Coffee Talk

So recently, with this kid about to pop (seriously, when will that be?) my mother-in-law has been delivering lots of meals for freezing. Since she’s taken the real-food part of our future newborn-infused lives, I have taken charge of the sweet stuff.

Last week, she included three pints of blueberries with her delivery, thinking that it might inspire something fun! Indeed, it did – my friend Marianne directed me to a favourite recipe of hers and thus my variation on this delicious simple cake was born!

Blueberry Coffee Cake

• 1C white flour
• 1C whole wheat flour
• 1.5C sugar
• 1/2C butter
• 1t baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 1C milk
• 1t vanilla
• 2 pints blueberries

Set the oven to 350F and get this party started.

Sift together the flours and sugar, then cut in your room temperature butter with a pastry cutter. Save 3/4C of the mixture in a separate bowl. Add your baking powder, milk, and vanilla to the remaining mixture and then pop in the yolks of your two eggs, saving the whites. (You know, the ability to yolk an egg using only the shell is still one that fills me with delight – my mum used to use a separate tool for this step and I am still thrilled that I don’t need that tool anymore. Ridiculous!)

Whisk your whites ’til they form soft peaks, then fold ‘em directly into the batter, which you can now pour into a greased 9″x13″ pan. Clean your berries and remove both stems and grody ones, sprinkle over the top of the cake, then sprinkle the remaining flour/sugar/butter crumble mix from the first step. Bake for an hour.

This is the first time I’ve ever made a cake in a 9″x13″ pan and had it come out of the pan without sticking anywhere, quelle miracle! That said, flipping it right side up after putting it on the cooling rack was a bit of a challenge, given its size, so I had to cut it in half. In any case, I sure hope this freezes well, because it’s otherwise in danger of being entirely consumed in 24 hours. Deliciousness!

This Shit is Bananas

For the last twenty years – at least! – I have eaten a minimum of one banana every day. I freaking love the things. I thus also love anything that tastes like banana – from muffins straight through to medicine. Naturally, as a banana aficionado, I’m always on the lookout for the best banana bread recipes.

When my friend Colleen, thus, had a Banana Bread Bakeoff Bonanza with some friends, I was intrigued. I was even more so when her loaf was crowned the winner, and she shared the award-winning recipe!

Colleen’s Bonanza Banana Bread

• 1C mashed bananas (this amounts to about 4-5 average sized fruit)
• 1C white sugar
• 3/16C oil
• 1/2C light sour cream (she vows that it must be light – not sure why, but despite my aversion to low-fat/calorie anything, I obeyed!)
• 2 eggs
• 1t vanilla
• 1.5C all purpose flour
• 1t baking powder
• 1t baking soda
• 1/2t salt
• 1/2C walnuts/pecans/chocolate chips

Set your oven to 325F and generously grease a loaf pan. Combine everything from bananas through vanilla in a delicious bowl of wet-ingredient goodness, and combine your dry goods separately. Mix ‘em all together – the whole process takes no more than five minutes, I swear.

Add the nuts or chocolate chips last – I personally find that chocolate ruins a perfectly heavenly banana bread, so I opt for nuts every time. I would’ve chosen pecans, but I only had walnuts in the house. (An edit: in my second batch of this, I tried to use 1C whole wheat flour and 1/2C white flour and I can’t figure out if it was that or the fact that maybe I put too much banana, instead relying on a quick fruit count, but it was less perfect than the first. The middle never really cooked, despite the fact that I put it in for an extra forty minutes. Bah!)

Bake for 45-60 minutes (my oven required 55). The top will crack lightly when it’s done. Eat or freeze – and beware doing the former entirely before the latter can happen!

Buttercream Ratios

So for some reason, I have never made a perfect buttercream frosting. It agitates me – it seems like such a simple thing, but I never get the butter/milk ratio quite right. My perfectionism wants the ideal ratio!

My friend Melissa (whose amazing-looking chocolate mint cupcakes are featured above) vows that this is the premium combination, thus I am storing the information for future reference. She actually uses milk, but another friend just pointed out to me that it’s cream that makes a perfect buttercream (um, how on earth has this never occurred to me?) so I’ve modified slightly for my records.

• 1C butter, beaten (ooh, another thing I’ve never done!)
• 4C powdered sugar
• 1/4C heavy cream
• Vanilla/other extract to taste

I’ll test this out in the next round of baking that requires frosty deliciousness!

