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.

My dad had this really lovely piece published in The Chronicle Herald this weekend. It’s about my grandparents, the navy, the legion, and Remembrance Day – super touching, sweet, and has a really great message.

I am super proud of him and hope, if you read it, you vote for and share it this Remembrance Day!

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!

Went a little purchase-wild today – the store at which we registered gives you a 10% gift card for whatever people buy you, so I decided to get the remaining essentials in one fell swoop. On a related note: I am a disgusting consumer and a marketer’s dream – but at least I’m not in denial about it. Besides, it was mostly free thanks to gift cards! Guilt trip out…

This Plover Organic crib bedding set – it’s double-sided with the dots versus geometric pattern, and we’ll be making the dots the stars (i.e. the opposite of what’s happening here).

This really bizarro bucket-of-baby style thing called Tummy Tub.

These two little newborn-size onesie things by Tea Collection with coordinating sweatpant-looking things which I’m not a huge fan of, but it appears that babies don’t get a lot of bottom options at this teensy size. It turns out we don’t actually have a lot in the way of things to put on this kid quite yet – well, other than blankets!

These hilarious looking things by Beba Bean (I can’t bring myself to write their name as it’s sickeningly cutesy) that apparently reduce the likelihood of a small creature urinating on you – I am praying for success with this as the idea of that is very hard on my grossness-hating head.

And most important of all: the only book I will be obsessed with, as the good doc was my absolute fave when I was a wee one. Thirteen in one! How’s that for fun?

The other little goodies are far less interesting so I’ll quit while I’m ahead. Suffice it to say, we’re pretty much done!

The family baby shower was lovely! Aside from the heavenly cupcakes, to-die-for St. Andre cheese, and ACE Bakery cranberry cracker things, the following is a short list of some of my favourite goodies!

The Baby Bjorn Babysitter Balance Air bouncy seat:

The Baby Bjorn carrier cover:

The Maxi-Cosi Mico car seat:

The crazy cute Cariboo activity gym:

The Skip Hop Playspot interlocking foam tiles:

There were also lots of adorable little things that I can’t find online, not least of which is a particularly cute baby medical kit. (Who would have thought that even the basics could get all cutied up?)

In other news, while I was out, Dave finished the subfloor for that kid’s room as well as insulating about half of it. Baby steps ’til we have somewhere to put this stuff!

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.

More bathroom reno updates!

Here’s the view when you walk in the room – note that the pipes sticking out of the wall on the right are where the vanity will be installed after it arrives. Also note that the red wall looks redder in these pictures – it’s more of a rust than cherry tone in real life!

And this is the view from the corner where the toilet is – and I promise that empty corner will look more fleshed out when the vanity comes in! Note that we need to put in some kind shelving thing on that wall on the right of the picture – we haven’t even started looking yet, but it will be something lovely that will hold towels and other bathroom paraphernalia.

Now the view from the tub – check out that great door! When we lived in our condo, the bathrooms had these doors in natural wood – and the previous owners left two extras in our storage locker. Dave took them when we moved, as he thought we might want to use them one day. Painted white? Et voila! Perfect door to let the sun to the hallway!

The tub is my favourite tub of life. Look at these stunning faucets! Look how pretty! I just love this shot.

A closeup on the shower tiling, which I fully love. Note that pipe sticking out – the rainshower head and handheld shower with slide bar are both scheduled to be delivered in the next week, so we’re still waiting on those. Additionally, the glass door for the shower is being built – we couldn’t order ’til the glass guys (who are also doing the mirror for the vanity) could come do the exact measurements of everything else in complete state, so that is about two weeks out as well!

So yeah, we have a few more pieces we’re waiting on, and still have to buy the shelving, towel racks and hooks, and toilet paper dispenser (completely forgot to look for these small pieces today) but it’s very close to done. We also need to figure out the window coverings, but I am thinking we might do a super sheer vertical blind type thing. Or maybe just sheer drapes would be better. Thoughts? Other suggestions are welcome!

Love! Love! Love!

Edit! I feel compelled to add that this was our original vision of what we’d do – before any design planning, but after we’d chosen the key fixtures.

While my renders are clearly more circus-cake baker than designer, I still think these are fun.

I’m obsessed with exfoliating. Honestly, I love no part of my body more than my delightful skin, and I love nothing more than making it ever-more dreamy and supersoft. I have tried a bazillion products over the years and each one has its own pros and cons – some redden up the skin with granules that aren’t fine enough, some coat my tub with a layer of sticky grime, some cost more than their weight by the gram, blah, blah, blah. Earlier this year, however, I tried Cake’s Sugar Coated Brown Sugar Body Scrub from their Barbie by Cake line.

I was in love. After years of product switching, I was quite certain I’d found the best scrub of all time. I went through the entire jar quickly, then subsequently tried both their Citrus Squeeze and Sweet Cheeks scrubs to try out their entire line of stuff. Both were nice, but neither fragance compared to the heaven that was the Barbie product, so when Cake recently offered a 50% sale through Scarlett Lounge on Red Flag Deals (which, FYI, is a great site for fashion and beauty deals that I’d previously overlooked under the assumption that it wouldn’t feature anything my style – wrong!), I was quick to buy two more jars.

But just now, I went to go buy more for the ladies in my life as holiday gifts… it was no longer on their site.

Say it ain’t so, Cake!

This is truly the dreamiest scrub of life. I can’t live without it after searching for it for so many years! Cross your fingers with me that they’re simply low on stock due to wacky demand. I can’t restart the search!

Full disclosure: My husband shoots their product, but I swear this product-pimping is unrelated. Not that anyone who doesn’t know me well enough to know this fact already reads this blog, but still. Honesty first? Hah.

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!

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!