kitchen frolic

mint-filled brownie cupcakes

2012-02-20T20:24:00.000-05:00

Paul is a huge fan of chocolate-mint flavoured anything, so when I saw this recipe for mint-filled brownie cupcakes in Martha Stewart's Cupcakes cookbook, I knew I had to give them a try.

The ingredients list is nice and short and the recipe is very easy to follow - perfect for a beginner baker. The hardest part was keeping Paul from eating all the mini peppermint patties!

I even tried piping for the first time ever! What do you think? I had planned on piping names and words on all of them using melted white chocolate but some of the cupcakes didn't turn out completely flat. So for the uneven ones, I covered the little mounds with vanilla frosting. I'm not so happy with the vanilla ones - definitely need more practice, but I'm really proud of the ones with writing on them!

Oh, the reason some of them didn't come out of the oven "completely even"? Apparently, if you don't really bury that peppemint patty - this happens! Haha!

My only recommendation? Make a few batches - these moist, fudgy cupcakes go pretty quickly!

mint-filled brownie cupcakes
source: adapted from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes by Martha Stewart
printer-friendly version

ingredients:

8 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
½ cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces, room temperature
1 cup sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
½ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder, sifted
12 small (1½-inch) chocolate-covered peppermint patties, like mini York Peppermint Patties

directions:

Preheat oven to 350˚ F. Line a standard muffin tin with paper cupcake liners.

Place chocolate and butter pieces in a heatproof bowl set over (not in) a pan or pot of simmering water. Stir occasionally just until melted (about 4 to 5 minutes).

Remove the bowl from heat. Whisk in the sugar and salt until the entire mixture is smooth. Whisk in the eggs, one at a time, until combined.

Gently whisk in the flour and cocoa just until smooth (be careful not to overmix).

Spoon 1 heaping tablespoon of batter into each cupcake liner. Place 1 peppermint patty on top and gently press into the batter (make sure the patty doesn't hit the bottom of the cupcake liner). Top with 2 tablespoons of batter, making sure to cover the patty completely.

Bake, rotating the muffin tin halfway through the baking time, until a cake tester inserted halfway in the centre (above peppermint patty) comes out with only a few moist crumbs attached (about 35 minutes).

Transfer the muffin tin to a wire rack to cool completely before removing the cupcakes.

Cupcakes can be eaten plain or decorated with your favourite frosting once cooled.

Cupcakes can be stored up to 3 days at room temperature in airtight containers.

yields: 12 cupcakes

triple-citrus cupcakes

2012-02-07T11:27:00.000-05:00

I have been obsessing over citrus lately. Citrus of all kinds - lemons, limes, grapefruits, mandarins...so once I saw these cupcakes in my sister's Martha Stewart's Cupcakes book, I knew these were definitely the cupcakes for me. Plus, the little sprinkling of zest on the top - like a little smattering of cheerful confetti - was the best way to brighten up a gloomy winter day.

The recipe suggests using either limes, lemons or oranges to glaze and zest the top of the cupcakes, but I decided to split the batch into thirds and did a dozen of each, so I've written the recipe out to reflect that, but you can easily just stick to one flavour. I loved making three flavours (identifiable by the colour of the zest on top) so that people could pick their favourite.

These cupcakes were a huge hit with my family, but 36 cupcakes was A LOT for us to eat, so I'd only try this again if I had an event to bring them to. Plus, I might toss in grapefruit as a flavour instead of oranges.

triple-citrus cupcakes
source: adapted from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes by Martha Stewart
printer-friendly version

TRIPLE-CITRUS CUPCAKES

ingredients:

3 ⅓ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons coarse salt
1 pound unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
3 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest (from 3 lemons)
3 tablespoons finely grated orange zest (from 2 oranges)
3 tablespoons finely grated lime zest (from 3 limes)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
9 large eggs, room temperature

directions:

Preheat oven to 325˚ F. Line standard muffin tins with paper cupcake liners.

