Been a while since I had a chance to post here. The month of May was particularly nutty, so I had to skip the Opera Cake challenge. I was excited when I saw the June Challenge. The Danish braid was another opportunity to try my hand at flaky dough. We had done it once in cooking school and I was looking forward to trying it again. I read the recipe a couple of times, a little too quickly, I might add. It was not until last Sunday, the day I had set aside to make this recipe, that I realized the amount of time needed. I kinda missed the “5 hours, or overnight”, final resting period. So, I ended up doing it over two days.

The recipe, from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking, was relatively straight forward.  I used a mixed fruit filling instead of the apple one suggested. We had a choice, luckily, and I had these frozen berries I wanted to use. I did a simple jam, based on the recipe presented in the video, included as a reference by our hosts for the challenge, Kelly of Sass & Veracity, and Ben of What’s Cookin’? The video also included a demonstration by Beatrice Ojakangas of the braiding techniques. Despite that, and the fact that I carefully counted slats on each side, I think I came out short somehow. There was a bit of last minute tucking and hiding (grin). The smell that emanated during baking was just incredible. The combination of orange and cardamom is to die for.  I could barely wait long enough for it to cool before cutting a slice off. Turned out quite nicely. Another wonderful recipe added to the repertoire. Thanks again Daring Bakers for this opportunity!

BTW, Daring Bakers has moved to a new site and now offers a forum for non-members who wish to hang out with other bakers. The new site is here.  Of course, new members are always welcome. Details on how to join are available here

Jennifer (The Domestic Goddess) is hosting this year the Mmm…Canada - The Sweet Edition. In 2005 she asked Canadian bloggers and non-bloggers to talk about their favorite meal, the one that really said Canada to them. This year she decided to up the ante:

This year let’s make our proverbial pot a little bigger; a little sweeter, if you will. Let’s get together as many bloggers as we can to share their favourite Canadian confection, indulgence, dessert, sweet…anything really! As long as says Canada to you and you can get some sort of Sugar High from it, we want to know about it.

As mentioned below in the Savoury Edition, I am Québec-born and bred. Quebecers are renowned for their sweet tooth. The dessert that most typifies this for me is Sugar Pie (with a name like that, how can you go wrong?). Tarte au sucre is one of those recipes that offers a lot of variations: maple sugar, brown sugar, flour, no flour, butter or not, cream, etc. Some families guard their version and pass it down generation to generation. I blogged on this last year. The full post can be found here.This entry is the most popular on my site, thanks to an incoming link from Wipedia. I never realized how many people were interested in this dessert…

Here’s the recipe I usually use. It’s foolproof and quick to prepare.

Quick Sugar Pie
(Recipe: courtesy of Mme Paquin, Trois-Rivières)
1 cup of brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 tablespoon flour

Mix ingredients in bowl until smooth. Throw in a frozen pie crust and bake at 400F for 30 minutes. Serve with vanilla ice cream. It tastes even better cold, the day after.

Now, living on the West Coast, my other favorite sugar high is provided by the Nanaimo Bar.  You can’t beat it for a quick pick-me-up in the afternoon (followed by the inevitable crash). Here’s a recipe from The City of Nanaimo’s website:

Nanaimo Bar Recipe
Bottom Layer

• ½ cup unsalted butter (European style cultured)
• ¼ cup sugar
• 5 tbsp. cocoa
  1 egg beaten
• 1 ¼ cups graham wafer crumbs
• ½ c. finely chopped almonds
• 1 cup coconut

Melt first 3 ingredients in top of double boiler. Add egg and stir to cook and thicken. Remove from heat. Stir in crumbs, coconut, and nuts. Press firmly into an ungreased 8″ x 8″ pan.
Second Layer

• ½ cup unsalted butter
• 2 Tbsp. and 2 Tsp. cream
• 2 Tbsp. vanilla custard powder
• 2 cups icing sugar

Cream butter, cream, custard powder, and icing sugar together well. Beat until light. Spread over bottom layer.
Third Layer

• 4 squares semi-sweet chocolate (1 oz. each)
• 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter

Melt chocolate and butter overlow heat. Cool. Once cool, but still liquid, pour over second layer and chill in refrigerator.

