Cupcakes and Shoes

If you like discount shoes and delicious homemade cupcakes check out the John Fluevogs stores on both Granville st. and the Gastown location! Cupcakes made by me, in my tiny apartment in my totally ill equipped kitchen! So here are a few notes, tips and thoughts on making cupcakes, both big batches (like yesteday’s 400) or small.

I made recipes that are all on this webiste already, the Red Velvet, Dark Chocolate with Satled Caramel Icing and Vanilla Pound Cake with Vanilla Buttercream.

I also cut dyed some fondant blue and rolled it out and cut out little high heels, but this is a really easy way to make a cupcake, or anything, extra cute with, honestly, little skill. It can be time consuming, but its really not hard!

I buy fondant, because I have made it before, and its less consistant, a totaly nuisanse, and not any better. It is cheaper, but I would rather have a product I know I can depend on.

Knead the fondant! Work it, and then work it some more. This process is going to get you a smoother and easier to work with product.

Always use paste food colourings, you’ll get a nicer color and a better texture with your fondant.

Roll out the dough and start cutting, leaving half the fondant covered so it doesn’t try out. Use a metal cookie cutter because they are stronger, thinner and sharper.

And keep going, and keep going, and keep going!

The most important thing is to be organized. What can you do in advance? Icings, fondant cuttings, even weighing out ingredients, this are things that make your life infinitely easier if your doing large batches. Use recipes that you’ve used before and your comfortable making.

And don’t cut corners. Use real butter, buy good quality vanilla and cocoa powder when ever you can. If you live in Vancouver some tips: I buy my butter at Save on Foods, sometimes its as low as $3.50! I buy my vanilla at Homesense, which is weird I’ll admit, but they often have non perishable food items super discounted, including my favourite brand of vanilla extract.  And I buy my cocoa powder from Dutch Girl Chocolates, just as her for some and she’ll give you a good rate. It’s cheaper then the cheap brands and it’s really really good quality!

If I Had a Million Dollars...

Words do not begin to describe the beauty of Cannell et Vanille. Shes a food stylist, an incredible photographer and clearly, a beautiful cook. Her blog is hands down the biggest inspiration for what I do here and, though I don’t think I’ll ever be anywhere close to as good as she is, she is absolutely what I aspire to.

If you are going to be in France in October or have some money kicking around and your wanting to plan a trip, she is doing a workshop that I desperately want to attend, but you know, I don’t have $2000.00 extra these days.

And if not, just go and check out this beautiful site, it will blow you away.

Cinco de Mayo Cake

I’ve been a bad blogger lately. I’m sorry friends, I really am.

I’ve been busy. Like, super busy, but thats not a good excuse, everybody’s busy.

I’ve been working lots and lots, and I’ve been eating a lot of take out. I’ve been getting home from work at 6 and going to bed at 9. I haven’t been much fun thats for sure.

BUT I did at least put on a pretty dress and an alarming amount of under eye concealer and go to a Cinco de Mayo Party on Friday. I ate tacos and caught up with girlfriends who I have been neglecting along with my blog. And I made a cake.

It was a good cake.

I had a bunch of coconut buttercream still in my fridge from making these macarons, and so I thought that was thematic enough and made a coconut cake. I was going to frost it with the straight up buttercream but then it wasn’t quite right so I added in some cream cheese a la the Barefoot Contessa. But then it was to heavy so I added some gelatin and folded in some whip cream. The result of this experiment was delicious, and light and very flavourful almost closer to a mousse or a bavarois then icing. So good in fact that’s what I ate for dinner Thursday night.

I was feeling quite pleased with myself until I realized I didn’t take into account that the frosting would set up because of the gelatin and so I put it in the fridge not very smooth thinking I would let it set a little before smoothing it perfectly, but it never did. Fortunately I had a a couple ripe mangos so I peeled them into slivers and put them on top. And then it was very festive, and very pretty, and very delicious.

I’ve toned down the icing a bit, you don’t need to make the buttercream, just a regular cream cheese frosting will do just fine.

Coconut Cake

2 1/4 cup AP Flour

1 1/2 cup Sugar

2 tsp Baking Powder

1/4 cup Butter, Melted

6 Egg Yolks

1/4 cup Water

3/4 cup Coconut Milk, unsweetened

10 Egg Whites

Mix your flour, baking powder, salt and half the sugar together

Mix in all ingredients except egg whites and the remaining sugar.

