This is not your usual carrot cake recipe.   This is a carrot cake made sublimely rich with butter replacing the oil.   The results are a fine, firm crumb that holds and slices beautifully (so necessary in a layer cake). Th cake is not complicated.  You can stir it  up in one bowl without using your mixer.    Use it for the most important of occasions, like birthdays and weddings.   One can bake a  four tier cake and have an impressive tower of indulgence (held in place with dowling of course).  Refrigerated, the cake holds well so you can  enjoy nibbling cake over a couple of days (if it lasts that long).

And then there’s the frosting.  It is outrageously wonderful.  Rich, creamy, buttery and exquisitely flavoured and enriched with cream cheese.  It is the light as air volume that takes this cake creation over the top.   There is absolutely no doubt.  The frosting is sublime.  The frosting is uncomplicated and foolproof.  You simply beat the cream cheese, butter and icing sugar until is fluffy and smooth.    The volume will seem like  a lot of frosting, but use every bit.  Lavish the frosting  between the layers and on the top of the cake.  Don’t frost the side of the cake.

The recipe for the frosting has been changed.  I have eliminated half of the icing sugar.  I find the over whelming sweetness of the cream cheese  frosting did not complicate the flavours of this outstanding carrot cake.  If you desire you can add more sugar.

SCONES

Turn your oven to 400 degrees F. and have the rack in the centre of the oven.

Collect the ingredients and have everything at room temperature except the butter.  If you haven’t done this ahead of time heat the egg in a bowl of warm water and gently warm the buttermilk in the microwave.

You’ll notice the amount of buttermilk is not precise.  The amount you’ll need will depend on the humidity that day. You want just enough liquid to hold your dough together.  If you get too carried away with adding the extra buttermilk don’t worry.  Just drop your scones on the baking sheet.  I promise you they will still be delicious.

2 cups all-purpose flour,  3 tablespoons sugar,  1 teaspoon soda and 2 teaspoons baking power,  1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup cold butter (or hard margarine) cut  into small squares

1/2 cup dried fruit – apricots, raisins currents, cherries blueberries,  grated lemon peel

1 large egg,  1/2 to 1 cup buttermilk.

Whisk the flour, sugar, soda, salt into a large bowl.

Cut in the butter until most the mixture is the size of very small peas with a few bigger pieces. If you don’t have a pastry blender use two knives.   Make a well in the centre of your flour mixture and add the liquid.

Stir this together gently just until all the flour mixture comes together.  Briefly stir in the fruit and lemon peel.  If you have too much flour mixture sitting at the bottom of your bowl stir in a little more butter milk.  Work quickly, and don’t over-mix .  Leave a little flour showing in your mix.  It will assimilated when you gently pat out your dough.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and gently gather and knead the dough just until the dough comes  together.  It may look a little rough or ragged.  That’s OK.  Quickly and gently pat the dough into a circle about 3/4 inch deep.   Don’t skimp here you want the scones  to be voluptuous, lovely and high.

Cut into six or eight edges.

Plate on parchment paper.

Bake on a parchment lined baking sheet for ten to twelve minutes or until golden brown.  When you feel the scones are ready to come out of the oven bake for one minute more.

Serve while still warm lavishly spread with butter .  Enjoy

It’s a glorious fall day and overhead flocks of migratory geese are honking their way south. Their lonesome cries fill the air and remind me I should be thinking of tucking away brandy soaked Christmas cakes. And yet I continue to linger, watching their flight, and think of making cookies. A crunchy crisp, rich, chocolate chip cookie to nibble with a cup of tea.

I will whip butter fluffy and pale yellow. Add sugars, white and brown that caramelize beautifully in the oven. Into the bowl crack an egg, water (the secret for a thin cookie) and vanilla and whip again. The Callebaut chocolate chips will be whisked with the flour, salt and baking soda. Then added to the butter mixture and combined very well. So important to evenly distribute those rich chocolate chips.