Whisk together flour and salt.

With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, scraping down sides of bowl every few minutes. Add lemon, orange and lime zest to the butter and sugar mixture and reduce mixing speed to medium. Add vanilla and continue mixing.

Add eggs, three at a time and mix until incorporated (scrape down sides of bowl as needed). Reduce speed to low.

Add flour mixture in four batches, mixing until completely incorporated after each.

Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each cup about three-quarters full. Tap pans on countertop once to evenly distribute batter.

Bake for approximately 30 minutes, rotating the tins halfway through the baking time, until a toothpick inserted into a cupcake centre comes out clean.

Transfer tins to wire racks and cool for 10 minutes. Turn out cupcakes onto the racks and let cool completely.

Unglazed cupcakes can be stored up to two days at room temperature, or frozen up to two months, in airtight containers.

CITRUS GLAZE

instructions:

1 ½ cups icing sugar, sifted (have more on hand in case it's needed)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (have more on hand in case it's needed)
1 tablespoon fresh orange juice (have more on hand in case it's needed)
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice (have more on hand in case it's needed)
¼ teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
¼ teaspoon finely grated orange zest
¼ teaspoon finely grated lime zest

directions:

Use three small, shallow bowls (one for each citrus flavour). Divide the sugar evenly among the three bowls. Divide the cupcakes into three batches (twelve cupcakes in each batch).

For the first batch of cupcakes:

Add the lemon juice to a bowl of sugar and whisk the juice and sugar together until smooth. If necessary, add more sugar to thicken or more juice to thin the glaze.

Using a spoon, drizzle the lemon glaze onto the cupcakes (I used a silicone brush to smooth out the glaze) and garnish with the lemon zest.

Repeat with the orange and lime flavours.

Cupcakes are best eaten the day they are glazed; keep at room temperature until ready to serve.

yields: 36 cupcakes - twelve of each flavour

celebrating chinese new year

2012-01-26T13:43:00.001-05:00

Monday, January 23 was the official start of the Chinese New Year celebrations. It's the Year of the Dragon, an especially lucky symbol and even rarer, it's the Year of the Golden Dragon, which is even luckier (for obvious reasons - it's golden baby!).

There are so many traditions and symbols associated with this holiday that I'm not even going to attempt to discuss them (you can read a lot about it on the Wikipedia page), but anyone who's ever celebrated Chinese New Year (or has friends that do) knows that, after family, this holiday is definitely all about the food.

Food is not only a great reason to bring family members together to celebrate, but what you eat also has many meanings. There are quite a few foods that are considered especially lucky and are eaten in copious quantities during the New Year festivities.

Here are just a few of the dishes that my family had on New Year's Eve and New Year's day to celebrate.

Ok, not really a dish, but oranges are considered very lucky, especially little Mandarin oranges. The Chinese (Cantonese) name for mandarins sounds a lot like the word for "gold". My mom was super excited when she saw my HUGE bowl filled with citrus, until I explained they weren't for her but for my baking (which turned out fine as she loved what I made - more on that in a future post).

Noodles (uncut and long) are also considered lucky, as they represent longevity and long life. Because it's the Year of the Dragon, crabs and lobsters are also considered a symbol of good fortune (because they kind of look like little dragons). When we went for dim sum the day before New Year's Eve, my parents made sure to order a lobster noodle dish.

My mom is a great cook - I really need to learn to make all these dishes from her! Unfortunately, like most moms who are good cooks, she doesn't have any recipes written down - everything is in her head and it's just "a dash of this, a little of that" whenever I ask her to explain how to make a dish. Next year I think I'm just going to show up in the kitchen with a video camera to capture it all.

I was a little slow on the camera this year (still getting used to the idea that I now have a food blog and should take photos of everything) and didn't even get to take photos of all the things that she made, which included:

- Turnip Cake - not really a cake and so much more delicious than the name implies. I'm not sure why this is considered lucky, but it's traditionally served at a lot of Chinese holidays. And dim sum.
- Nian Gao - Chinese New Year cake - a sweet and sticky cake - the name literally translates into "high(er) year".