Holiday Blondies

There is nothing so happiness-inducing as the beginning of holiday baking – and I got mine started tonight. I realize it’s only late November, and I don’t typically start ’til mid-December, but with a kid on the way, I want to make sure I get things done while I still can!

Every year, Chatelaine (yes, again, I will note how much I love this magazine) dedicates a section to holiday baking in an efficient way, sharing base recipes that can be quickly modified to make a variety of different options. Today, I decided to take their blondies recipe, double it up, and go for the most holiday-friendly variety.

Chocolatey-Cherry Blondies

• 1C butter
• 2C sugar
• 2.5C flour
• 1/2t  salt
• 2 eggs
• 4t vanilla
• 2C glacé cherries (red, green, or a mixture)
• 1C dark chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350F and spray a rectangular cake pan. (You can, of course, go back to half size here and do two 8″ pans, but I was in a doubling mood.) In one bowl, cream together your butter and sugar. In another, whisk together flour and salt. Combine these two bowls and mix.

You can use your stand mixer here if you like, but I sometimes just prefer doing things by hand – brings me back to the kid days. Once those are creamed together, throw in your eggs and vanilla and make sure the batter is nicely mixed.

A note here: the quality of extracts you use is often the differentiating point between good baking and heavenly baking, so please do yourself a favour: splurge on your vanilla!

I put the cherries in the blender at this point, but I think in future, I would just chop the cherries – the blender turned it kind of into a mostly-red mixture, but whatev. Include your chocolate chips, spread in the pan, and bake for an hour.

These blondies are ultra-chewy and quite fantastic-tasting, so – despite not being one of my traditional holiday favourites – I am pretty pleased with the result, even if they’re not totally themey-looking. Chatelaine suggests drizzling melted chocolate over the top to make things festive, but I fear that that wouldn’t freeze well, so I’ll probably just do either that or a super-thin glaze-type icing for drizzling when I thaw them. Finally, next time I’d probably replace the chocolate chips with toffee bits and keep the pecans. These would’ve done well with some nut action. Hah.

So what should I make next?

Sunday Sugar Rush

This morning, despite the fact that it’s a Sunday, I was up and at ‘em at 7:30AM. If you know me at all, you know how weird this is. I am not a morning person. I will never, ever get up before 9AM unless I am required to do so by work, appointments, or yoga class (which, let’s face it, might as well not even exist at this point given my inability to work out, but that’s another story). In any case, I was all energy and joy, doing laundry and tidying and reading crap on the internet.

And this morning, my most awesome friend and B-dos partner-in-crime Angela was also in an energized weekend mood – and had posted that she was baking muffins.

A perfect activity for a sunny Sunday, no? I slightly modified the recipe she’d posted and these were the results!

Sunday Sugar Rush Muffins

• 2C flour
• 1/2C white sugar
• 3t baking powder
• 1/2t salt
• 1/2C semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2C toffee chips
• 3/4C milk
• 1/4C vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1.5T white sugar
• 1T brown sugar

First off, heat your oven to 400F. Grease the bottoms of a dozen muffin cups or two dozen mini muffin cups – which is the direction I went this AM. So adorable!

In your main bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt, then mix well. Throw in the chocolate chips – go with mini editions if you have ‘em – and toffee chips (aka Skor bits). In a separate small bowl, whisk up your milk, oil, and egg. Slowly stir your wet stuff into the dry mix, blending carefully.

Whisk together your remaining tablespoons of sugar in a tiny bowl. Fill your muffin cups most of the way to the top, then sprinkle each wee one with the sugary mix. (It kills me that I’ve never thought to do this before! Of course this is why I love certain bakery muffins so very much – the cooked sweet stuff on the top is both darling and heavenly and I will most definitely be adding this step to future muffin recipes!)

Bake for 20-25 minutes. Et voila!

Things I loved about this recipe:

1. It took exactly as long for the oven to heat up as it did for me to both make the muffins and fill the cups. Talk about good timing!
2. It made exactly the amount of baked goodness promised. I hate it so much when a recipe gives you batter for, say, sixteen muffins. It weirds me out to put a tray in the oven with only four holes filled! I know this is a weird OCD thing, hah, but it’s so convenient when the quantities match the pan.
3. They rose perfectly! It always irritates me that my cupcakes never seem to rise enough – muffins FTW!
4. The muffins were ready in no time flat – Dave still hasn’t woken up yet!
5. Clean-up took about a minute, as it required so few dishes.