In the bowl of your standing mixer, or with a good amount of arm muscle, beat the egg whites until frothy.

Then slowly add in the sugar, a tablespoon at a time until stiff peaks form and the meringue is beautiful and glossy.

Fold the whites into the rest of the batter being careful not to over mix. Pour into your prepared pan.

Bake for about 45 minutes, or until an inserted skewer comes out with only a few moist crumbs and it looks like this:

Cool and cut the cake into 3 horizontal layers.

Coconut Syrup

1/2 cup Coconut Milk

1/3 cup Sugar

Zest of half a lime,

Mix all ingredients in a pot and bring to a simmer until all the sugar is dissolved, cool.

Cream Cheese, Coconut, Icing-Mousse

120z Cream Cheese

1/2 cup Butter, Room Temperature

3 Cups Icing Sugar

1 cup Shredded Unsweetened Coconut

1/2 cup Coconut Milk

1 cup 35% Cream, whipped to stiff peaks

Cream butter and sugar together. Slowly add cream cheese piece by piece until all combined. Mix in coconut.

Soak gelatin in coconut milk for 5 minutes.

In a small pot heat them until the gelatin has dissolved.

Slowly add the gelatin mixture into the cream cheese mix.

Fold the cream into the frosting. Use immediately.

Immediately get the bottom of layer of cake onto your cake stand or plate.

Brush with the coconut milk mixture and then spoon on a big glop of the icing.

Keep going with all the layers.

And then do the outside!

Then smooth it as best as you can, I mised that step as you can see.

Take  a couple mangos and peel them with a vegetable peeler. And then keep peeling them into strips.

Then artfully twist and twirl the mango on to the the top of the cake and the bottom around the edges.

I then grated some lime zest around the edges and put some flowers on the top. Et voila!

Health Food

Sometimes, when you write a food blog, work at both a bakery and a restaurant called Meat and Bread, and have dinner at your Italian friends houses regularly you end up eating cake for breakfast, BBQ beef sandwiches for lunch, pasta for dinner and ice cream for desert regularly. And when that happens you feel dreadful, not only right after but for a few days. And when that happens sometimes you need a big bowl of veggies, lovingly cooked without butter, with some toasted nuts on top. You know, I’m just sympathizing here, that certainly isn’t me. I do not eat cake for breakfast. Not this health concious angel. Never.

But in case you have that problem here is a bowl of local veggies, lovingly fried in olive oil, full of iron, protien, and vitamin B. In case you write a food blog, work at a restaurant and a bakery and have a lot of Italian friends. Just in case.

Swiss Chard Hash

1 big handful of nugget potatoes, quartered, or a few yukon gold potatoes diced.

4-5 big stalks of Swiss Chard, cut into strips, keeping the stems and leaves seperate.

1 clove of Garlic, sliced

1 tbsp Capers.

Zest of half a Lemon

2 tbsp Toasted Hazelnuts

Olive Oil

Salt

Some fresh herbs if you have any kicking around, I used basil and mint, because thats all thats big enough to pick in my “garden”.

Put the potatoes in a pot covered by an inch or two of cold water. Put it on high heat and bring to a boil.

Let it simmer for about 5 minutes, until the potatoes are nearly cooked.

Drain the potatoes and in a frying pan (or in the same pot if you don’t want to wash two dishes!) put a good glug of olive oil and theme dump the potatoes back in. Add in a good pinch of salt.

Fry them until they are nicely browned and happy looking.

Add in the swiss chard stalks and fry them for a few minutes until they are soft and starting to brown around the edges.

Add in the garlic and cook for a minute or two. Add some more salt here.

Toss in the leaves of swiss chard and cook until wilted and delicious.

Add in the capers, lemon zest and herbs. Mix to combine.

Put it all in a couple bowls and finish with the hazelnuts. I was thinking while I was eating this that some shaved parm would have really completed it, but of course, that was an unhealthy thought.

Recipe Index Updates

I have never been able to wrap my head around  hanging my coat up and putting away my shoes when I first walk through the door. Or doing dishes as I go (although I’m way better when I’m working and have a real dishwasher!) And so predictably I have to do big clean ups all the time, even though all logic is telling me I should just do little bits all the time.