Almost every cookie benefits from an overnight stay and this cookie is no exception. So I’ll tuck this dough into refrigerator overnight

(modified recipe from Pastry Love  Joanne Chang)

Summers at Emma Lake. It was filled with halcyon days of swimming, building rafts and dreaming the hours away. We lived completely off the grid. We chopped wood , pumped water and lit oil lamps to chase away the dark. Meals were cooked on a wood burning stove and the finest cookies in the world were baked in its oven.

I baked in the evening when the oven was the right temperature for cottage cookies. Cottage cookie ingredients do not require refrigeration, and only two mixing bowls, a whisk, and a baking sheet. The cookies are quick to make; whisk oil, sugar, egg and molasses together, stir in the flour mixture, roll the cookie dough in a little sugar and pop in the oven.

The original recipe, found in an old copy of Canadian Living magazine, was called Ginger Crackle cookies. Over time this unprepossessing cookie evolved into an addictive, ginger loaded morsel of perfection. A cookie crisp and crackling on the edges, tender, chewy in the middle. A cookie with a generous amount of ginger, a flattering amount of cinnamon and cloves, a pinch of cayenne pepper and several grinds of black peppercorns. You can never eat just one!

While I baked cookies, Monopoly, Snakes and Ladders and card games were the evenings entertainment. I still have the deck of cards used at the cottage. When I open the box I swear I can smell the aroma of ginger cookies and wood smoke.

This rather exotic sounding recipe  – a tangine is the name of food and of the container it is baked in – is a the kind of slow cooked dish that is so perfect for entertaining.   You don’t need a tagine for this recipe – a large casserole with a lid will work.   I like starting this tagine the night before marinating the chicken in the spices and oil.  Chicken thighs and or legs are the best choice.  Chicken breasts do not respond well to food that is slowly simmered in liquid.   I make this recipe early in the day and then gently reheat it for dinner.  This rest period really gives the tagine a richer, deeper flavour.  Enoy!

CHICKEN WITH SWEET POTATOES AND PRUNES  serves 4

8 chicken  thighs  or chicken legs, or a combination  (I like to mix it up)

2 fat garlic cloves crushed

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper and sea salt each

2 cinnamon sticks (using cinnamon sticks allows you to adjust the flavor by simply removing the sticks.  You can’t do that with powdered cinnamon.    If you must use powdered cinnamon be sparring around 1/2 tsp.)

1/2 tsp tumeric

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp chile flakes

2 tsp cumin powder

1 generous tsp sweet paprika

2 tbsp plus a little extra of vegetable oil

Around 2 cups of chicken stock, vegetable stock or water

1 onion cut in half and then sliced in1/4 slices

1 cup dried pitted prunes

2 cups sweet potatoes cut in bit size cubes (not too small  or they’ll cook mushy and disappear)

couscous, to serve

Preheat oven to 350f.

Place all the spices, the salt and pepper, the garlic, and oil in a shallow dish.  Mix well and then add the chicken.  Toss well to coat.  Cover and marinate at room temperature for at least 30 minutes or refrigerate overnight.

Add a good splash of oil to your large skillet and  brown the chicken.    Remove the chicken and set aside.  Add a little more oil if necessary and saute the onions just until translucent.  Don’t let them brown.    Add a little liquid and scrap up the browned bits.   Add the prunes and  sufficient liquid  to just cover.

Remove from the  heat, cover,  and put into the oven.  Bake for about 40-50 minutes.    Add the cubed sweet potatoes, cover, and return to the oven until the potatoes are tender (around 15 –  20 minutes).  If your tagine  seems a big soupy remove  the cover and continue cooking for ten or fifteen minutes longer.

Serve with couscous and  plenty of crusty bread.  I like to have lots of flavorful liquid to dunk bread in, but either way it is delicious.

Chef Notes:  You may also cook this on top of the stove.   Bring the liquid to the boil, reduce heat to a lower simmer and cover and cook for about 40 minutes.  Then add the sweet potatoes and cook those until tender.

This is not the Oreo cookie of your childhood. It’s a little less crisp, a whisper less sweet.  The squishy filling is a sophisticated, buttery vanilla flavoured layer of wonderfulness.  The cookie is rich and dark and seductive.