(psst - if you're really curious about nian gao, check out this blog post over at Munchkie's Munchies)

- Fa Cai Hao Shi - my mom makes this year-round, but for Chinese New Year stands for "prosperity and good fortune". My mom's version of this dish is a rich mix of pig's feet, oysters, mushrooms and Fa Cai (a type of seaweed that looks like long black strands of hair). The Chinese name for oyster sounds like "good stuff" and the word Fa Cai sounds like "prosperity". Have you noticed Chinese people do that "sounds like" thing a lot?

- My mom's vegetarian dish, which as 10 different kinds of vegetarian ingredients, including long noodles, snap peas and various forms of tofu. I pulled out one of each ingredient and only found nine, but we found out that was because my dad had eaten all the gluten balls (a wonderful, chewy, puffy vegetarian item that was my favourite growing up). Ok, he didn't eat them ALL - my mom had bought a package of ten gluten balls and put them all into the dish - my dad ate nine. Paul apparently ate the other one. Men.

There was also a whole roast duck (my favourite!) - the "redness" of the skin stands for good luck, since red is a very favourable colour in Chinese culture.

There were also plates and plates of store-bought candies and baked goods (again, all gone before I remembered to snap a photo) and other treats.

Next Chinese New Year, I'm definitely going to write out some of my mom's recipes for the traditional dishes and attempt to make some of them myself. If nothing else, it should make for an interesting blog post!

Happy New Year everyone! May your year be filled with good fortune, good health and lots of prosperity and delicious food!

my new year's food resolutions

2012-01-08T22:42:00.000-05:00

I never make New Year's resolutions because, well, mainly I'm pretty lazy about things like that, but also because I don't think January first should be the only time people decide that it's a time to start hitting the gym or quit smoking.

But I have seen lots of people making "food resolutions" - lists of things they want to try food-wise during 2012 and I thought it was a really fun idea and a nice twist to the usual list of New Year's Resolutions.

It's also a good idea for a rookie cook like me as it will set some interesting goals that (I hope) will keep me motivated to continue cooking, reading and having fun in the kitchen!

I'll keep a tally of how I'm doing with my resolutions under the "2012 resolutions" tab near the top of my blog.

So, here are my food resolutions for 2012 (I may add to this list as the year goes on but this is a pretty good start)

Foods I want to learn to make (and hopefully make well)

macarons
I LOVE macarons. I love the soft, chewy texture, the creamy centre, the multitude of flavours, the pretty colours...There's pretty much nothing I don't like about them. Except that they're usually very expensive. And I can eat a lot of them. So I'm determined to try making them myself. I'm crossing my fingers that this is one resolution I keep and that I'm successful at it...except that I might get fat on macarons.

clams
I've made mussels and lobsters with pretty good success but I've never thought of making clams until I was at a family dinner over Christmas. I love the little shells and can't wait to try making some clam dishes on my own.

strawberry freezer jam
Paul and his mom both make amazing freezer jam so this year I want to join in the fun and fill mason jars with summery goodness.

cutely-iced sugar cookies
Sugar cookies are really simple and sweet and I think that they would be easy to master, until I see cookies like this and (are you kidding me?) this and then I know I have a very long way to go.

Foods I want to eat

at least 20 different varieties of apples
I know this sounds like a weird resolution, but I really want to accomplish this one. Our grocery stores carry about three to five types of apples and I know there are so many more out there. I know this applies to many different fruits, but for some bizarre reason, I'm obsessed on trying apples.