BUT, I’m hoping to keep it up on my recipe index now that I have updated (I think!) all the recipes. So in case you were looking for something, it’s now there, and I promise I will do my best to update as I go. Pinkie swear/

Darn Close to Perfect Macarons

I have made macarons many times before. I’ve made them with chocolate, with raspberries, with caramel. I’ve made them at work, at home and even in a classroom in Paris, and every time I’ve made them, I’ve done them the Pierre Herme way, which is much more complicated, because I’ve eaten macarons at Pierre Herme and that man knows a thing about macarons. Seriously.

But here’s the thing of it, I’ve made all these macarons in all these places, to great success, except in my own home. They never work.

Sometimes I blame myself, but mostly I blame my oven and the ridiculous rain in Vancouver, but I thought today that maybe I would try blaming the recipe and try another one.

I have never thought of myself as practical so this seemed like a totally logical solution.

BUT bam. Miracles do happen, and they worked.

Maybe I was feeling the Cinco de Mayo feeling but I made them coconut and lime macarons, and they were darn good. I found fresh grated coconut at my Chinese grocer which gave them that really fresh coconut taste but these would also be lovely with dried coconut I reckon.

Macarons

2 cup Icing Sugar

1 cup Ground Almonds (sometimes called almond flour)

3 Egg Whites

2 tbsp Sugar

Sift together the almonds and the icing sugar into a bowl.

In your standing mixer fitted with the whisk attachment whisk the egg whites until frothy.

Slowly add in the sugar while whisking and then let run on high until stiff peaks form.

Carefully fold the egg whites into the almond mixture. This is really the only tricky part because you want to mix it until the batter is soft enough to spread out a bit when you stop stirring it.

Put mix into a piping bag and pipe into 1 inch circles and spread about 1 inch apart, they will spread out a bit as they bake.

Let them sit at room temperature for at least 20 minutes or until a soft filmy skin has formed on the top the cookies.

Preheat oven to 350F

While the cookies are cooling make the coconut buttercream.

Coconut Buttercream

1 Egg White

1/4 cup Sugar

1/2 cup Butter, room temperature

3 tbsp Freshly grated coconut or dried unsweetened coconut flakes

1 tbsp Coconut Cream

1/4 tsp Lime Zest

 Get a small pot of water on the stove with 2 inches of water in it.

In the bowl of a standing mixer mix together the egg white and the sugar

Place the bowl over the pot and whisk the egg mixture into it is hot to the touch.

With your standing mixture fitted with the whisk attachment whisk the egg mixture until its smooth and glossy and holds stiff peaks

Slowly add in the butter, tablespoon by tablespoon until it’s all incorporated.

Add in the coconut and the lime zest.

Put icing into a piping bag and carefully pipe onto half of the cookie shells

Place the top cookie on top.

Gently pick up the cookie and press both sides together, again gently.

If you have the patience, chill them overnight in the fridge and then bring back to room temperature the next morning, for the very best texture.

But of course, you can eat one now. They look too good not to don’t they?

Lemon Meringue Cake

When I was about 7 or 8 and at the height of my Fimo Clay stage (before the water colour phase but after the decoupage stage, and concurrent with the make your own hair clips phase) my sister was at the height of her Martha Stewart phase.

Oh Martha.

I’m not sure an 11 year old has ever loved Martha like my sister.

So, when the Easter edition of the magazine came out that year with Peter Rabbits Garden cake on the cover, a simple carrot cake, with Oreo crumbs on top and carefully placed vegetables made out of marzipan in artful rows, we knew we had met our match.

Nina baked the cake and made the fondant white picket fence while I painstakingly dyed all the veggies (we couldn’t find paste food colouring so I would mix the colours really brightly and then let them dry out for a few hours and then go back to making them so the consistency would be better.) I painted the bottoms of cabbages a deep purple and let the edges stay a crisp green, I laboured for weeks on that cake.

When it was done we brought it over to our Aunt and Uncles house, and when it arrived to the table, my sister told them that she had done it all.

So I did what I always did in such occasions, I ran and locked myself in the bathroom crying hysterically and promising never to come out.