Things I’d try differently in future editions:

1. Do half white flour, half whole wheat flour. I was fully going white-bread-style this morning, but half whole wheat tends to still taste like normal baked goods while giving it a nutrition bump.
2. Add a few tablespoons of flax seeds to up the nutritional value overall – even the stuff that’s not particularly good for you can be a bit good for you!
3. Variation: Apple toffee chip muffins. Replace the chocolate chips with a chopped up apple (probably only half an apple really, whatever equates to half a cup of bits), add cinnamon and nutmeg to the dry batter, and put some cinnamon into the sugary sprinkled topping.

I am eating one now – yes, already! – and they’re a perfect Sunday morning treat. Now if only I could have coffee, my life would be complete.

Creepy Cakeballs

So ever since I discovered cakeballs on the Bakerella site, I’ve wanted to make them – yet somehow, I’d never made the time. But today, I saw that my domestically (among many other things) gifted friend Melissa made these kickass ghost cakeball pops for her office.

I had to do it. Sadly, I couldn’t find the sticks to make them into pops on such short notice, but I think just plain creepy cakeballs will do the trick – and treat!

Nightmare-Inducing Goblin Balls

• Cake mix + eggs + water + oil
• Can of cream cheese frosting
• Chocolate – one package of Baker’s white chocolate does a dozen balls

I will make my own homemade cake next time, but in the interest of time, I just bought a mix – and this marks the first time I’ve ever made a cake not from scratch in my life! In any case, follow the instructions on the mix and bake the cake. Set on a cooling rack.

When the cake is cool, crumble it with your hands. This is a kind of messy process, but I like that kind of thing. When it’s all crumbled, scoop in the contents of the can of icing. Alternatively here, Melissa says you can use half a brick of softened cream cheese – which, again, I will most definitely do the next time as I found the fake icing a little over the top with the sweetness. In any case, when you do this part, you will need to smoosh the crumbles and the goo together with your hands – this part is seriously icky, like making mud pies, but it’s all part of the process!

Once this part is done, get out a baking tray and line with wax paper. Start forming the cake-frosting mixture into small balls with a circumference of about a quarter. This will make about four dozen little balls (both Melissa’s and mine made exactly 44), but it takes no time at all. Note that if you rinse your hands after every dozen or so balls, you make the rolling process a lot easier on yourself as when dough starts sticking to your hands, it will start sticking to the next ball as well. In any case, if you have lollipop sticks, this is the point at which you’d stick them in.

Throw the balls/pops into the freezer for a bit – or if your freezer, like mine, is a vertical one on the side of your fridge, making it too skinny for a wide baking tray (sigh), toss them in the fridge for an hour or so. When they’re sufficiently cold, melt white chocolate in a double boiler. (I don’t have a double boiler and alternatively boil water and then add a smaller pot on top of it, in which I melt the chocolate.)

Dip and cool! Now, I found the white chocolate very hard to work with – the cake bits kept crumbling into the whiteness and it was really visible to me. I did the first 22 with that stuff, then switched over to dark chocolate for the second round. I suspect that I should have used maybe double that amount of white chocolate, or a different variety of white chocolate, as it didn’t coat my little ghosts as much as Melissa’s did in her picture above!

This was much easier to work with and the chocolate ones came out looking great! Overall, I think the whole thing would’ve been easier if I’d been dipping in lollipopped cakeballs, as working with the spoon was quite challenging and the balls kept sticking to it as I tried to pop them back onto the pan, so I’ll definitely do that next time.

Melissa said to use edible ink for the faces, but I have no such thing, so I tried using more melted dark chocolate and drawing on spooky eyes and a mouth on the white chocolate ones with a toothpick. It definitely looked creepy – but in a kind of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane way more than a ghost way. (See, some look okay, but others – like Mr. Third-Column-Second-Row-From-the-Front – look totally freakish, like they were made by either a deranged person… or an uncoordinated child. Hah.)

Dave said I should’ve packaged them in twos (one chocolate, one white) and called them Nightmare-Inducing Goblin Balls before taking them to work. (He then laughed hysterically at himself. Because maturity is at a high level in our household, I did as well and changed the name of the recipe. Har.)

