Happy belated Saint Patrick’s day!

To celebrate the Irish-ness, here’s a pic of my gorgeous Irish Setter.

I think he is my lucky charm. There must have been luck involved in helping these cupcakes turn out as yummy as they did. Not only did I fly by the seat of my pants in with the recipe, but I did so at one o’clock in the morning, after a long day of classes, in a goat curry-induced food coma and after several glasses of wine.

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Mother nature is having a no-holds-barred temper tantrum outside my apartment. The rain is pelting down so hard that the windows are trembling in their frames. And the wind is thrashing so violently that it sounds like there’s a tornado brewing in our chimney. Hence the need for a dinner that doubles as a warm hug. Enter brown butter drizzled over homemade squash ravioli.

Butternut squash is one of my favorite vegetables. Mashed, I love its thick, starchy texture – it is sweet, subtle, creamy and comforting. I equally love it cubed and roasted, then tossed with goat cheese in a pasta. Or pureed with a touch of cream to make a simple and delicious soup. Not to mention its starring role in baked goods like muffins. Also, a butternut squash packs a lot more flesh than other squash varieties due to its shape. It has only a small cavity with seeds in the knob at the base, and the entire length is solid and edible. In need of a comfort food to take the chill out of the howling wind, I opted for roasting a squash as a filling for chewy, homemade pasta. Continue Reading »

When I was an exchange student in Belgium, my best friend was Hannah from Australia. Hannah told me stories of inside-out seasons (Christmas on the beach?! That could blow a Canadian girl’s mind!), taught me important exchange-student life skills (like which Belgian beers were the strongest, and how to stuff your rapidly expanding exchange-student ass into your tiny pants), and introduced me the Australian delights of Tim Tams, Anzac biscuits, and Pavlova. I make Pavlova on occasion, and always think lovingly of my favorite Aussie, somewhere out there on the upside-down side of the world.

Pavlova is a traditional to Australians and New Zealanders that was apparently created in honour of the ballerina Anna Pavlova, when she toured in those parts. It is basically a delicate mountain of whipped meringue. After being baked under low heat, the outside shell gets crunchy, the top gets browned, but the inside stays chewy and soft – like creamy fresh marshmallow. It then gets piled high with softly whipped cream and fresh fruit. The result is dreamy, with the consistency of a cream-smothered cloud. Continue Reading »

Over the Christmas holidays, my sweetie took me on an exciting trip to the big city, NYC. We walked and walked and walked, and we ate and ate and ate, (and we froze and froze and froze). I made the mistake of bringing only my Vancouver-weather rubber boots to stomp around in. Did you know that uninsulated rubber boots act as individual foot refrigerators in cold weather, the way they trap and recirculate damp, frigid air? So because of my silly choice of footwear, we froze. And because we froze, we ate – for every few blocks we walked, we had to stop in somewhere to warm up. We found all kinds of little hole-in-the wall shops and cafes where we were happy to munch on cupcakes, rice pudding, cardamom coffee, dosas, thin-crust pizzas… As far as problems go, this one was rather favorable, the freezing necessitating the eating – my tummy was happy enough to more than make up for my toes’ misery.

One of my favorite places we stumbled into to thaw our extremities was a little tea house called Alice’s Tea Cup in the upper west side. The entrance was just like a descent into the rabbit hole, and the inside was magically decorated with twinkly lights, keyhole windows, stained glass, and antiques. They had a multiple-page menu of teas and a selection of sweets to accompany them, including a variety of fresh scones with cream and fruit preserves. I hungrily devoured a warm strawberry-chocolate scone, piled with sweet whipped cream. And it was so scrumptious that it has been on my mind ever since.

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Pineapple Pie with Brown Sugar Meringue? It just kinda happened to me. See, I was in need of a recipe to use up my egg whites after making this. So I did what I do when I need to think through a big decision: I hitched Oliver into his harness, laced up my sneakers, and hit the seawall. Loping along the dusty trail that flanks the Vancouver shoreline, my thoughts darted through all the important things I had to consider. Like pavlova… and dacquoise… and homemade marshmallows… and seven-minute frosting. But all I really wanted to become of those whites was a pile of soft, billowy meringue to top something gooey. So I moved on to the next important decision. What kind of gooey did I want to sit beneath my meringue? (Yes, this really IS what I think about while I run – call it the carrot that drives the horse).

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I bought myself a new toy! An ice cream maker. It really actually looks like a toy, too, in all its hard plastic glory. But despite its rather un-extraordinary appearance, with its moving parts that snap together like a tonka truck, I have to give it credit. My new toy produces eye-widening, silence-inducing ice cream.