Which is all a long way of saying that every Easter after that my mom made a basic white cake in a cake mold shaped like a lamb and covered the whole thing with shredded coconut and called it a day.

So when I volunteered to bring desert for Easter dinner last week I had no idea what to bring. Was coconut cake traditional? There’s nothing fresh to make pies with, no fruits to fill layers of angel food cakes, no anything really. Until I realized of course that I have lemon curd in my fridge.

So it may not be overly festive but hot damn this cake was good.

It will last a day or two in the fridge so you can make it the day before and relax about it. It’s quite showy with the burnt edges but it’s really beautiful without, if you don’t have a blow torch, or the patience to do it all with a BBQ lighter. But most importantly, it’s fresh, and light, and not to sweet and not to heavy, so it makes a wonderful end to a big meal.

Lemon Meringue Layer Cake

Angel Food Cake- recipe follows

1 cup Lemon Curd- you can half this recipe for it.

Italian Meringue- Recipe follows

Angel Food cake

10 Egg whites

1 1/2 cups Sugar

1 cup Pastry Flour

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp Cream of tartar

1 1/2 tsp Vanilla

Zest of 1 Lemon

Tip: when your seperating this many eggs at once, have 2 bowls for your whites and one for your yolks. As you separate them, put the yolks in the bowl and then transfer the whites over individually. That way if one of the yolks breaks and it gets in the white, you only lose one egg instead of the whole batch.

 

Preheat oven to 350F

Sift 1 cup of sugar with the pastry flour and the salt.

In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the whisk attachment whisk the egg whites, cream of tartar, vanilla, and lemon zest until soft peaks.

Slowly add in the sugar teaspoon by teaspoon until all the sugar is incorporated and the when you bring the whisk up the egg stands at stiff peaks.

Carefully fold the flour into the meringue.

And pour it into an unlined ungreased 9 inch round pan without a detachable bottom.

Bake for about 30 minutes or until it has risen nicely and an inserted skewer comes out with only a few moist crumbs. Immediately turn the cake upside down and let it cool completely inside the the cake pan, upside down. When cooled remove.

Cut the cake into 3 layers.

Spread a thick layer of curd in between each layer.

Italian Meringue

3 Egg Whites

1/2 cup Sugar

Over a small pot filled with an inch of simmering water whisk the egg whites and the sugar until it is quite hot to the touch. (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of this stage.)

Pour the mixture into the bowl of your standing mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and whisk until nearly cooled and very light and glossy.

Immediately smooth over cake.

Be generous in your icing and allow for lots of artful swoops.

Then carefully with a blow torch on medium or a BBQ lighter burn the edges of the cake.

And then eat!

Lasting Lemons

While I am definately looking forward to sunshine, fresh berries and days on the beach, the one thing from winter I will miss are the beautiful citrus fruits. Limes aren’t as juicy, lemons aren’t as sweet and grapefruits are so much more bitter in the middle of july. Which is mostly okay, I’ll happily take beaches and peaches, but of course I say that now and in a few months I’ll be waxing poetic about the beauty of key limes.

Which is all to say that in preparation for my citrus withdrawal symptoms I made lemon curd this week.

I love lemon curd.

Spread on toast in the morning? Iced onto cakes? Sandwiched inside a fresh scone? Check, check and check.

Lemon curd is also one of those things thats incredibly simple to make and yet costs an absolute fortune to buy in shops. So save yourself some money and make it at home. It only takes a few ingredients and 20 minutes (seriously, thats a generous estimate, it takes me 10 minutes!) and it also makes an amazing hostess gift.

Lemon Curd

(adapted from the Tartine Bakery Cookbook)

1/2 cup Lemon Juice

5 Egg Yolks

1/4 cup Sugar

1 cup Butter, softened.

Mix together the yolks and the sugar.

Add in the lemon juice and pour it into a pot and cook at a medium heat, stirring constantly until it comes to a boil.

Strain it into a bowl.

Stir in the butter, piece by piece, into the curd until it is all emulsified in.

Pour it into a sterilized jar and seal, or it will last for up to 2 weeks in your fridge!

Pretty Things

This photo shoot makes me want to quit my job and leave for the sea, maybe permanently. Check out the rest of the shoot, from the amazing blog From Me to You. So pretty.