But, whatever, they’re fun and they’re creepy – and, most importantly, edible!

Candyland

So this month’s Chatelaine (FYI – this isn’t your mother’s magazine anymore, so don’t mock me for the fact that it’s the only print publication to which I have religiously subscribed for years!) had an amazing-looking recipe for homemade chocolate truffles that I was dying to try. I’ve never made homemade chocolates before. A friend’s sister made some for me one Christmas about a decade ago, and I’ve always wanted to do the same – yet every year, my holiday schedule gets jammed and I skip out on the delicacies.

Luckily, with my family baby shower approaching, I had a wonderful excuse to give them a shot. Volunteering to make my own take-away guest gifts, I was officially on the truffle train. (On that note: I never host anything without including an adult edition of the loot bag – I think it’s the best part of putting an event together. Even though I’m not really the host here, given that people are taking the time and bringing me gifts, I feel the same level of host gratitude!)

In any case, I made three batches, one of each of their amazing recipes. Each batch makes 16 tablespoon-sized truffles, so be prepared to enjoy!

Chatelaine’s Decadent Chocolate Truffles

• 8oz package semi-sweet chocolate (I went for dark Valrhona from Williams Sonoma, as I am addicted to the stuff)
• 1/2C whipping cream
• 2T unsalted butter
• 1T corn syrup
• 1t vanilla
• 2T sifted unsweetened cocoa powder

Finely chop chocolate – and, yes, do this first. It is time consuming to get it ultra-fine! Also, be sure to transfer it from the cutting board to a small bowl to avoid melted chocolate powder all over your stovetop.

Once that’s done, combine your cream, butter and corn syrup in a small saucepan at medium heat, bringing the blend to a boil. Once it hits that stage, turn off the heat, tossing in the fine chocolate, vanilla, and alternate ingredients if you’re following any of the other versions below. Stir ’til it’s smooth, then place in a medium sized bowl in your fridge for an hour and twenty minutes, checking on it with a stir every twenty minutes. (The original recipe called for an hour, but mine was still pretty soft at that point.) It should be scoopable by the time you start the next stage.

I recommend some variation here from the original recipe, though you can try to ball it at this runny stage if you so desire! Scoop 1T at a time with a tablespoon or melon baller, placing on a parchment-lined baking sheet which will be returned to the fridge for another twenty minutes when the whole batch is rolled. They look more like macaroons at this stage than truffles, as the chocolate – particularly as you get closer to the bottom of the bowl – is still pretty soft. That’s okay, though, because the refining comes at the next stage, after you refrigerate the chocolate globs for twenty-five minutes or so.

Place cocoa – or whatever rolling ingredients your alternate version may call for – in a small bowl. Re-roll your now fairly firm truffles in a lovely ball and lightly cover each truffle, using a spoon to avoid fingerprinting the now-coated candies. Line a storage container with parchment paper and store in layers, separated by wax paper, for up to two weeks. Or, if you’re like me, put in little cute foil wrap thingos and find small truffle containers to give two at a time as gifts to your guests!

Alternate: Spicy Orange

Reduce whipping cream to 1/3C. Stir in 2T orange liquer (Grand Marnier), 1t grated orange peel, 1t cayenne. Continue with main recipe.

Alternate: Dark Espresso

Reduce whipping cream to 1/3C. Stir in 2T coffee liquer (Kahlua), 2t espresso granules. Continue with main recipe, and roll in toasted hazelnuts at the end.

Alternate: Caramel Crunch

Stir 1/2C Skor toffee bits into chocolate mixture. Additionally, rolling pin another 1/4C of the toffee bits for the cover. Continue with main recipe, and roll in a combination of shredded coconut and powdery toffee bits at the end.

Another To-Die-For Basic

Along the quick dinner favourites line of thinking, here’s a shout out to my fave meal of life: trout with roasted potatoes. I was a total meat and potatoes girl before I went pseudo-vegetarian last summer. Now, obviously you can do the potatoes with whatever you like, but, since I only eat fish, trout is my absolute fave replacement for steak.

This dinner takes all of five minutes total to prep, but allow an hour for cooking.