I must admit that my first attempt was less than impressive. In my naive, if enthusiastic, efforts, I didn’t follow a recipe. With what confidence did I think that I was born knowing how to make ice cream? I don’t know. To my credit I began by loosely following a jumble of ideas I nabbed from a variety recipes, but decided half-way through making the custard that I would split it in two and make two flavours. (Mango and White Chocolate). The White Chocolate ended up being far too sweet, the Mango not nearly mango-y enough, and only the first was frozen because I didn’t realize you needed to re-freeze the bucket between batches. Lessons learned.

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I just finished devouring a cinnamon bun hot from the oven. A swirl of soft dough, oozing with buttery brown sugar and cinnamon and thickly gobbed with cream cheese frosting. Actually, for the sake of truthfulness, I just finished devouring two. Oops.

(Don’t worry – I ate a carrot straight after to make up for it).

This is what I do when I am supposed to be studying “Advanced Topics in Clinical Nutrition”. With midterms next week, I should probably feel ashamed at being covered in flour when I should be covered in something studious like post-it notes. But really – what would you do if the thought of warm cinnamon buns kept floating into your mind in place of something like Chapter 18: Diseases of the Hepatobiliary. Hmm? Would you think about bile? Or would you think about the cinnamon buns? Come on, you know you’re on my side.

This recipe is from Molly Wizenberg, written for Bon Appetit magazine. It is the best cinnamon bun recipe I have ever tasted. Ever. Since I found it, I ceased my faithful pilgrimage to the local jewish bakery. I like mine better.

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Whoopie pie. I think the name alone has the power to coax feelings of glee from even the toughest old birds. In fact, when I announced to my friends that I intended to make them, the mmmmm’s and ooooooh’s far preceded the ‘what is it?’s.

My childhood memory of this gleefully-named treat is of eager anticipation and zealous consumption. Oversized cakey chocolate cookies with an oozing marshmallow-y filling would stickify my hands, face, and whatever surfaces got between me and my enthusiasm for the whoopie-filled treat. I can still see my mother crouched in front of the hot oven, mitts donned, and nose centimeters from the steamy window to watch the rising mounds of chocolaty batter (yes, it is from my mom that I inherited my squat-and-stare approach to oven use).

The chocolate part of a whoopie pie thicker than cake, but lighter than cookie. Traditionally, where I come from anyway, they are filled with a billowing mound of marshmallow frosting. Many recipes include Fluff, but I prefer a 7-minute frosting. In my version, rich chocolaty cookies sandwich a pile of creamy, caramel frosting. Continue Reading »

When you you haven’t been for a run since last weekend, you have been wearing your laundry-day socks for three days, and you are behind on at least three chapters’ worth of readings in Nutrition textbooks, what better time to bake cookies? I think it is a logical priority. And when white chocolate chunks, toasty walnuts, and chewy coconut are tucked into a rich cocoa cookie batter, how could you not expect the results to be rapturous?

The batter whips up in minutes, with the help of a standing mixer. Just beat everything together in steps, and fold in the add-ins with a wooden spoon. I used a tablespoon to drop mine onto cookie sheets, but I would make that tablespoon slightly more heavy-handed next time. As made, they turned out to be fairly itty-bitty, (against the magnitude of a typical chocolate craving) but still scrumptious – making their dainty size forgivable. Also, do flatten them, or they will be more like macaroons.

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Growing up in Atlantic Canada, a Sunday evening wasn’t complete without a bowl (or several) of warm apple crisp. The vanilla ice cream (and my heart) would melt on contact, in full surrender. It was a final hug of the weekend, providing the courage to start another week of school. After an afternoon skating in the backyard till our toes were numb, or sliding from our yard into our neighbour’s on our man-made mountain (a happy by-product of driveway-shoveling… with New Brunswick-style snow storms, an impressive sliding mountain really doesn’t take long), there was nothing like warm, gooey apples under buttery oats to take the chill out of our cold, rosy cheeks.

That being said, a quarter-century of Sundays and my eye started wandering away from my apple crisp hugs, and I landed in the arms of another, bolder and more exciting crisp… with sweet cherries… and almonds.

Cherry crisp is like the best of cherry pie meeting the best of apple crisp. The cherries release lots of juice, making a thick, rich, delicious filling. The addition of sliced almonds to the topping is perfection. The toasty, nutty crunch is nothing short of divine with the gorgeous, soft cherries. Continue Reading »