There is a restaurant in Victoria called Pagliacci’s that is famous for its focaccia bread: light, fluffy, chewy, flavourful, and baked in olive oil so that the crust is both crunchy and almost buttery at the same time. I know several people who go there just for the bread (myself included), and it stands to reason that making a Pagliacci’s taste-alike focaccia was on my List.
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This Christmas I asked Santa for a waffle iron (mainly so I could make Belgian Liège waffles, which I plan on doing soon), and he delivered! I christened it by making a totally wonderful waffle recipe that yielded over a dozen gigantic waffles – luckily they froze well! These are not those waffles (that recipe is coming though, I promise!), but they are just as good. I’ve been collecting lemon ricotta pancake recipes for years – ever since having some of the lightest, most delicate and delicious pancakes at a bed and breakfast – and a week or so ago I happened to have both lemons and ricotta on hand… and a new waffle iron! A quick Google search revealed this lemon ricotta cornmeal waffle recipe, and I was on my way…
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Francijn of Koken in de Brouwerij was our January 2013 Daring Bakers’ Hostess and she challenged us to make the traditional Dutch pastry, Gevulde Speculaas from scratch! That includes making our own spice mix, almond paste and dough! Delicious!
I had just posted about the speculaas I made for Christmas, so it was like déjà vue to read that the Daring Bakers challenge this month was speculaas. But these ones are different: they are gevulde speculass, which means they are stuffed with almond paste to make more of a dense, crumbly cake than a cookie. Interestingly, the dough for gevulde speculaas is essentially the same as the dough as for making speculaas cookies, but you end up with something completely different. And as much as I like regular speculaas, turns out that I loooooove gevulde speculaas, and I implore you to make these as soon as possible!
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I can now officially cross an item off my list: homemade nut butter! It literally is as simple as roasting some nuts (in this case, almonds) and grinding them in a food processor until they turn into nut butter. The only reason it’s taken me this long to make it is because my former food processor was such a disappointment: it could barely purée cooked squash, let alone pulverize whole nuts. BUT, I now have a powerful new Cuisinart food processor and nut butter is fully within my realm of possibility. Yay!
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Sometimes I swear that Jenni and Shelley, the ladies behind Sourdough Surprises, are inside my head, reading my thoughts. I was just contemplating baking all my leftover Christmas chocolate into brioche buns when they announced that January’s Sourdough Surprises recipe was going to be just that: sourdough brioche swirled with chocolate and topped with struesel, also known as babka.
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In the winter I often get massive cravings for rice pudding – warm, creamy, comforting, and delicious. I was having one of those cravings when I found these adorable miniature Seckel pears at the grocery store, and I immediately thought of poaching them in wine and spices and serving them with rice pudding. But not just any rice pudding: sweet dessert risotto flecked with vanilla bean seeds. If you like creamy rice pudding, you’ll love this. All the stirring that makes a creamy risotto with broth makes an even creamier dessert risotto with milk.
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Don’t you hate it when you are in the middle of making something delicious and you reach into the pantry to grab that one last (rather important) ingredient, only to discover that you are, in fact, out of chickpeas for your chicken, potato, and chickpea curry? Yeah, I hate it when that happens. (Also, I’m terrible at mis-en-place.)
Luckily, this curry is still plenty good chickpea-less, although they are kind of my favorite part. I love them and could eat then straight out of the can. Nate, on the other hand, actually preferred this dish without chickpeas, and thinks that it should be made with either potato or chickpeas but not both. However this is my blog so I’m going to suggest that you make it with both – chickpeas in particular.
Just pretend there are chickpeas in there too…
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I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions because I’m terrible at following through on them (see last year’s resolution… I can’t say it went so well), but if I were to make one for this year it would be this: MORE CHEESECAKE.
I know resolutions are usually about exercising more and eating less, but that’s kind of the antithesis of a food blog (or at least, this food blog. And I already get plenty of exercise). And after making this cheesecake to take to a Christmas Eve dinner, all I can say is that I want more cheesecake in 2013.
I’m not a big coffee drinker and I don’t even love eggnog all that much, but once a year when the Eggnog Latté makes an appearance on the Starbucks menu, I always crave it. I thought those flavours would go well together in a cheesecake (while I may not like drinking coffee, I sure like eating coffee-flavoured things!), and luckily I was right. This eggnog latté cheesecake turned out better than I expected.