Foodie things I want to do

grow my own mini citrus tree (hoping for lemons, but will also settle for a lime tree)
I saw an online shop selling a dwarf lemon tree and now I totally, totally want one. But I'm having trouble finding a nursery in Canada that sells them (all the ones I see online are American and they can't ship to Canada). But I'm determined. What could be more amazing than being able to pick fresh lemons right inside my own home?!

host a hot pot dinner night
This was something my parents did a lot when I was younger, but I haven't done it in decades. I think it would be lots of fun to buy lots of different foods, invite some friends over and enjoy a night of Chinese Hot Pot. (When I told Paul about this resolution, he added that he wants to do a Korean BBQ night as well).

cook at least one new recipe from a different cookbook that I own every two weeks
This was something I decided to do at the end of last year and I'm hoping this resolution will make me try more new recipes (and go through all those cookbooks I own).

Project 366
Last year I tried to tackle Project 365 - taking and sharing a photo every day of the year but I stopped somewhere around mid-March. So I'm going to try again this year, but with an even bigger challenge - I'm only going to use photos of food. You can check out how I'm doing by visiting my Flickr set.

happy christmas to us!

2012-01-03T22:41:00.000-05:00

The holiday season, for most people, means food - lots and lots of food. Unfortunately, this year I had approached my vacation time with lots of plans to cook new dishes and bake batches of goodies, but I ran out of time (and eggnog). Really, I don't think six days really counts as a vacation anyway, considering three of those are spent at various family dinners and events.

So, although I didn't get to have as much fun in the kitchen as I had envisioned, Paul and I did receive a few really cool and unexpected food-related gifts from our family members (aside from the usual assortment of Christmas chocolates, cookies and bottles of wine) that has definitely kicked our cooking imagination into high gear.

To add to the library:

Every Christmas I put Nigella Lawson's Nigella Christmas on my wishlist and I never get it, so this year I took things into my own hands and bought it for myself (plus I found a new copy for only $10). It paid for itself when I made her Sticky Gingerbread the next day to relative success.

One book that was also on my wishlist that I did get (from my mother-in-law) was the very popular The Art of Living according to Joe Beef: A Cookbook of Sorts by David McMillan, Frederic Morin and Meredith Erickson . It seems to have popped up on every "Best of 2011" list I've seen so I was excited to get my own copy and start browsing through the beautiful book.

Not on my wishlist, but kind of a cool idea, Paul's uncle gave us three bottles of wine and a really, really thick and heavy copy of Wine by Andre Domine - so we can drink and learn at the same time.

Because Paul needs another excuse to grill:

Paul loves to barbecue. He does it year-round (not a small feat considering Canadian winters!) and we have a nice-sized propane BBQ to satisfy his grilling needs. But he was very excited to unwrap this gift from his brother - a small, round charcoal grill. Definitely not something we were ever expecting, but may turn out to be Paul's favourite Christmas gift of 2011.

Now I need to bake something:

Also unexpected, but really pretty - my cousins gave me this stunning cake pedestal and glass dome - now I have to bake something equally pretty just so I have an excuse to pull this out and display it!

Turkey, turkey:

The most popular food-related gift we received this year (also from Paul's brother) - a propane deep-fryer. I'm not kidding! As soon as Paul unwrapped this on Christmas morning, all the other gifts were forgotten. His mom actually got so happy she had tears in her eyes and plans were instantly made to deep-fry the turkey she had planned on serving on Boxing Day.

Since we were spending Boxing Day at our future sister-in-law's parents' home, we hauled the deep-fryer, turkey and 4 jugs of oil to her parents with the hope that they would be okay when we suggested setting this crazy contraption up in their backyard. Not only were they willing, her dad was so excited he went into his workshop to metal-work a custom-made turkey-lifter.

It was definitely a meal to remember - while the rest of us stayed inside to prepare dinner and take photos of the experiment from behind the safety of the patio doors , Paul and his brother braved the cold and splattering oil to deep-fry the bird.

The 25-pound turkey took two hours to cook. It turned out so much better than anyone could have ever expected - crispy skin on the outside and juicy meat on the inside. We all stood around admiring it in awe...for about five minutes before we dug in and ate some great turkey.

