Dessert By Candy

Redeemed By Banana Cake

After the pizza stone fiasco, I had two things on my mind: clean and redeem. The cleaning was not pleasant obviously but it was well within my expertise. After all, I was brought up learning to clean long before my Mom taught me to cook. I wiped off all the excess grease from the oven interior and scrubbed the racks shiny. Without any grease for fuel, I don't expect the oven to smoke anymore. Just to be cautious, I heated the oven to various temperature to ensure all traces of grease burnt off. The trickier part was the lingering smell of burnt grease in the house. When I proposed to air out the house during the day, B simply cannot understand my sense of urgency and wanted to do it "in the spring when it's warm" [I gave him the biggest eyeroll]. Well, he couldn't stop me when he was not there so I had my way in the end. The fresh air did much good but I also had another trick up my sleeve. I simmered a pot of water with spoonfuls of cinnamon and nutmeg for a few hours. The sweet spicy fragrance is better than any scented candles that you can buy. What a useful trick I learned from real estate agents!

As the final touch of putting this whole disaster behind me, I must bake something super delicious to redeem myself. My answer is a Banana Chocolate Chips Upside Down Cake from the trusted David Lebovitz. Often I don't realize how much I've come to rely on the little conveniences in my own kitchen. Standmixer, food processor, cake pans of every shapes and sizes, a pantry filled with baking essentials...these are all things I have to do without this week. Minimalist baking, you can say. However, even with the few things available at my disposal, plenty of great baking can be achieved. Generations of homecooks have come before me without any of these bells and whistles in their kitchens. If they could do it, so can I.

Fruit puree-based quickbread is one of the easiest thing to bake with barely any dishes to wash. This upside down banana cake fancies it up with a topping of caramel sliced bananas and chocolate chips. These simple variations make the plain jane banana bread not so boring for sure. Oddly enough, I don't remember baking upside down cakes before except one years ago made with chunks of mangoes. After making this cake, I cannot imagine why I didn't make it more often. It is rustic yet packed with enough flavours to be memorable. When I served it warm with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream melting lazily on top, who's to say it is not a dessert worthy of fancy linens and plates? Well, if only I have fancy linens and plates right now...

Epic Kitchen Disaster

I knew it's been too good to be true. After bragging about my success in B's bachelor kitchen, something bad was bound to happen. I found a baking stone inside the drawer of the stove. Of course I immediately thought of pizza! I do not actually own a baking stone myself though it is something I always wanted so I thought what a perfect opportunity to test out a gadget before getting my own.

I made a beautifully smooth and elastic dough using a recipe adapted from smitten kitchen with a touch of honey added in. I had big plans for this thin crust pizza. I wanted to top it with locally made apple butter, fresh mozzarella, caramelized onions, cremini mushrooms, thin slices of Virginia country ham, and shaved parmesan cheese. While I caramelized the onions on the stove top, I started to preheat the oven with the baking stone inside. It wasn't long before the entire house was filled with smoke! I frantically ran around to open all the windows and balcony door as fast as I could, fearing the smoke alarm would go off any minute. And then the cat found the opening in the screen door and tried to run out. I stopped it just in time and blocked off the opening with a bunch of boxes. I took a peek inside the oven and saw that the baking stone was the culprit. It was dripping with grease! I removed it from the oven immediately and after much waving and panicking, the smoke eventually cleared.

I still had all the makings of a pizza waiting to go. Well, we could still have pizza with my heavy duty baking sheet. I preheat the oven again. Lo and behold, smoke started filling the house again! Apparently, the baking stone sweated so much grease that there was now a pool of grease on the oven floor. I could not decide if I wanted to cry or scream or sit in a corner in fetal position.

Any use of the oven was obviously out of the question for the evening. Luckily, I made plans to make cranberries walnut chicken salad with the leftover roast chicken we enjoyed on Tuesday. I bulked up the salad with diced apples and seasoned it with some balsamic fig mustard and lemon juice. The chicken salad was delicious on a bed of mache lettuce. It was funny to see B's disappointed expression when I broke the inevitable news that instead of pizza, we were having salad for dinner.

