Lemon Squares

My friend's grandpa died and I decided it would be nice to bake him something. This friend is also a neighbour, and it's always nice to bring food over to neighbours' in times of need. I wanted to make something comforting and practical and was thinking about making muffins. I started sifting through my cookbooks and these lemon bars from Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman (the original not the new cookbook) jumped out at me. My friend likes Lemon meringue and lemon cake so i figured he might like these too. I saved a couple for my friend Stu who is recovering from an inner ear infection and Stefan ate as many as he could before I brought these upstairs... fine I may have eaten a few myself. They taste so yummy and fresh. I would definitely recommend these and will be making them again.

It's funny, I have really bad time management when it comes to baking or cooking. I always underestimate the time it will take me. The bars take a bit longer than you'd expect because you first bake the bottom later for 20 minutes, than add the top layer and bake 35-40 minutes more. This time, we had plans to meet friends at the Museum of History's Christmas Market and we wanted to walk over and needed to make a stop on the way. We quickly realized we would never make it on time and pushed back our meeting half an hour. Anyway, the market was really beautiful! I have been going for the past couple of years, and each year i buy less and less. It's still fun to browse and admire the beauty of the Museum.

Note the recipe uses a food processor. I imagine you can also just use by hand, but a food processor makes it quicker and easier.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

I am so excited that our seasonal veggie share has started. I always rant and rave about it. I can't help it. I just can't say enough good things about it and highly recommend everyone sign up. We get the bi-weekly share and it's more than enough for two people. I always want to get the weekly share, but it wouldn't be realistic to eat it all in time. Anyway, we received some fresh rhubarb, and decided it would be good to make pie, as I had leftover pie dough in the freezer from the pie workshop at Life of Pie.

Rhubarb has a soft spot in my heart, as it reminds me of making jam with my grandma. Strawberry rhubarb is a classic combination and I decided to make a rhubarb strawberry custard pie, because it sounded good. I modified a recipe from all recipes to make improvements based on the reviews so I can share a new and improved recipe.

I gotta say, I was pretty impressed that I was able to whip this up in no time. I didn't even leave a big mess. Usually by the time I am done cooking I have no energy left to clean, but for some reason I had a burst of energy after work one evening, made the pie, a soup and managed to clean a little bit.

Stefan took the photo above. I made a deal with him- photography in exchange for laundry folding and he jumped on it. #comparativeadvantage #specializationoflabour #econ #nerd #notthatgreatatfoldinglaundry #domesticlife

Stefan said the pie was excellent. I liked it too, and will definitely make again. It will be sooner rather than later as we got more rhubarb yesterday. mmmm Enjoy!

Salted Caramel Apple Pie

Since I had so much dough left from the pie course, I decided to make a pie for dinner with friends. Anto offered to help me and came up with a few recipes. We settled on this one and followed it for the most part except that I used my own dough. I won't re-write the recipe as the original one is great and has a great step by step with photos and a video. I was surprised how easy it was to make the caramel. Unfortunately I didn't have salted butter so, after a quick google search,  I just added 1/4 tsp of salt to my unsalted butter.

Anyway here are the photos!

It got all eaten up pretty quickly. I'd definitely make this again.

The best part..I had leftover caramel sauce, and then came across a booklet I had from Food network with 50 recipes with caramel sauce..I tell you, sometimes the stars just line up!! stay tuned..

Bakesale Trifecta Squares

S asked me if I would bake something for a bake sale fundraiser for his work. Sure. I love baking and this is for a good cause: win-win. Oh, and I won't end up eating it all: win-win-win. I came upon this Food Network recipe by chance in my monthly magazine and thought it was perfect. It said bake sale trifecta, I needed something for a bake sale. Voila, I was sold. It combines 3 popular bake sale items, the brownie, the cookie and Rice Krispies squares into one.

Warning: these are very intense!!

Baking these squares made me feel a bit Martha Stewart-y. Well, sort of.  Maybe a messier, less perfectionist version of her (oxymoron right?). I always say that I have 'butter fingers'  but for this recipe, you really do need to cover your fingers with butter..

Unrelatedly, while making these, somehow, the bag of cocoa fell, on it's own, pouring out of the cupboard onto the counter, toaster and the floor. How does that even happen?   When I was younger,  I used to say something fell, and my mom would ask, did it fall or did you drop it? In this case, it really did fall.  I must have put it back off balance somehow, in such a way that it was fine at first and then just fell on its own a few minutes later. What a mess!!

Daniele told me that sometimes cocoa can be used as blush and is great for staining.. good for environmentally friendly makeup, not so much for cleaning the kitchen! Wahhh. Luckily she helped me clean it up. Haha, it was a pretty funny sight.