We're already all dreaming about what else we can toss into that deep fryer. Any suggestions?

I hope you all had a great holiday season filled with lots of great food, family memories and fun gifts!

sticky gingerbread

2011-12-28T13:02:00.000-05:00

As a newbie cook, the one thing I probably shouldn't do is the exact thing I did on Christmas Eve - I took a recipe I've never tried before, whipped it up in a rush and then served it at a family event.

Paul and I were doing some last minute shopping on December 23 and I found a copy of Nigella Lawson's Nigella Christmas at for $10. How can I resist a cookbook deal like that? So I bought it and went through it once I got home. The recipe that immediately got my attention was her "Sticky Gingerbread". It looked fairly easy and I felt that it would be a perfect dessert for our annual Christmas Eve family dinner.

The only problem was that on Christmas Eve, Paul was going to claim the oven starting at 1:30 pm for the turkey, so by the time I decided to make the gingerbread, I had exactly two hours to get everything together and bake it.

I made the batter in a rush (I love my KitchenAid mixer!), poured everything into a pan and then tossed it into the oven with fingers crossed. The result looked and smelled great, but I resisted the urge to cut into it while it was still warm as I figured a complete cake would look better when presenting it to my family.

I brought it out with the disclaimer that I had never made the recipe before and wouldn't be offended if people didn't like it. But they did! It was soft and moist, even after cooling on the counter for over 6 hours, and the flavour was nice and spicy. It's not very sweet, but my family likes that (they don't really like overly-sweet desserts) and definitely something I would make again.

sticky gingerbread
source: adapted from Nigella Christmas by Nigella Lawson
printer-friendly version

ingredients:

½ cup plus 3 tbsp. of butter
¾ cup golden corn syrup
¾ cup molasses
⅔ cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons finely grated ginger
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon baking soda, dissolved in 2 tablespoons warm water
1 cup whole milk
2 eggs, beaten together
2 cups all-purpose flour

directions:

Preheat the oven to 350˚ F and line a baking pan or ovenproof dish (approx. 2 x 8 x 2 inches) with lightly greased aluminum foil or parchment paper.

In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat along with the brown sugar, syrup, molasses, grated and ground gingers, cinnamon and cloves.

Take the mixture off the heat, and slowly add in milk, eggs and dissolved baking soda.

Place the flour into a mixing bowl and slowly pour in the liquid ingredients, beating together until well mixed. It may seem like it's too liquid, but it's fine - it's supposed to be a very liquid batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 45-60 minutes until risen and firm on top. Try not to overcook (otherwise it won't be as sticky when it cools).

Transfer the pan onto a wire rack and let the gingerbread cool in the pan before cutting into 20 squares, or however you wish to slice it.

yields: 20 squares

cookbook challenge accepted!

2011-12-18T19:59:00.000-05:00

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to keep a journal of my own adventures in the kitchen as I try to learn and "grow" as a home cook. One of the side effects is that starting a blog has caused me to immerse myself even more in the food "community" - I'm reading even more food blogs, spending more time on Twitter, thinking more about recipes, pulling out all my food books for a re-read and basically driving Paul crazy with all the interesting food facts I'm uncovering.

Speaking of books...for someone who doesn't really cook all that well (or that often - but I'm trying to change that) I own an insane amount of books. At last count, I think I have over 100 cookbooks and food-related books. That may not seem like a lot for those veterans out there, but keep in mind I'm pretty new to this home-cooking thing!

I've always been a bit of a bookworm - as a child, my parents definitely encouraged me to be a reader with lots of library trips and pocket money for school book sales. As I grew up, I went to the library less and less and to the bookstore more and more. As I started getting more interested in food, my book purchases reflected that interest. And food books are often so beautiful, I bought them for the photos alone.