Let's hope the oven cleaning goes well and I can rebound from this epic kitchen disaster. This fiasco only makes me want my pizza even more!

Not Cooking In My Kitchen

I've been spending the holidays at B's and I don't miss my own kitchen as much as I thought I would. Simply put, I decide to equip his kitchen with some key cooking pieces that I cannot live without. Some girls leave toiletries at their boyfriends'. Me, I leave cookwares and bakewares and kitchen gadgets and pantry items. Makes perfect sense to me.

Since I arrived on Christmas Eve, we've been eating very well everyday. I'm going to do a little bragging, ready? Christmas Eve dinner was Virginia country ham, chestnut mushroom sausage dressing, caramel stewed apples, and maple glazed roasted sweet potatoes. We opened presents with mugs of rich hot chocolate in our hands, made with raw milk (yum!). Christmas breakfast was slices of stollen. Christmas supper consisted of country ham in buttermilk biscuits and beluga lentils in balsamic vinaigrette. We began Sunday morning with a relaxing breakfast of caramel apples bread pudding and hot chocolate. Monday morning we enjoyed fluffy buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup and tall glass of berries banana smoothie. For dinner, we had sausage apples mushroom cheddar strata and soul-warming bowls of split pea soup with ham (recipe below). Tonight, while the roast chicken and herb roasted fingerling potatoes were in the oven, we relaxed with glasses of sparkling apple cider and a cheese plate. Oh, what a delicious cheese plate it was too! There were selections of Cowgirl Creamery fromage blanc, Midnight Moon aged goat gouda, a locally made Mountaineer, parmigiano reggiano, golden delicious apples, baguette, and Italian cherry honey. There'll be more homecooking in the next few days! This is what happens when B's at work and I'm left to my own devices...

Split Pea Soup With Country Ham

serves 4

Ingredients

• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 1 stalk of celery, diced
• 225g of yellow split peas, picked over
• 1/2 cup country ham, cooked and diced
• 1/2 cup low sodium chicken broth
• 4 cup water
• olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. In a 3.5 quart dutch oven or heavy bottem sauce pan, heat 2 tsp of olive oil over medium high heat.
2. Saute onion and celery until softened and fragrant, about 5 minutes.
3. Tip the yellow split peas, ham, chicken broth, and water into the pot. Bring to boil then turn heat down to a simmer. Simmer for 60 minutes until soup thickens and peas are soft.
4. You can season and serve the soup at this stage but I like my soup smoother. Simply take an immersion blender and puree the soup until thick and creamy.

Season's Greetings

Thank you for supporting Dessert By Candy. I wish you and your loved ones a very merry Christmas filled with laughter and delicious food! Now I'm going to open some presents and enjoy slices of stollen with a special someone.

I prepared this Christmas stocking for a loved one. Aside from the teddy bear peeking out from the top, there are 16 espresso biscuits inside. Of all the cookies that I make (and I make plenty), this is his very favourite and the only one that he ever requested. I really hope he likes this small gift on Christmas morning!

Rush Of Christmas Eve

It's been busy days leading up to Christmas Eve but now I'm finally sitting still and relaxed. One of the reason I've been running around like a headless chicken was my determination to clean my fridge of all perishables. When I saw the Smoked Salmon Pasta Salad posted on Simply Recipes a few days ago, it was the soluation I've been looking for. Like a jigsaw puzzle, it uses up all of those ingredients I want to get rid of with the help of pantry staples which I happen to have without trips to the grocery store.

Doesn't it look pretty? This light salad is composed of gemelli pasta, smoked salmon, celeries, green onions, and a bit of red onions for colour. It is seasoned with just a touch of mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, lemon juice, lemon zest, salt, and pepper. It's simple yet elegant. Simply Recipes is absolutely correct that a lot of the flavour is delivered by the smoked salmon. So don't skimp!

I had a little taste before rushing out the door and I like it very much. It is incredibly easy to make too. While the pasta was cooking, I chopped all the other ingredients and the whole thing came together in 15 minutes including cooking time. It is now part of my potluck/party standby dishes. If you're still looking for an extra dish for your holiday menu, I highly recommend this one!

Do you think Santa will help himself to some speculoos and clementines when he drops by tonight?