Pizza

Restaurants are funny places. You work 12 hour days, you work every night and every weekend and are made to feel terribly guilty if you ever take a holiday. You make absolutly no money and but you become intoxicated by this world. You work for complete sociopaths and thats a good thing. It gives you bragging rights.

So when I was 19 and had big lofty ideas of being a famous pastry chef I worked at a very fine dining Italian restaurant in Vancouver, that shall not be named. It was the sort of place where you were encouraged to do nothing but show up on time and follow orders. The sort of place where he had 10 different ways to do everything, so he could come up to you at any point and tell you you were doing it wrong. The sort of place where recipes were not given to cooks, and cooks were not encouraged to ask questions. It was without question the worst job I have ever had.

I have nearly no recipes from that time but strangely I have one from something he made only once; pizza. It’s not a complicated recipe, but the dough is wonderful, its soft and pliable and it rolls easily and it crisps up beautifully in the oven. He also put a lot of ingriedents on the pizza after it had cooked, like arugala, or proscuitto, or salami. I had never seen that before.

It makes a wonderful very fresh tasting pizza. It’s not greasy, and it’s not heavy, but its very satisfying all the same.

Pizza:

Pizza Dough, recipe folows

Tomato Sauce, recipe follows,

200g Asiago or Parmesano

4 Large bocconcini balls

a big handful of baby arugula and basil

100g super thinly sliced prosciutto

Tomato Sauce

1 large onion, diced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 can of Tomatoes, try to find a brand without added citric acid.

Salt

A good glug of olive oil

In a medium sized pot on medium heat, add the olive oil and the onion, cook for a few minutes then add the garlic. Stir until the onions are translucent and the garlic is fragrant.

Add in the tomatoes and cook until it gets thick and saucey, about 15 minutes. Season to taste.

Pizza Dough- Makes 2 Pizzas

51/2 cup Bread Flour

2 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 1/2 tsp Salt

2 tbsp Sugar

1 1/2 tsp Dry Yeast

1 1/3 cup Warm Water

Mix the water, sugar and yeast together until the yeast gets foamy on top, about 10 minutes.

 In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the dough hook mix all the ingredients. You can also do this by hand if you have more patience and arm strength then me.

Mix it until it becomes a smooth elastic dough.

Place dough in a bowl, covered, in a warm place until it’s doubled in size, about an hour and a half.

Preheat oven to 500F or the hottest it will go.

Cut the dough in half and roll out to the size of your pans, the bigger the better.

Top with the sauce, and the cheese, breaking apart the boconccini and grating the asiago. 

bake for about 10 minutes until the cheese is brown and the crust is cooked.

Tear the basil and prosciutto on top and sprinkle the arugula. Eat and be happy!

Easter Morning

Heres the thing, aside from the year my mom made a tomato based lamb stew and my sister had a fit thinking it was chunks of lamb in blood, I don’t remember what we ate for Easter dinner. I’m sure it was great, my mom is an amazing cook, but all I remember about Easter is painted eggs and hot cross buns.

Hot cross buns made quite an impression.

My mom never made bread or cinnamon buns or anything like that, the sweet yeasty smell of fresh bread in the morning was a pretty foreign thing, and it was wonderful. Those little buns, dotted with candied fruit and currants still warm. My mom would wake up early and let them proof so they were just cooled enough to pipe the X on them in the before we ate them.

And now, because I live 3500km away from her,  I bake them myself at Easter and think of her.

¾ cup warm milk

1 package of dried yeast, or 7 grams

1 tbsp Sugar

3 cups All Purpose Flour plus more for sprinkling

¼ cup Brown Sugar

1 ½ tsp Cinnamon

¾ cup Butter, softened.

Zest of half an Orange

½ cup dried fruit, I used currants and apricots, but if you could find dried cherries or blueberries you’d really be in businsess.

Mix together the yeast, milk, and white sugar and let stand for about 10 minutes or until foamy.

In the bowl of your standing mixer fitted with your dough hook put your flour, cinnamon, brown sugar, eggs and salt.

Add in your milk mixture and beat until it comes together. (sorry I forgot to take a picture of this stage!)

Then add in the butter in bit by bit, it might look like a big hot mess but don’t worry it will come together

See? I told you it would be fine.

Now add in your dried fruits, you may have to do this by hand.