They turned out pretty well. I would definitely make them again.

Layers:

Ingredients:

For the brownie layer:
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for the pan
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

For the cookie layer:
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips

For the cereal-treat layer:
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for your hands
1 10 -ounce bag mini marshmallows<< I used half of a 400g bag
3 cups rice crispies or other rice cereal

Directions
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line a 9-inch square, 2-inch-deep baking dish with foil, leaving an overhang; butter the foil. Make the brownie layer: Beat the butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar in a bowl with a mixer on medium speed until creamy, 4 minutes. Add the eggs and vanilla; mix until combined. Reduce the mixer speed to low; beat in the flour, cocoa powder and salt. Spread in the prepared pan.

Make the cookie layer: Beat the butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar in a clean bowl with a mixer on medium speed until creamy, 4 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until combined. Reduce the mixer speed to low; beat in the flour, baking soda and salt. Stir in the chocolate chips. Gently spoon and spread the cookie dough on top of the brownie batter. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. Transfer to a rack and let cool completely in the pan.

Make the cereal-treat layer: Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the marshmallows; stir until melted. Remove from the heat and stir in the cereal. Let cool slightly. Butter your hands, then press the cereal mixture on top of the cookie layer. Refrigerate until set, about 30 minutes. Cut into squares.

Smore Cupcakes

Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the completed cupcakes with the chocolate icing on top. I was a bit rushed making these and packing them up in a cooler to take to the lake.

On Saturday we went to Lac Philippe to celebrate S and my birthdays with some friends and family. We had a delicious bbq and picnic lunch, swam (the water is so much warmer than Meech lake), lounged around and hiked to the Lusk caves! I really loved going through the caves. I definitely recommend wearing your swim suit because you are neck deep at some points. It's also useful to have a headlamp. Of course my headlamps batteries were dead, but luckily S is organized and had brought a whole bunch of head lamps.  It is a bit scary, but really fun and beautiful! For those in the Ottawa area, I recommend checking it out. Note it is about 4-5km walk to get to the caves from the beach. I say walk, and not hike because the terrain is easy. You can also get most of the way by canoe or kayak.

Photo credit:Tamara

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to make Smores cupcakes to go along with the camping/lakeside feel. Plus I love smores. I combined a few recipes here because I lost the original one I had found which was the easiest. Here is one that I used for inspiration  There are many different variations. Some use real marshmallows, some have you make your own with egg whites, and some use marshmallow puff. I used real marshmallows.

Basically you make a layer of graham cracker crust, then a chocolate cake layer, one marshmallow that bakes in, one other marshmallow that's mostly in tact and then a chocolate icing over top.

 Graham crust

Chocolate cake layer

With Marshmallow

They were a bit messy and didn't look as nice as the photos in the original recipe but in the end still turned out pretty well. I transported them in a muffin tin in a cooler and that seemed to workout okay.

Green Tea Flaxseed Macarons with Red Bean Filling

Ahh, macarons. 

Macarons are probably one of my favorite desserts. They're delicious.. They're both chewy and crunchy at the same time. They can come in many different flavours.. Pistachio, lavender, chocolate, salted caramel.. You name em. The list never ends! They're pretty and colourful. When I walk into a macaron store, I feel like a kid at a candy store.. Or a kid in a macaron store... >_> I just want to buy ALL the colours.. Pink, green, purple, blue,.. ALL shades.. I like pretty and colourful things! They can come in many different sizes.. As big and as tiny as you want. They're easy to eat, easy to transport, they make a great gift.. Yum, yum! What's not to like about macarons ?

Oh, I know...

They're expensive! They may be little, but they aren't cheap! Those little Oreo looking and Oreo sized things can cost up to $5 for ONE. You can pretty much get 2 boxes of Oreo cookies for a macaron (But trust me, they aren't Oreos. Though Oreos ARE good too. Mmm oreos... Ahem. I digress).

They're also expensive to make (this, I didn't know until I went to shop for the ingredients). The ingredients to make macarons are generally pretty expensive. Mostly, the one key ingredient that is hard to substitute for: almond flour, which costs almost $16 for a 453g bag. Yikes! :O

Not only that, macarons are also known to be one of the hardest desserts to make:

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3894316

Like they say, the real difficultly is getting them to look nice. They are made with egg whites so it's hard to work with..To get them perfectly shaped, smooth, un cracked, perfectly sized..

I know what you may be thinking.. So why would I want to make them myself if it costs just as much with so much more effort (Because you love baking....? Har har) Actually, everything turned out to be not that bad. I'll explain in a bit.

