sourdough beauties from Lauren Bakes (she recently posted a chocolate chip version, too), which stopped me dead in my cutesy little bunny tracks. Her recipe contained dried fruit soaked in tea plus a sourdough levain made with Guinness, which I swapped out for chocolate porter because, well, I’ll take any excuse to buy it, really….

Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream Frosting, Take 2: Success!

March 28, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 86 Comments

Almost two years ago, I made a wedding cake for my good friend and frosted it with cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream. The cake turned out great, but the frosting was another story. Turns out that cream cheese doesn’t work so well as a replacement for butter, which I realized after having made two giant batches of frosting, posting about it, and then having it go all weird and curdled when I actually tried to frost the cake with it. It was so unsuccessful that I wouldn’t recommend the recipe to anyone, but it is obviously a topic of interest to many because that post generates a lot of traffic for my blog….

Daring Bakers: Beet Red Velvet Cake

March 27, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 67 Comments

Ruth from Makey-Cakey was our March 2013 Daring Bakers’ challenge host. She encouraged us all to get experimental in the kitchen and sneak some hidden veggies into our baking, with surprising and delicious results!

OK, here comes the FOURTH cake post this month! My goodness.

I’ve been mildly obsessed with red velvet cakes for the past little while – you know, the American Southern classic bright red cake spiked with cocoa powder and frosted with cream cheese frosting – only upon looking through several recipes, there was one ingredient that put me right off: red food colouring. We’re not just talking a few drops here – we’re talking a few tablespoons or ounces! I figured there had to be a way to make this cake without all the food colouring, so I started searching. I found a post with a recipe for a red wine velvet cake (yes I’ll be trying that soon!) and a really interesting history of the red velvet cake as we know it (ie, chock full of food colouring). Apparently, way back when, “velvet cakes” were called that because of their velvety texture, and red velvet cake would have been appreciated for that rather than for its colour. In this particular cake, the acidic buttermilk caused a chemical reaction with the small amount of cocoa powder in the batter, making the resulting cake a slightly reddish brown. As well, the cake was usually made with brown sugar, which at the time was known as “red” sugar. The bright red velvet cake we know today didn’t come about until the enterprising owner of a food colour-producing company decided to boost Depression-era sales by creating a recipe for red velvet cake that included two whole bottles of red food colouring.

Maybe not two-bottles-of-food-colouring red, but still pretty red.

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Sourdough Banana Bourbon Upside Down Cake

March 20, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 36 Comments

Sourdough Banana Bourbon Upside Down Cake This might be the most unattractive cake I’ve ever made, which is both disappointing and hilarious.

Disappointing because the pictures from the recipe I based it on are quite pretty, but somehow it didn’t translate (more on that later).

Hilarious because, as my darling Nate pointed out when he went to cut himself a piece, the bananas look like penises (yup, I just said that).

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Chocolate Bomb Cupcakes

March 7, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 21 Comments

Chocolate Bomb Cupcakes A good friend of ours had a milestone birthday this week, and to celebrate we got together with a bunch of good people for some Neapolitan style pizza at Pizzeria Prima Strada last weekend. I offered to make Aaron a cake, but unfortunately you can’t take a homemade cake into a restaurant… so instead I made cupcakes that we devoured in the parking lot after dinner.

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Buttermilk Scones

March 5, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 26 Comments

Buttermilk Scones I almost never buy buttermilk, but a few weeks ago I had some in the fridge (leftover from making these) and was looking for ways to use it up. Scones jumped into my head because I also happened to have some lemon curd to use up, and there is practically nothing I like better than scones with lemon curd.

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Daring Bakers: Crisp Flatbreads and Crackers

February 27, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 26 Comments

Sarah from All Our Fingers in the Pie was our February 2013 Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to use our creativity in making our own Crisp Flatbreads and Crackers!

I had some trouble getting into this month’s challenge. I don’t eat a lot of crackers in the first place, so the desire to make them myself isn’t that strong, I guess. I kind of feel like I phoned this one in, which sucks because I also know how much work our host, Sarah, put into choosing, testing, and presenting the challenge recipes. So please don’t judge this challenge by my lack of enthusiasm. Instead, check out the amazing assortment of crispy, crunchy snacks the other Daring Bakers made this month.

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Ethiopian Injera

February 20, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 35 Comments

Ethiopian Injera A few years ago I had lunch with my Mum at an Ethiopian restaurant in Vancouver. Never having had Ethiopian food before, I had no idea what to expect, other than my Mum telling me that we would be eating “injera” made from “teff”, which really didn’t do much to clear things up.

What arrived at our table was a giant, crèpe-like flatbread covered in dollops of several kinds of thick, curry-like stew, to be shared between the two of us. Eating with our hands, we tore off pieces of the crèpe and used it to scoop up the stew, which was spicy and flavourful and incredibly delicious. The crèpe, as it turned out, was called injera, and it was made from a grain called teff (which happens to be gluten-free). It had a pleasant, almost spongy texture and slightly sour flavour, due to it being made with a sourdough starter of sorts. Along with being one of the most unusual eating experiences I have ever had (it’s not everyday in Canada that an edible part of your meal serves as both plate and eating utensil), that lunch was also one of the most memorable and delicious.

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Silky Lemon Curd

February 17, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 17 Comments

Silky Lemon Curd As mentioned in my previous post, I loves me some lemon. Lemon curd is one of my favorite things to spread on toast, dollop on scones, stir into plain Greek yogurt (or layer with granola in a dessert-for-breakfast parfait), or just eat straight off a spoon. It’s also darn good in a tart shell or as a Danish filling, which is the reason I came across this particular incarnation.

Greek yogurt, lemon curd, and granola parfait

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Lemon Heart Danishes

February 14, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 15 Comments

Lemon Heart Danishes Valentine’s Day. An excuse for heart-shaped baking. I’m in!

Lemon is my favorite sweet/dessert flavour second only to chocolate, but it’s hard to buy decent lemon baked goods. I hate fake lemon even more than I love real lemon, and unfortunately most of the time, store-bought lemon-flavoured things are pretty dreadful. So in the case of lemon, it’s best to take matters into your own hands.

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