Fish & Potatoes

• 2 pints (4C) small potatoes (I like those baby sized ones, but you can alternative chop a few normal sized potatoes into small chunks)
• 1/4C olive oil
• Herb salt
• Garlic salt
• 1 trout fillet
• 1/2 lemon
• Sea salt
• Ground black pepper

Set oven to 375F and allow to preheat while you chop those wee potatoes into halves or quarters, depending on the size you like it. Toss them with olive oil in a rectangular cake pan and shake a bunch of herb salt and garlic salt on them. (I am obsessed with this stuff that I found at Metro called Ethnic Delight Organic Herb Salt, which is apparently made by a kosher grocer in New York called Streit’s, but you could make your own edition of this with some combination of salt, oregano, marjoram, thyme, and rosemary.) Throw them in the oven for forty minutes to start and go watch some PVRed television.

When 35 of those minutes are up, pop back into the kitchen and toss your trout fillet on a piece of tin foil on a baking pan. Squeeze half a lemon over that fillet, then press some sea salt and freshly ground black pepper on top. Fold the foil over the fillet so it’s foil-sealed.

When the forty minute buzzer rings, take the potatoes out and flip them in the pan to give the other side some top time. Set the timer for another twenty minutes and return the potatoes to the stove with the fish alongside ‘em.

I know this is a basic! But I love it. Love!

The Lady and the Scampi

So I’m not the world’s biggest fan of shrimp. I find it’s rarely cooked properly and I sometimes just plain find the taste… a bit cheap. In any case, when it’s good, it’s really good. Last night, my most excellent mother-in-law brought this over for her reno-and-cleaning-frazzled son and daughter-in-law. I’m sure the fact that it was delivered didn’t hurt its tastiness factor, but it would’ve been nearly as yummy if I made it myself, as it’s a super quick recipe. I think that you could also skip the shrimp and throw over penne or something for a basic Greek dinner, or cool the whole shebang for a tasty pasta salad. So many options!

Greek Scampi

The lemony dill deliciousness is refreshing, while the feta provides a heartiness that works in any season. Yum!

• 2 lbs of colossal frozen raw shrimp
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
• 4T olive oil
• 3C diced tomatoes
• 1.5C crumbled feta cheese
• 1.5 lemons, juiced
• 6t chopped fresh dill
• Dash of salt
• Dash of ground black pepper

Shell, devein, and rinse the shrimp as necessary, and prep all your other ingredients before you start cooking. Sauté garlic in oil briefly, then add the shrimp. Cook on medium for a minute or so. Add the tomatoes, feta, lemon juice, and dill. When the shrimp are pink and the tomatoes and feta have made a sauce? It’s ready, people. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste and serve with basmati. (Dave likes white, but I prefer brown. The battle wages on!)

Final note: this recipe serves 4-6, and if you don’t like reheating shrimp (for the overcooking reasons stated at the beginning of this post), you might want to half the recipe. Or you might just want to remove the shrimp before you reheat your leftovers. It’s your call!

A Crisp in the Air

With fall most certainly in the air and fresh locally grown apples on the streets, I found myself in a crisp-making mood. I am waiting to make it ’til Thursday when the in-laws will be popping by to see our renos in progress, but in my excitement, I’ve pulled out my favourite traditional recipe for sharing – again, a modified version of what my mum used to always make when I was a kid – in advance!

A Deliciously Basic Crisp

Peel and cut up about five apples or so, and put them into a pretty casserole dish. You can, of course, alternate the fruit based on what’s seasonally available – I often like to combine a big orchard type fruit with a berry, like peaches and blueberries, but you can use whatever fruit you like, as long as it’s about the amount that five apples would be.

You can additionally prep the apples the night before if you’ll have a busy Thursday like mine – just let the fruit sit in lemon water overnight so they don’t start browning, yuck.

Sprinkle lemon and spices over your apples and stir:

• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 1t cinnamon
• 1/2t nutmeg
• 1/2 t ginger/cardamom/cayenne/whatever strikes your fancy – select your spices based on the fruit you’re using (I got the cayenne idea that I will totally be trying this week here while Flickr-searching for crisp shots)

And now for the best part: mix until just crumbly, but not beyond that! Use equal parts of all ingredients, and go higher on the measurement if you love the crispy part best like I do!

• 3/4-1C butter
• 3/4-1C brown sugar
• 3/4-1C rolled oats
• 3/4-1C flour

Cover the chopped layer of fruit with this yummy topping and bake at 350F for 40-45 minutes. Serve hot from the oven, and never skimp on the ice cream.

Heaven!