Note: This dessert/snack also comes in prepackaged mixes for the time-pressed.

(Photo: Stephanie Spencer, Wikipedia Commons)

In early June I was invited by Jasmine (Confessions of a Cardamon Addict) to blog about “which savory dishes or drinks tastes like Canada to you?” This invitation was in anticipation of July 1st, Canada’s official birthday. It certainly was an interesting question, one I had often thought about, but usually in the context of: Does Canada really have a distinctive culture? Food is definitely part of a culture, I think. But as difficult it is to answer the culture question, the food angle is no easier.

I was born and raised in Québec, predominantly in the french-canadian culture. I now live on the West Coast of Canada, in Vancouver, a city with distinct Asian and East-Asian culinary influences.  Though I absolutely love that cuisine, and consider it part of my heritage now, I have to admit the first thought and taste that came to me when I received the invitation was my mom’s meat pie (tourtière). I also “smelled” maple sap reducing in a cabane à sucre (sugar shack), and felt the soft, sweet texture of maple taffee on my tongue. All, really, childhood memories.

Christmas time is a big cooking and baking period pretty much around the world. It’s no exception in Québec. Though my mom now lives in Toronto, I was really happy last Christmas to finally help her prepare a traditional dish, usually served in the winter: Ragoût de pâte de cochon (Pigs feet stew). I blogged about this here. Another traditional fare at that time of year is a type of quick paté called cretons.  It’s a nice little appetizer. Here’s the recipe:

Cretons à l’ancienne

Source : Jehane Benoît

1 lb minced pork, lean
1 cup milk
1 cup bread crumbs (or dried bread, finely chopped)
1 onion, finely chopped
to taste, Salt
to taste, Pepper
to taste, cloves, grounded
to taste, cinnamon, grounded

Instructions :Mix all ingredients in a saucepan. Cover and cook for 1 hour on low heat. Stir once or twice during cooking time. Store in containers. Can be frozen.

Thanks again, Jasmine, for this thought-provoking subject. Now, I wonder, to which cuisine will I turn to celebrate this July 1st?…

Where has the month gone!… Back to working fulltime, my food blogging has come to a veritable stop, though I’ve been cooking and baking more than ever.

This month’s challenge was hosted by Elle – Feeding My Enthusiasms and Deborah – Taste and Tell.
The recipe involved making cheesecake and turning it into lollipops coated with chocolate. I decided to do half the recipe – the original calling for five (5) 8 oz bricks of cream cheese – way too much cheesecake to have around the house. Everything turned out fine. My baking time was more 1h15 hours than the 35 minutes called in the recipe. The consistency was really nice and silky, and a snap to do in the mixer, meaning this is a recipe I’ll definitely be turning to again. Though the process was simple, there was a lot of time involved in letting things cool, then freeze. I tried to form the balls using an ice cream scooper, which sort of worked. The resulting shapes weren’t the most delicate (or lollipop-like), but looked a bit better once coated with the chocolate. In retrospect, I should have slightly frozen the cheesecake before scooping.

Thanks for the challenge, ladies!

BTW, Daring Bakers now has a new website/Forum with a section open to anyone interested in baking and meeting DBers. More details here.There are now over 1,000 registered Daring Bakers!

This month’s Daring Bakers Challenge, hosted by Morven (Food Art and Random Thoughts), was the “Perfect Party Cake”, taken from  Dorie Greenspan’s book Baking from my Home to Yours. This recipe called for plenty of lemons for the cake part, and enough butter all around to make Paula Dean proud. My mouth was watering just reading the instructions.

On a quiet Friday morning, I printed the recipe and jumped right in. My KitchenAid made the whole process pretty painless. Like pretty much every DB recipe, this one seemed more daunting than the actual process turned out to be. My cakes came out moist and light, despite not rising much (a step involving whisking the egg whites and the buttermilk had been left out inadvertedly in the instructions) and the buttercream was just divine. Give me a recipe I can just beat the living daylights out of, any day. The preserve used between the layers was left to us. I decided to make the Strawberry Preserves with Black Pepper and Balsamic Vinegar, found on the Food Network site. Turned out lovely and balanced well with the lemon flavour of the cake. Big success all around. Bonus: 8 egg yolks to make ice cream (chocolate and vanilla).