Speculoos For The Holidays

My kitchen smells like Christmas, I smell like Christmas, my bag smells like Christmas...all because of one small batch of speculoos! I've been saving this recipe from the December roster of French Fridays With Dorie for this week. Any earlier, I knew I would get ahead of myself and fool myself into thinking the holiday season already arrived.

Speculoos/Speckuloos made its way into my life this year. I first became aware of this cookie when I read David Lebovitz's account of speculoo spread. Then in September, I went to New York City and finally obtained my very own jar of speckuloos spread from the famed food truck Wafels & Dinges. While I was there, of course I had a wafel layered thick with speckuloos spread too. It was truly an indulgence that spoke to my heart. Of course there was also the article by Francis Lam on the famed Delta Airline Biscoff cookies which are really speculoos. All of these conspired to build up my anticipation to finally make these delicate cinnamon spice cookies in my own kitchen.

Dorie's recipe calls for a mix of cinnamon, cloves, and ground ginger. Like she described in the recipe, the dough is soft for roll cookie and it is really for the best of my own sanity to roll out the dough between sheets of wax paper. Even after I cut out the shapes post overnight chill, the cookies must be transferred to the baking sheet carefully with the help of an offset spatula. I made an assortment of stars in three different sizes and baked them on three different baking sheets. They all came out thin and crispy. And did I mention addictive? Gosh, I can totally park myself in front of a bowl of speculoos and inhale them all in one sitting (but I didn't. Or haven't. Yet.). Following Dorie's suggestion, I made sandwich cookies with the small and medium stars. The small ones were filled with Nutella and the medium ones with orange-scented fig jam. What a lovely assortment when all piled up high into a bowl!

I love the Christmas wreath arrangement. Isn't it festive? However, I must confess that it is a shameless rip off of the cover of Chatelaine magazine's December issue. I was reading the magazine last night at the gym and knew I had to give my speculoos the same glamourous treatment. Instead of painstakingly decorating my cookies with royal icing, I took the easy way out and just sifted icing sugar over some of them to give a sense of dimension. They look so adorable. I just can't help myself!

Other members of French Fridays With Dorie are also cooking/baking up a storm this week. Check them out!

Baby It's Cold Outside

It's not quite a deep freeze but the temperature has been unmistakably winter since beginning of December. I crave steaming bowls of warming soup everyday...hearty soups that double as a light meal. When I saw the Pioneer Woman posted her recipe of Chicken And Dumplings last week, I knew I had to make it. Usually recipes have a way of sitting in my to-cook box for weeks and months before I get around to them but this one was an exception. I love how I first floured and browned the chicken (I used 4 skin-on thigh pieces) which adds a nice depth of flavour. It doesn't hurt that this extra step rendered out some of the fat from the chicken which I subsequently discarded. The tumeric, onions, carrots, and celeries all helped to build a delicious base for the soup.

You see that ginormous dumpling in the photo? I've never made chicken and dumplings before. My dumplings were made with buttermilk to lighten up the recipe a bit with a slightly tangy taste. Silly me forgot that dumplings would expand when cooked. So I ended up with three huge dumplings per serving of soup. Ooops.

This soup smells heavenly even when I warm the leftovers in a microwave oven the next day. And now I'm definitely on a soup kick and cannot get comfort food out of my mind. Over the holidays, I plan on making Chicken And Noodles and Split Pea Soup With Ham. What soup do you crave in winter?

Ode To Stollen

Fruitcake is one of those food that people either love or hate. Like most food, there are the good, the bad, and the ugly. Unfortunately, it has an unfairly infamous reputation for being the butt of holiday jokes because of the proliferation of horrible mass-produced rendition of this holiday treat. I have been lucky enough to grow up eating excellent fruitcakes every Christmas. Over the years, they made their appearances at my home in various cultural guises be it traditional aged brandy fruitcake, plum pudding with hard sauce, Trinidad black cake, huzelbrot, panforte, and on and on. So yes, I definitely count myself a fan. Guess what? I'm not the only one with a soft spot for fruitcake.

