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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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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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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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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To make up for the fact that I’ve been a slacker these last few months with Around the World in 12 Plates, I’m bringing not one but TWO recipes to this month’s party. Sweden was November’s destination, and similar to their Danish neighbours’ appreciation for hygge – enjoying simple pleasures and general coziness – the Swedes have a serious appreciation for fika, which you could sort of think of as coffee break hygge. But fika is not buying a to-go coffee and inhaling it in your car on the way to somewhere else – it is intentionally slowing down to drink a cup of coffee (or tea), eat some kind of delicious baked good, and enjoy yourself – either alone or with friends. It is so much a part of Swedish culture that workers have fika breaks built into their work days.
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Our American neighbours have a certain important holiday involving turkey and pie coming up tomorrow, and I wanted to share these maple pecan shortbread bars because they would make the perfect last minute addition to a Thanksgiving (or other) dinner menu. I actually made these for Canadian Thanksgiving back in October (along with this pumpkin roulade) because I wanted something like pie but I couldn’t manage rolling out a pie crust with my busted elbows (which have both now healed and I’m back to full force in the kitchen – now there’s something to be thankful for!).
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Before we get caught up in the pumpkin spice madness that seems to take hold in the fall, let’s take a moment to appreciate the humble grape. Grapes are one of those fruits that I could usually take or leave, except for during the small window from the end of September to early October when Concord grapes are in season. So ten days ago when I saw some Coronation grapes – similar to Concords with with their dark blue-ish purple skin and tangy juice – at the grocery store, I snapped them up because 1) YUM and 2) I’ve been wanting to make schiacciata con l’uva, a Tuscan grape focaccia only made in September to coincide with the wine grape harvest, commonly made with Concord or similar grapes elsewhere in the world. And WOW – this stuff is amazing, the purple grape-iness mingled with rosemary, all sprinkled with coarse sugar and a little salt, not to mention the olive-oil infused focaccia bread base.
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With our Around the World in 12 Plates leader, Gabby, spending the month of July in Turkey on an archaeological dig (#lifegoals), it only made sense that this month’s destination was Turkey! Seeing her post delicious-looking photos of her meals on Facebook, I was intrigued by her mention of a bread called “simit” that is commonly eaten at breakfast (although it is also popular as a snack any time of day). Simit is sometimes called a “Turkish bagel” because of its round shape, hole in the middle, and sesame seed-covered exterior. Made with a very simple lean dough (just flour, water, yeast, and salt), the dough is rolled out into long ropes and twisted together before being shaped into rings, giving simit its characteristic coiled look. Before baking, each ring is dipped in a mixture of pekmez (a fruit-based, molasses-like syrup – I improvised with half regular molasses, half pomegranate molasses) and water, then coated in sesame seeds and baked until crisp. Once cooled, the crust softens slightly and yields to a deliciously stretchy, soft yet chewy inside.
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I’m a sucker for a beautiful pie, and especially a strawberry rhubarb one, so even though rhubarb season may be nearing an end, I had to share this pie I made a while back. I love love love rhubarb pie, and this one is a riff on Anne Dimock’s Straight-Up Rhubarb Pie as seen on Food52 – which is a damn good rhubarb pie and needs no embellishment – but when I made this one, the very first strawberries of the season were also hitting the grocery store and I couldn’t resist.
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There is a certain local Asian noodle bar that has built an entire business model on its take-out boxes of delicious noodle dishes, but what keeps me coming back are their spring rolls. Piping hot and crisp, full of savoury pork, carrots, bean thread noodles, and general umami-ness, they are served with crunchy green lettuce leaves and sprigs of fresh cilantro to wrap around them and salty-spicy-sweet nước chấm for dipping. They are insanely delicious and I could easily eat half a dozen in one sitting, but sadly each order only contains two rolls.
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