The let it sit, covered, somewhere wam for about an hour to an hour and a half and let it rise.

Now  put the dough on a floured board and cut it in half. Cut it in half again, and then cut each quarter into thirds.

Take each piece, and off the flour, squish it down with the pal of your hand, while keeping your fingers wrapped around it, push it in circles until there is no seem on the bottom and it’s a nice tight round ball.

When they’re all rolled put them in a greased pan and let them proof. I like mine to stick together like sticky buns but if you want yours individual you can just space them out more. Also if you want to bake these off the next morning just stick them in the fridge wrapped, and pull them out about 2 hours before you want to bake them.

Preheat the oven to 375F

Once your buns have doubled in size stick them in the hot oven and cook for about 15 minutes, or until they are golden brown on top. I cooked mine a little to much, so make your slightly lighter then mine.

Pop them out of the pan and let them cool on a rack.

Ice them with an x once they’ve cooled and your done!

Leftovers

The inimitable MFK Fisher who revolutionized food writing from the 1930’s all the way to 1990’s wrote a wonderful essay about leftovers. Of course now that I am looking for it to quote it, it is lost somewhere in a book shelf and I can’t give you anything concrete but the basic idea of it was, that anyone can go to the store, buy ingredients, follow a good recipe and make a good meal. And this is true. But, she argues, it takes a good creative cook to look into her fridge and say, “Well, I’ve got a little bacon, some leftover squash, a tomato, and half a bottle of wine” and turn it into something delicious. And then, in her wonderful honest, not at all pretentious way, tells us that its a better way to cook, a more exciting way to cook, and a more satisfying way to cook.

Ever since reading that I think about it all the time. It’s so nice to make a meal out of things you thought you might throw away!

So yesterday when I looked in my fridge and saw half a bag of frozen blueberries, three quarters of a tub of ricotta that expires in 2 days, a lemon past it’s prime and 4 things of butter with a few tablespoons in each, I knew I could make it into something. In fact, I might just start keeping these things around to make this cake again but it was seriously good.

It is very very moist, not to sweet from the lemons, and the blueberries add a little something that makes it taste like summer.

So here it is, Blueberry Ricotta Bundt Cake.

3/4 cup Butter, Softened

1 1/2 cup Sugar

3 Eggs

1 cup Ricotta

1 1/2 cup AP Flour

1 tbsp  Baking Powder

1 tsp Baking Soda

Juice of 2 Lemons

Zest of 1 Lemon

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy

Add in ricotta and lemon zest.

Add in the eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl in between each addition.

Add in the ricotta and the lemon zest.

Add in the lemon juice, and then the dry ingredients. Do not over mix.

Mix in the blueberries and spoon into the prepared pan.

Bake until an inserted skewer comes our with only a few moist crumbs, about 45 minutes.

Flip it out onto a a plate and let cool, slice it and eat it up!

Flowers and Sunshine!

Yesterday Jordan and I went to a wonderful market way out in the burbs on our way to his parents place to pick up some produce, in hopes that they would have something, anything, local. Apparently even in the middle of farm land they are still getting everything in from Mexico. BUT they did have some beautiful flowers, and it was just so nice to be out and about in the sunshine. So here are a few pictures from my field trip out of the city.

Pop Tarts

I have never eaten a pop tart. I’ll even go further, I have never wanted a pop tart. Oh that’s probably not true, I’m sure they were popular for a while when I was in middle school or something but the point is, I can’t remember ever wanting one.

In a recent discussion about breakfast though I realized I am the only one in our household of two that way.

I am the only one in our household of two that feels that way about a lot of junk food. I’ll admit I’m a little evangelical about eating local, seasonal, unprocessed food.

But I am not unreasonable, friends. I do not allow pop tarts, McDonalds or powdered garlic into my house. BUT I will make pop tarts, burgers, and I am actively looking for a way to make powdered garlic that doesn’t  involve a dehydrator.

See? I’m a totally rational human being. I swear.

I made these pop tarts almost entirely from the recipe I found on Smitten Kitchen, which is a fantastic blog. The pastry is very flaky but also sturdy enough to hold as your running out the door with a coffee in your hand, which sounds like an oxymoron but I promise this works beautifully.