Nonetheless, I decided I was up for the challenge. I guess initially, I also didn't know they were that expensive to make. So I thought there would be some cost savings. Also, I wanted to have green tea macarons. As I mentioned before, it's really hard to find good Asian inspired desserts in Ottawa. I had a bag of green tea matcha at my office desk that I intended to drink but never did. I was staring at for quite some time. Let's put it to good use, I thought.

Anyways, so I was off to the supermarket. That's when I found out almond flour was $15 (Say what?!). 

I was just about to abort, but felt determined..

then figured maybe I could try substituting something else for the almond flour. Possibly another but or seed. Coconut flour was equally expensive. I didn't see any other seed flours.. Then I saw flaxseed flour.. 3 bucks? Quick check online said it was a possible substitute. Score! They also would go well with the matcha since matcha was sort of bitter. 

And to my surprise, they actually turned out and tasted pretty good! 

I decided to use red bean for the filling since Japanese desserts usually come in the green tea / red bean combo. I originally was going to mix in the red bean paste with a white chocolate ganache but I completely botched the ganache recipe (I used 3:1 cream:chocolate instead of chocolate:cream). Though it was a blessing in disguise because I tested it my dipping some of the shells in the mix and the ganache would have overpowered any green tea flavouring. Just pure red bean paste was perfect.

Without further aideau, here is the recipe:

For the ingredients, I used;

- 1 1/2 cup of icing sugar

- 1/4 cup of granulated sugar

- 1 1/4 cup of flaxseed powder

- 3 large egg whites

- 1 1/2 tablespoon of green tea powder

- 1/2 of a 400g package of red bean paste

- I dash of vanilla extract (optional)

Directions:

Prep:

1) if you do not have macaron makers with presized circles, draw circles on your parchment paper lined on your baking pan for the size of the macaron you want so that they are all consistent. Mine were about 1 1/4 inch in diameter. 

2) preheat your oven to 350 degrees

Making the macarons:

3) mix together the powdered sugar, flaxseed, and green tea powder thoroughly. Set aside.

4) beat the egg whites (with the optional vanilla extract) and granulated sugar until a stiff peak form. For mine, I beat them for 3 min on medium, 1 1/2 minute on medium high, 1 minute on high, and another minute on the highest.

5) fold in your dry ingredients slowly and carefully into the egg white mixture until it is well blended.

6) fill your pastry bag with the mixture and squeeze the mixture into your circles. Then bang the pan on your countertop (I did it about 15 times from all angles) to flatten and smooth them out.

7) stick them in the oven for about 12-14 minutes. 

8) let cool and using a butter knife, spread the paste to fill you macaron.

Overall, I was quite happy with the result for the first time making them. There definitely were some ones that didn't turn out as nice and were cracked, but they still were delicious.  Only comment I would say is that the red bean paste does dry out if you don't eat them right away, but they still tasted decent the next day. I will definitely try to experiment with some other flavours so stay tuned!

(And of course, Instagram always makes everything look better ;D)

Tiramisu Cake Balls / Cake Pops

Yep, I know... Cake pops and cake balls are a bit 2011. But they still are (relatively) easy and fun to make. Not to mention still delicious. So even they are no longer really the “trend” nowadays, I brought them back and decided to make them last week. Besides, it’s not out of style as long as Starbucks keeps selling them. And they still were last time I checked :-D

Last week, I made Tiramisu Cake Balls. Surprisingly, there aren’t actually a lot of Tiramisu cake balls recipes online when I researched them. There were a few, but I didn’t really like how they were made. A lot of them were mostly regular cake balls with a tiramisu twist.

I wanted my cake balls to taste as close as tiramisu as possible. So, I decided to be creative and come up with my own recipe by using just the ingredients for a classic tiramisu recipe (basically, lady fingers, mascarpone, whipped cream, kahula or expresso with rum, chocolate (optional)). What would be more authentic and can taste most like tiramisu than using the actual tiramisu recipe?

For the Cake Balls recipe, I used:

-          1 package of Vicenzi ladyfingers

-          1 ½ package of Milano ladyfingers

-          1 container (250g) of Mascarpone Cheese

-          125 mL of Kahula

-         3-4 heaping tablespoons of Starbucks Moka flavored coffee grounds (more of less depending on your preference)

To make the cake balls:

1)      Using a magic bullet or another type of food processor, ground your Vicenzi and Milano lady fingers into a fine powder. Add the Starbucks coffee grounds into the mixture and set aside.

2)      Mix the mascarpone cheese and kahula together in your magic bullet. Add mixture to the lady fingers powder.