But now that I'm staring at my bookshelf, I realize that all these beautiful cookbooks are worthless unless I actually USE them (Paul points this out all the time). After reading The Reluctant Gourmet's Cookbook Challenge I decided to do something about it. I won't ever become a better cook if I keep making the same recipes over and over!

So, to try and curb my book-buying for a little while and to motivate myself to try new recipes, my New Year's resolution for 2012 is to pick a new recipe that I've never tried before from a different cookbook every two weeks and give it a go. And of course, I'll blog about it - the good, the bad and the messy. :)

red velvet cake balls

2011-12-04T01:45:00.010-05:00

Paul had mentioned seeing a cool contraption (I can't remember the name now) on TV a few weeks ago that made it easy to create little round balls of cake, making cake pops super easy to make. Of course, cake pops are all the rage these days, even Starbucks carries some of them. I couldn't justify buying something from an infomercial but a couple of weeks ago this babycakes gadget, the babycakes cake pop maker, went on sale at Canadian Tire for $23.99 (regularly it's $39.99). It promised to create a dozen cake pops in minutes! Minutes!!! I couldn't resist and dragged Paul to three different stores to find one (apparently, they sold out pretty quickly - I guess every wants to make cake pops).

It works on the same principal as common waffle irons and George Foreman grill, so it didn't seem that difficult to use and it even comes with a few basic recipes to get you started. It creates mini cake balls and once you glaze and stick lollipop sticks into them you get cake pops! Easy peasy.

I flipped through the instruction booklet and decided to try making the red velvet cake pops. The recipe was easy to follow and I actually had all the ingredients handy, except for buttermilk (but they included a substitute for that).

The only thing I always forget is how messy red food colouring can be. My kitchen looked like a crime scene by the time I was halfway through preparing the batter. Apparently, me alone in the kitchen can be just as messy as Paul and me in the kitchen together....(shhh, don't tell Paul I admitted to that!)

There was enough batter to make about three and half dozen cake balls and since the cake pop maker makes a dozen balls at time, I had roughly three chances to get it right.

My first batch was, um, a little underwhelming. The instructions kept warning to be careful not to overfill the cake ball well and that you only needed a tablespoon of batter. So I piped in about a tablespoon of batter and ended up with little mushroom caps of cake. Haha. They tasted great, but obviously, wasn't as round as I would have liked.

So, for my second batch, I filled the well completely with batter and voila - red velvet cake balls! :)

Since they were just for us, I didn't bother with the lollipop sticks. I glazed some of them, but wasn't happy with the results. So I coated the rest with icing sugar and they turned out really nice. I love that I could turn out dozens of these in a really short amount of time - even without the sticks, I had adorable cake balls that were really yummy and would be a hit at my next pot luck or family getogether.

red velvet cake balls
source: slightly tweaked from babycakes cake pop maker instruction booklet
printer-friendly version

ingredients:

1¼ cups all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cocoa
¼ cup unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon. red food colouring
½ cup buttermilk
½ teaspoon vinegar
½ teaspoon baking soda
optional: ½ cup icing sugar

directions:

In a small bowl, combine flour, salt and cocoa. Using a fork, blend the mixture together well and set aside.

Using a mixer, beat butter until creamy. Slowly add sugar and continue beating until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and blend until creamy and smooth.

In a medium bowl, whisk the red food colouring into the buttermilk.

Blend a quarter of the flour mixture, then a third of the buttermilk mixture into the butter mixture, repeat this process until everything is used up (you should begin and end with the flour mixture).

In a small bowl, combine the vinegar and baking soda and allow to fizz. Fold this into the cake batter.

Preheat the babycakes cake pop maker.

Using a piping bag, fill each bottom of the cooking well with batter until almost full.

Bake 4 to 5 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into a cake ball comes out clean. Do not open the cake pop maker until at least 4 minutes have passed, otherwise you may break some of the cake balls in half.

Allow the cake balls to cool completely.