CHOCOLATE CREME SANDWICH is an adult cookie. One you will reach for when involved in a long and difficult project; an intellectual cookie for the book-worm. A cookie that will sustain you as you wade knee deep in snow through War and Peace; when you think you will never get to the end of Atlas Shrugged, or a reward for actually finishing reading Ulysses.

The dough is pure joy to make. It’s easy, forgiving and simple to roll out, and holds its shape if you wish to use a scalloped cutter. Make this cookie with the very best cocoa you can find. For a darker cookie use a combination of black cocoa and Dutch-processed cocoa powder. Don’t use all black cocoa as it lacks the rich chocolate flavour your cookie requires.

Because of the butter filling this ephemeral cookie, once baked and filled, is best served that day.  They can be wrapped well and refrigerated for up to 2 days.

The filling can be made ahead and kept tightly covered in the refrigerator for up to three days.  The dough can also be cut into rounds, wrapped airtight and frozen.  There’s no need to defrost before baking. This allows you to bake and fill half the cookies, then bake and fill the rest of the cookies two days later.    Four glorious days to enjoy chocolate creme sandwiches!

There are some who say the ultimate sweet treat is cookies and milk.  Make the cookie crispy rich with the perfect amount of old fashioned oatmeal,  bittersweet and milk chocolate chips and you have the oatmeal chocolate chip cookie that dreams are made of.  Bake with the best chocolate chips you can find or be creative and  chop a bar of good chocolate into coarse chunks.

Of all the soups we made at ROXY’S BISTRO in Regina, tomato basil soup was our favourite.    This  soup tastes like the glorious days of summer.  The tomatoes  enhanced with basil and a whisper of oregano.    The very best part of this tomato soup – you  make it twelve months of the year.   The secret is  canned tomatoes (but you must use top quality Italian canned whole tomatoes).  The chicken stock should be a rich,  home-made stock.   You do your culinary magic with onion, garlic, seasonings and dried basil (when fresh is not available).

In a generous stock pot, over medium heat,  saute the onions with oil,  a good sprinkle of salt, more grinds of black pepper than you think you need, and around 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes.  When the onions become translucent (don’t brown them please) add the chopped garlic and saute for a couple of minutes.

Put this onion mixture into a large sauce pan.    Add the basil and oregano, canned tomatoes and the tomato paste and lower your heat to simmer.  Let this cook away while you are preparing the roux.

In a medium sized saucepan melt the butter.  Add the flour and cook for a few minutes.  Use a wooden spoon to mix the flour as it cooks.   Increase the heat a little.   Add the chicken stock and using a balloon whisk stir the sauce until it thickens.  Make sure your sauce is lovely and smooth with no lumps.

Add the roux  to the hot tomato mixture and mix well.  Stir in the cream.  Your soup is ready.   Garnish with a spoonful of sour cream and fresh basil or flat leaf parley.

When you are in the midst of an Arctic Vortex, you stay home and bake. You admire the brittle blue skies etched with sugar sparkling snow covered mountains, but from your kitchen window.

This cold weather cookie comes together quickly and quietly, no stand mixer required. It is a grown-up ginger cookie warm with spices, and rich with memories of tall glasses of milk. The secret that take it above and beyond other cookies is the generous spoonfuls of powdered ginger, plus freshly grated ginger, orange zest, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, and a pinch of cayenne. The spices are bloomed in melted butter and sugar, and whisked until a simmer, then set aside to cool. Add a beaten egg, the flour mixture, and pop the dough into your refrigerator for a two hour nap.

These grown-up ginger cookies bake wafer thin, and snap when you break one in half to nibble with coffee, a glass of wine, or child-like- dip into a cold, glass of milk. Then the moment, when your home is filled with the heady fragrance of baking, you close your eyes and remind yourself of the Rubaiyat and Omar Khayyam: BE HAPPY FOR THIS MOMENT. THIS MOMENT IS YOUR LIFE.

This recipe was adapted from THE BOOK OF GINGERBREAD by Helen Garcia