I really really wanted to garnish it with a big pile of white chocolate curls, but I think it is safe to say that “Operation White Chocolate Curls” was my biggest baking flop of 2012. I tried three different methods for making curls (going through a considerable amount of white chocolate in the process) and NONE of them worked, not even in the slightest. Just when I was ready to throw in the towel out of frustration, I remembered chocolate leaves, and the day was saved. I actually think the leaves look better than chocolate curls would have, and they are considerably easier to make, both physically and mentally. 😉
Adapted from Canadian Living and Bon Appetit. Makes one 10″ cheesecake 9″ cheesecake which I managed to cut into about 16 thin slices (this thing is rich!). Beat the cheesecake batter on low to medium-low speed only – if too much air is incorporated, it will encourage the cheesecake to puff up and crack in the oven as the hot air inside it expands.
Preheat the oven to 350˚F. In a medium bowl, combine:
2 cups graham cracker crumbs (about 24 square cookies, crushed)
1/3 cup butter
2 tbsp sugar
Mix together until evenly moistened, then press firmly into the bottom of a 10″ 9″ round springform pan. Bake in the preheated 350˚F oven for about 10 minutes, then set aside to cool. (I actually forgot to prebake my crust and it came out fine in the end…)
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat on low to medium-low speed until smooth:
4 x 8 oz packages of cream cheese, cubed and at room temperature
1 1/4 cup granulated white sugar
One at a time, beat in:
4 eggs
Stir well after each egg, then beat in:
2 tbsp flour
When the flour is incorporated, beat in:
1/2 cup sour cream
Place half the batter in another bowl. To one bowl, add:
1 tbsp rum (or 1 tsp rum extract)
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
To the other bowl, add:
3 tsp instant coffee powder dissolved in 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Dollop each batter alternately over the prebaked crust to create a marbled effect, then carefully drag a skewer through the batter to swirl them together slightly. Be careful not to scrape up the crust and don’t swirl too vigorously – you want to maintain some contrast between the two batters. Give the bottom of the pan a few little thumps on the counter to dislodge any air bubbles.
Wrap the bottom of the springform pan in a large piece of aluminum foil (it must be watertight) and place it in a large roasting pan. Put the whole thing in the oven, then pour enough boiling water into the roasting pan to come halfway up the cheesecake. Bake for 65 – 80 minutes, until the edges are puffed, the center is just set, and the cheesecake starts to pull away from the sides of the pan.
Run a knife around the edge of the cheesecake and cool on a rack for 30 minutes, then chill, uncovered, for at least 6 hours. The cooled cheesecake will keep, covered and refrigerated, for up to 3 days. Garnish with chocolate leaves.
Wash and thoroughly dry 12 – 16 non-toxic, sturdy leaves, such as rose or salal (I used salal). Melt about 1 ounce each of white and dark chocolate. Using a tiny spoon or a clean paintbrush, spread the chocolate over the underside of the leaf, taking care not to spread the chocolate over the sides. Make the chocolate thick enough that it won’t break when you peel off the leaf (at least 1 mm is good). Place on a plate and chill until set. Carefully peel the leaf off the chocolate and keep the chocolate leaves chilled until you are ready to use them.
I can’t believe it’s the end of 2012 already. How did that happen so fast? A lot has happened this year, including Nate and me becoming homeowners. We celebrated Thanksgiving in our new house with both of our families, I baked a bazillion Christmas cookies in our new kitchen (see one last recipe below), and we made plans to buy a new oven. 2013: Year of the New Oven! (Hopefully, anyway!)
Everyone seems to be posting a year end round-up today, so I’m jumping on the bandwagon to share some favorites from my blog this year. Which are, in no particular order…
Brain Cupcakes – outrageously chocolatey cupcakes with creamy, smooth vanilla buttercream. Chocolate and vanilla are a classic combination for good reason.
Cream Puff Swans – yup.
Mint Chocolate Chip Battenburg Cake – such a fun cake. I need to revisit this with another flavour combination.
Sourdough Danish Pastries – possibly my favorite post this year. I was so proud of those!…
A good friend of ours celebrated a birthday last weekend, and after some not-so-subtle inquiring, Nate and I discerned that his favorite cake is black forest. Which made me happy because I have been looking for an excuse to make this fantastic version with Grand Marnier soaked cherries, espresso whipped cream, and chocolate ganache. It may not be the most photogenic (or maybe it’s just because I was photographing at night, which is no fun) but it is SERIOUSLY good.
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