Optional: Fill a small, resealable bag with icing sugar. Drop in a few of the cake balls, seal the bag and then shake to completely coat the cake balls. Repeat until all the cake balls have been coated.

yields: approximately 36 cake balls

checking out the market

2011-11-26T23:14:00.002-05:00

One of the only reasons that make me wisftul about not living in downton Toronto is that I can't get to the St. Lawrence Market very often. So whenever we (Paul and I) find ourselves downtown on the weekends, we always try to stop by.

This morning we just happened to be in the neighbourhood so we made a quick stop into the Market. We didn't really have anything that we needed to pick up, but that never stops us from enjoying the sights and smells!

As soon as we walked in the door, the first thing we saw was this man making fresh ravioli. Gotta love fresh pasta...

As we were walking by a small stand that was sampling mustards, we stopped to have a try. Paul is always looking for a new mustard and he had to try the Horseradish Mustard (he also loves horseradish). Apparently the Horseradish Mustard was nice and hot (he also sampled the Horseradish but didn't think it had much heat) so we grabbed a jar (for $6). I tried some when we got home (I'm not really a fan of hot food) and boy - it definitely cleared my nose! Whew! You can check out Kozlik's at www.mustardmaker.com.

Next we decided to pick up some souvlaki kebabs for dinner tomorrow night. At $1.25 each, these are so much fresher and cheaper than what we find at our local grocery store.

On our way out, we passed by a booth called Eve's Temptations. The baked goods were gorgeous! I really want to be able to turn out cupcakes that look like this one day...

eating in tokyo

2011-11-13T23:05:00.002-05:00

During our two-week family vacation in Hong Kong last year, Paul, my sister and her husband took a quick 3-day side trip to Tokyo. This was our first time in Japan and I was super excited because I LOVE sushi. Seriously - I could have sushi every day, so the prospect of actually having to eat Japanese food for all my meals had me pretty excited.The first night we were there, we kind of just wandered around as it was pretty late and we had no idea where to go. We were going to just find something familiar but wandered down a side-street near our hotel and ended up at this amazing little sushi place, just like the ones I had seen on TV. There's only a few stools around a sushi bar and the chef works in the middle. You order your dishes one by one and the chef makes them fresh as you order them (or, as they taught us - yell out the dish we want). After you're full, they tally up the different coloured plates that you've eaten and present you with your total. Plus, there are little hot water taps situated along the bar and you "brew" your own green tea! There are little pots of green tea powder (matcha) available at each place setting and you help yourself. We fell in love with this little place and ended up there again during our short trip.

Sushi Bar Ginsen

Of course, being the sushi lovers that we were, we couldn't go to Tokyo without visiting the world famous Tsukiji Fish Market. We got up super early (it was still dark when I woke up, which I would NEVER do on vacation unless it was for something really important) and headed there (the auction is first-come, first-served for tourists and limited to 120 people a day). It was so early, the market wasn't even technically open yet (the rest of the market opens at 9am), but no one seemed to say anything at the sight of four tourists wandering in the aisles. Our aim was to find the famous Tuna Fish Auction, which was much more difficult than we would have thought (there were a lot of lost tourists wandering aroun). Paul finally saved the day by wandering off and befriending a security guard who saved the last few spots in that morning's auction for us.

Tuna, waiting to be auctioned at the Tuskiji Fish Market

After the auction we headed to one of the famous restaurants within the Fish Market for breakfast. This is probably the freshest sushi I'm ever going to eat in my life! We ended up at Daiwa Sushi, which my husband had read about before our trip. We ended up having the Special, which meant the chef made whatever was freshest that morning.

We also had dinner one night at Kani Doraku, which specializes in crab dishes. Don't let the huge plastic crab on the outside of the restaurant fool you - it's beautiful and elegant inside! And the array of dishes that they come up with using only crab - I could eat here a lot if it wasn't so expensive!