Can’t wait to see the April challenge!

I checked up on the 2008 Edition of Canstruction Vancouver last Sunday at the Cruise Terminal. Now in its sixth year, this event raises much needed funds for the Greater Vancouver Foodbank. Designs were ingenious and colourful. Who knew so much could be done with a single can as a building block? Well worth the price of admission/donation.

Picture: I’m a Little Tea Pot (Team: Brooks and Associates Inc, Walter Frand Architects, Studio Elemental Design
5,400 cans)

Slideshow here

Came across this article on Washingtonpost.com today. A Knork in the Road looks into the radical new designs coming down the road, or at least appearing at the upcoming International Home and Housewares Show next week in Chicago.

Featured will be the Knork, a knife-fork designed by Mike Miller of Kansas. Also, Zeug Tools, based on neanderthal designs (I love that oyster shape spoon), the ergonomically-designed Curvware and the ramen spoon (I want one of those). Jane Black , author of the article, puts these new designs to the test in this video, here.

Photo: Ramen Spoon. Museum of Modern Art Collection

One of the exhilarating aspects of being part of the bakerhood that is Daring Bakers, is knowing that you become a better baker after each new challenge. There is always a trick or two to pick up, a new way of looking at a process, a new direction to stretch your skills and comfort zone. This challenge proved this once more.

Hosted by  Breadchick Mary (The Sour Dough), and Sara (I like to cook), we were dared to bake French Bread, the Julia Child way. Well, I’ve baked a lot of bread from scratch, but I have to admit my jaw dropped when I read the instructions. How could a recipe with four (4) basic ingredients take so long!? Eight ( to nine (9) hours?! Whoa! The bread I usually bake entails one proof/rise, shaping and a second shorter rise. Total time from kneading to fragrant bread out of the oven: 2.5 hours. My curiosity was piqued. We had been warned so many times in cooking school not to let the bread over-rise, that I was a bit skeptical. Nonetheless, on a quiet Sunday, I got up early and plunged in.

I’ve always made bread the old fashion way, kneading by hand. Since the option to use an electric mixer was offered with this challenge, I decided to try it that way. Improvement #1: It’s a lot more efficient to make bread this way. The mixer bowl is ideal for the first proofing. A keeper. Next up? Using the oven, with the light on, as the rising chamber. Brilliant! Even better, wrapping the bowl in a towel. That’s how I’ll be rising bread from now on.

The whole process was pretty straightforward, just time consuming. I may have gotten a bit impatient at the end. My shaped bread (three ficelles) could have risen a little longer. Still, I was really happy with the final results. I’m not sure I’ll be repeating the whole process in the future, but I’m sure the tricks learned will make my regular method even tastier. Thanks for the challenge, Breadchick Mary and Sara!

The full recipe is available here.

Barilla does it again, this time in support of Second Harvest in the US. The free downloadable pdf includes recipes from Mario Batali, David Tutera, Debra Messing, Stanley Tucci, Natalie Portman, Chris Daughtry and Marisa Tomei.

So, if Penne in a Spicy Sauce with Capers and Olives, Autumn Vegetables with Goat Cheese and Pumpkinseed Oil and Saffron Panna Cotta sound like your type of Italian delectables, head over to this site to download the book. If you’re from the USA, you can actually specify which Second Harvest you wish Barilla to send its contribution.

Offer ends February 29th has been extended to March 31st!

Stumbled upon another cooking video site today, called I’m Cooked. It looks even more homespun than Active Cooks, except for one dash of stardust: Christopher Walken showing how to roast a chicken.

(The clip above is from YouTube, but I saw the original on I’m Cooked). I haven’t seen much of Walken’s work. I know of his roles in Deer Hunter and Pulp Fiction, among others, but first saw him last Summer in Hairspray. So much for the tough guy image, I thought watching him, as Wilbur Turnblad, hoofing it with John Travolta as his wife. The next film I saw him in was Mousehunt with Nathan Lane and Lee Evans. He played a nutty pest exterminator, vanquished by the mouse of the house. Now, here he is, roasting a chicken… Nice bit of trivia: Walken’s parents were both bakers, and he grew up working in the family bakery in Queens, Walken’s Bakery.