It’s crisp and light and great. Jordan thinks they are more like a toaster streudel. I’ve never eaten one of those either.

The dough is just like a pie dough but it has an egg in it so it holds its shape better and the filling is just jam with a little cornstarch to make sure the bottom pastry doesn’t get soggy. I made the jam (with local strawberries! Yeah!!)  but you could use any jam that you have with a little extra cornstarch, or even nutella inside if you don’t have the time.

I won’t judge.

Stawberry Filling:

1 quart Strawberries

1/2 cup Sugar

1 tsp Cornstarch

Cut up strawberries and get them in a pot on the stove

Let them simmer for about 15 minutes until nearly all the liquid is gone.

Add in the sugar and continue to simmer for another 20 minutes or so until it’s nearly dry again.

Mix the cornstarch with 1 tsp of water and then mix it into the jam. Bring to a boil and then take it off the heat and get it into a bowl in the fridge.

Pastry
2 cups (8 1/2 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks or 8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into pats, very cold.
1 large egg
2 tablespoons (1 ounce) milk

In the meantime make the pastry:

Mix the butter, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Cut in the butter. That means break it up with your hands until the butter is in pea sized pieces. It should look like this

Add in the egg and the milk. it should be quite dry but if it doesn’t come together add in another bit of milk.

On a lightly floured board push the dough into a flat rectangle and then fold it in half. Push it down, fold it in half and and keep doing it until it starts to feel a little tough and it doesn’t quite want to be folded. Then wrap it up and put it in the fridge.

Preheat the oven to 375F

After about half an hour in the fridge and once the jam is cold you can roll out your dough.

Roll it out into a long rectangle about 1/4 inch thick. Cut with a non-serated knife into rectanlges of your choice! I did mine about 4-3 inches.

Put a dollop of jam on top of half of the rectangles, about a teaspoon each. Brush some water on the bottom edges.  These will be the bottom pieces.

Cover the bottom pieces with the remaining rectangles.

Press down the edges with a fork. This will help make sure the jam doesn’t shoot out the sides. Poke the top of them too to let some steam out.

Get them on a tray and bake them! About 20 minutes, and they are deffinatly best served hot, or perhaps, out of a toaster.

Tea and Cookies

Sometimes, when it rains for 7 months straight you so sick of your hair being frizzy that you don’t want to leave your house, and your rain boots have holes in them from to much wear, and even though it’s getting warmer and there are flowers coming up you just don’t care because everything looks grey. It happens. There was an odd sunny day last week and I saw the mountains and thought “They really look bigger then I remember” and then of course I realized that I hadn’t seen the tops of them in months and I was used to thinking that they stopped where the clouds started.

Which is all a long way of saying that today I made lavender oatmeal cookies and I am staying inside and drinking tea and reading my book. (which is “Say Her Name” by Fransisco Goldman by the way and it is fantastic. Click here if you want see it’s review in the New York Times.)

Sometimes you just have to accept the rain and make the most of an inside day. These cookies are perfectly melty and crumbly and the oats give just a little more substance and nuttiness and the lavender is not at all perfumey but just gentle and floral. And these go exceptionally well with earl grey tea.

Lavender Oatmeal Cookies

(adapted from a Martha Stewart Recipe)

1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp Oats

3/4 cup AP Flour

1/3 cup Sugar

3/4 tsp Dried Edible Lavender

1/2 cup Butter

Preheat the oven to 325F

Line a 8inch loaf pan with parchment

Spread the oats on a baking sheet and bake until just golden and toasty, about 5 minutes.

In a food processor pulse the sugar and the lavender until the lavender is broken up, the sugar is fine and it smells a little perfumey from the lavender.

Add in 1/2 cup of the toasted oats and pulse again until they are broken up into very small pieces.

Add in the flour and pulse to combine. Add the Butter

Pulse about 10 times until the mixture just comes together.

Press into your prepared pan. If its too sticky get your fingers a little wet and then try.

Sprinkle the remaining oats on top. 

Bake for about half an hour or until the cookies are just beginning to get firm to the touch and the outsides are lovely and golden brown.

As soon as they are out of the oven use the parchment to help lift out the cookies and cut them. if you ct them when they are cool thy will crumble.

Then do NOT eat them while they are scorching hot like me because you will burn your tongue. Or do, that’s fine too, they are super delicious.