All in all, eating in Tokyo is definitely an unforgettable experience, but three days just wasn't enough to do it justice. I can't wait to go back and try some more interesting things and check out the Fish Market again (although I may skip the Tuna Auction the next time around and opt for a few more hours of sleep!)

doing the food thing in hong kong

2011-11-06T17:05:00.001-05:00

Last October/November, I spent two weeks in Hong Kong and Tokyo on a family vacation with Paul, my parents, my sister and her husband. It was my first time back to Hong Kong in almost 15 years (our family used to go back to visit relatives all the time) and my first time in Japan. It was Paul's first time in any part of Asia, so in general, we were all very excited.

Of course, one of the main highlights of travelling to such a different location is to EAT. Really, every time we mention the trip or get asked how it was, all we do is talk about the food that we had.

Here's just some of the food highlights from Hong Kong (Tokyo coming in a separate post).

Street vendors are at a whole other level in Hong Kong!

There is food EVERYWHERE in Hong Kong. It's definitely a city for the hungry. And there's something for everyone, rather you're feeling adventurous or not. Luckily, my entire family was feeling pretty adventurous...

Mantis Shrimp at the Tong-Tai Seafood Restaurant

Goose Intestines at the Yue Kee Roast Goose Restaurant

The other really cool thing was the different eating experiences you could have in Hong Kong. Not only did we at regular restaurants, cafeteria style eateries and from the variety of street vendors that were open at all hours of the day and night, we also took advantage of some places that you wouldn't normally get to do...

...like a real Buddhist monastary with its own restaurant (it's so popular that it takes up two large rooms) that serves nothing but vegetarian dishes.

A completely vegetarian meal at the Po Lin Monastary

...Or a seafood restaurant that's open during the all-night Temple Night Market and spans a couple of streets and roads.

Tong-Tai Seafood Restaurant, Temple Night Market

Spicy Steamed Clams at the Temple Spice Crabs Restaurant

With all this amazing food, it would have definitely been hard to pick our food highlight of the trip, but I think my sister, her husband and my husband would all agree - it was definitely the PORK BUNS. But not just ANY pork buns - these were award winning pork buns by a Michelin-starred chef. The first time we went to the restaurant, Tim Ho Wan, we waited for hours on the street outside just to sit in an extremely cramped room to have dim sum. But when the pork puns showed up at our table, all was forgotten. They were unbelievable good. We went back several times, just to have pork buns. Is it weird when you show up at a restaurant and all you order is a dozen pork buns? We all still drool at the thought of these pork buns...


Tim Ho Wan - definitely doesn't look like a typical Michelin-starred restaurant

We'll take a dozen pork buns to go please!

We had such a great time in Hong Kong that we're already planning our next trip back. I'm sure one of our first stops is going to be for pork buns! And then roast goose...and maybe some fresh clams... and then some freshly squeezed cane juice...mmmm....

welcome to kitchen frolic!

2011-11-01T11:03:00.001-04:00

Hi!

My name is Stephanie - welcome to my food blog, kitchen frolic!

My day job is in corporate communications and marketing (in an industry that's as unrelated to food as you can possibly get), but I'm pretty obsessed with food the rest of the time (and sometimes while I'm at work too).

I was born, raised and reside in Toronto, Canada. Growing up, most of my friends lived on hamburgers and french fries, but my parents were very traditionally Chinese, so I grew up eating with chopsticks at home and having lots of Chinese dishes. Now I'm all grown up (mostly) and married to an amazing guy, Paul, who's half-Italian and half-Irish and who uses chopsticks better than I do. We'll pretty much try anything food-wise (although I'll probably squeal and run away if you hand me anything remotely related to an insect).

I was hesitant to start a food blog because there are already so many great (and not so great) food-related blogs out there, plus I am a real amateur in the world of food. On the other hand, I definitely needed an outlet for my food fixation and I really wanted to get back into writing. In the end, I gave in and decided to start this blog with the hope that I'm semi-interesting enough that some of you may check it out regularly and enjoy what I have to say!

Thanks so much for stopping by!