3)      Using a mixing spoon first, mix together ingredients. When the ingredients are mixed together, you can start kneading them with your hands until it turns into a dough-like consistency, like so.

4)      Using your hands, break or spoon off chunks and roll them with your hands to make the cake ball. Set them aside in a pan covered with parchement paper (this is important so that the cake balls can be removed without running or sticking later on). Put them in the freezer for about 30 minutes to form the shape.

During the time when the cake balls were being chilled, I used the opportunity to make the chocolate coating for the cake balls.

For the chocolate coating, I used:

-          4 packs of Bakers Dark Chocolate (170g)

-          2 packages of Presidents Choice white chocolate chips (226g)

To make the chocolate coating:

Typically, you melt the chocolate using either a double boiler or a microwave. As I did not have either, I simply placed a bowl that fit just over a pot and used boiled water to melt the chocolate. It was a bit tougher to handle, but it worked just fine.

Once the chocolate coating is ready, you can take the cake balls out of the fridge to coat them. Once they are coated, put them back on the pan with parchement paper (or cake pop stand if you are making cake pops) and put them back in the fridge to chill until the chocolate becomes harden. This part takes about 15-30 minutes.

Once they have cooled, you can either leave them as is, or use the remaining chocolate to play around with designs. This part is entirely up to you and you can be as creative as you want. I made but cake balls and cake pops, and experimented with various designs on both.

You can also have the option of not even dipping them in the chocolate. Here, I tried to serve them another way but putting them in a martini glass and toping it off with some homemade whipped cream, cinnamon, and chocolate shaving. They were also quite delicious and fancy as well.

Package them in a box or display cup. They make a great gift for those who love tiramisu :)

Mini Batch Cupcakes

Happy Sunday!

I took a 2 day workshop at the School of Photographic Arts: Ottawa (SPAO) on food photography, that wrapped up yesterday. It was so much fun! Thank you G, for telling me about this course! The instructor, Adrien, is so knowledgeable and great. He really is a master of light and knows how to tweak things just so, to make them look better. The other students were great to work with. There were a couple of other food bloggers,  Louise of Kitchen on Fourth and Fida of Sweet and Savoury Pursuits, Deb, a marketing professional and Alex, a high school photography teacher! We balanced each other out well.

The first week was theory and practice: composition, lighting, what we liked and didn't like about photos, etc.. This week was more about production. We set up two sets and got to shoot and play around with the lighting.

Here's a glimpse:

I was paired with Louise and Alex who are in the photo above. It was great because we all had Nikons and could try out each others lenses. I got to test out a macro lens and now I really want one!!

Another highlight for me, was finding out that my (Dad's) really old tripod can do some really neat stuff! The instructor was all excited about it too, saying it could do things he had never seen on a tripod, for example part of it can unscrew and attach somewhere else so it'll be possible for me to shoot birds eye view with it. I can't wait to try this feature out!  He also said it is very light for what it can do. So that was really cool. Hey who says newer is better, right?

For Saturday, we were supposed to bring in some food to photograph. It was supposed to be simple enough to be able to play around with the composition. I couldn't decide what to make. I had already photographed fruit and tomatoes the week before and wanted something different. I decided I would bring in cheese and crackers and if I had time maybe bake something.

I woke up early on Saturday and decided to make some cupcakes.  I had received some great accessories for cupcakes for my birthday and thought they could be fun to photograph (Thanks T and P)  I am so last minute! As usual, I was frazzled and rushed. I had previously found a recipe on Pinterest,  from Yes to Yum  for a half batch of devil's food cupcakes, which I think is amazing. You don't always need 12 cupcakes and if you are like me, you will just eat them all.

Side note- I am not the only chocoholic out there. In yoga the other day - yes I have been going to yoga like it's my job and am down to just 4 classes left!!- the teacher told us about how she always used to think the " Cat/Cow" pose was called " cacao". She was wondering why it was called that and finally realized her instructors were not saying that, she had just misheard. She said that even though it doesn't make as much sense, she still wished it were called cacoa because she likes chocolate. Hmm so I am not the only one daydreaming about chocolate while on my yoga mat.. She is a pretty funny instructor and also talks a lot about coffee in the morning classes- "Imagine there is a cup of coffee.. now reach as far as you can for it"

Anyway I did not modify the cupcake recipe so if you want to make these, just click on the link above and get it directly from the source. I was surprised at how quick they were to make.  I didn't make the icing but can see from the comments on the site that it is really good. If I have more time, I will definitely try it. Instead I just used a plain white icing.  Here are some of my photos:

These were modeled on Martha Stewart's style- clean and crisp with white on white background 

Everyone loved this cake stand- thanks Patrick and Jane! 

close-up!