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oh-so-coco:

THIS IS THE FUTURE

Through my new friends at tumblr headquarters I’ve recently come in contact with a very talented new photographer named Jamie. She and her boyfriend create these unique images she calls “cinemagraphs” - more than a photo, but not quite a video.

Even just as a photograph this would be gorgeous, but with the wind in her hair and dress? Incredible.

Wishing I was in Paris...

After a pretty rough year I decided to skip town and get lost in Paris. Oh Paris. Words do not begin to describe how wonderful it is to get lost in Paris. To just forget about everything and emmerse yourself in drawing, painting, people watching, gallery hopping, coffee drinking and macaroon eating, is an extraordinary luxury and I am so grateful for it.

However, I am not so luxurious to have gone and done it all in style, and so, to balance out my daily macaroon budget (4 euro a pop!) I ate completely delicious sandwiches that were both cheap and exceptionally tasty. The one I ate the most of and the one which you can’t find any where in Vancouver were big slabs of crusty baguette stuffed with pork rilette, cornichons and dijon mustard.

Pork rilette is basically pork thats salted and then braised in it’s own fat and shredded when it gets tender. This mix gets put into jars and will last, if done properly, for several years. But I certainly don’t have that kind of patience.

Pork Rilette

1 lb Pork (it will make a difference if you splurge and get good quality grass fed pork!)

1/4 cup Salt (again, good stuff will make a difference!)

2 sprigs of Thyme

2 cups of Pork Fat

Cut the pork into 1-2 inch cubes

In a bowl mix the salt and the pork, let it sit for 2 hours, at room temp, or overnight in the fridge.

In a culender rinse off the pork.

In a small pot put the pork, the fat and the thyme and bring to a boil.

Immediately bring down the heat and let it stay at a bare simmer for a couple hours until the pork is fork tender. If you let it sit overnight it will get to soft so I don’t recomend that.

Either by hand or in a kitchenaid fitted with the paddle attachment shred the pork until its seperated into tiny string like peices.

Add in a couple tablespoons of fat until it comes to a thick consistency.

Put into a jar, or eat it write away! depending on your patience!

Gluten Free and Better For it!

Gluten free has a bad name. And maybe rightly. There are so many terrible wheat free alternatives out there. Bread made with rice flour just isn’t good, I’m sorry celiacs it just isn’t. Foods that shouldn’t be gluten free but try almost always fall flat. However, there are lots of traditional french baked goods that aren’t supposed to have wheat, that use things like ground almonds that are amazing. They don’t try to be something that they aren’t, and they’re better for it. Such is the case for this sensational flourless chocolate hazelnut cake.

I have long debated putting this recipe up here because it isn’t my recipe, it is an extremely talented woman named Mary McIntyre who owns a wonderful cafe called Little Nest. But then I realized that she in fact has already published it in a a book which makes me feel that it’s okay.

I have made a couple changes, I use hazelnuts instead of almonds, and I use more vanilla extract. But this is a a very forgiving recipe, it’s super dark and intense without being fudgy, it’s still light somehow, its just generally wonderful. Seriously, make this cake.

Chocolate Hazelnut Cake

6 eggs, seperated

2 cups Brown Sugar

225g Butter

225g Good Dark Chocolate

1/2 cup Cocoa Powder

1/2 cup Hot Water

1 1/2 cup Ground Hazelnuts

Preheat oven to 350F

Line an eight inch round spring form pan with parchment paper

Melt butter and chocolate in a double boiler.

Add in the egg yolks.

Add in one cup of sugar, the ground hazelnuts, and cocoa powder.

Add sugar and hazelnuts.

In an electric mixer with the whisk attachment whip egg whites until soft peaks form. With the mixer still on slowly add in the brown sugar until it’s shiny and stiff peaks form.

Scoop one third of meringue into chocolate batter and fold in.

Add in the rest of the meringue and fold until barely combined.

Pour batter into prepared pan,

Cook until an inserted skewer comes out with only a couple moist crumbs about an hour.

Allow to cool in the pan. It will sink, do not panic!

Turn it upside down and your in business!

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These are absolutely amazing.

My walk to work this morning…

Christine Young, We Have Failed Each Other Miserably, Pencil on Paper