One variation that I had not try until this year is stollen. After seeing them often sitting lonely at supermarket shelves long after post-Christmas sale, I'm convinced that a homemade version is probably my best bet for introduction. Some time last year, I came across David Lebovitz's post on his stollen. I mentally filed it on my to-bake list but of course, like most seasonal recipes, it was quickly forgotten. I would not dream of making stollen after Christmas. It's just not right. The stars must have aligned this year and I actually thought of making stollen a week before the big day. I quickly dug up Lebovitz's recipe and its original source from Melissa Clark's New York Times column. Unlike other fruitcakes, this one doesn't require planning weeks or months in advance. It is exactly what I want for a special Christmas breakfast with a steaming cup of tea.

I took a quick look in my pantry and realized there were only a few missing ingredients to procure. I got the raisins and almonds from the grocery store and got to work. Imagine my disappointment when I opened that fresh box of golden raisin and it smelled faintly rancid! It was already late at night and I did not want to wait another day. Rather than risk ruining a whole batch of expensive ingredients, I adapted. My stollen contains a lovely mix of rum-soaked currants, apricots, cranberries, toasted almond slivers, candied orange peel, and candied ginger. I actually prefer the slightly tart apricots over raisins. No fossilzed glacé fruit in this one! Speaking of candied orange peel, it is one ingredient that I hoard. High quality ones are hard to come by in Toronto so I snap them up throughout the year to reduce my holiday baking panic. I love the warm spicy note of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cardamom used in this recipe. Rubbing ginger sugar all over the baked loaves is a clever touch yielding delicious results.

I made my stollen into four mini loaves as per Lebovitz's suggestion. The texture is slightly crumbly because of all the goodies inside the loaves. However, it is by no means dry. The dough itself is enriched by melted butter and then imbibed with more butter after baking. To me, they taste like a cross between cookie and cake especially since I like them in thin slices.

The mini loaves look so festive packed in cellophane bags, ready to be given out as gifts...which I am reluctant to do. There is so much cliché surrounding the dreaded holiday doorstop that I'm afraid the recipients would handily toss them aside as "ewww-one-of-those". I know for certain that they are delicious. Besides, what if it goes to a fruitcake-hater? This all sounds like I invest way too much emotions into my baked goods than what's healthy. But hey, it's a real dilemma!

This is part of my holiday gift 2010 series. See what other goodies I came up with this year!

Spiced Butter-Glazed Carrots

Butter-glazed carrots involves a very classic french cooking technique by first simmering the vegetable in butter and stock before reducing the liquid to a light glaze. It is so simple and straightforward but there is something about it that truly interest me. What I learned is not just a recipe of ingredients and steps. Instead, I mastered a technique that can be applied in many different ways. This is the teaching approach in Julia Child's The Way To Cook and it remains a good source of learning material in my cookbook library. This is actually not the first time I attempt to make butter-glazed carrots. My last attempt a few months ago did not go well as I missed a few key ideas of this technique. I did not use enough butter, I simmered the vegetable for too long so I could not give it enough cooking time to reduce the glaze before the vegetable turned to mush. I am glad to say experience is a wonderful teacher. When I cooked the carrots this morning, everything was textbook perfect and I was rewarded with buttery glazed carrots for breakfast. I would have finish the whole batch all by myself if not for that little voice in my head that reminded me one and a half pound of glazed carrots first thing in the morning is not the wisest food choice.

Speaking of technique, one of these days I'll have to master the tournée cut just so that I can proudly say "I can do that too!". Not that it has much practical use in my homecooking. Yes yes, I know that uniform size and shape contributes to even cooking but I'm perfectly happy with my haphazardly shaped carrots when it's just me and the vegetable at the table. 

Dorie Greenspan's recipe offers a twist to the classic with addition of fresh ginger and cardamom. They pair up for a mildly spicy kick that fit very well with the sweetness of carrots. In fact, this flavour pairing made an appearance in my kitchen not too long ago in the form of gajar halwa. Between the buttery taste of the light glaze and the sweet spicy carrots, this is a wonderful sidedish that would fit well in different menus.

I'm curious what other bloggers made this week at French Fridays With Dorie?

A Gift Of Instant Picnic

Sweets have always been my forté in the kitchen. Naturally, when it comes to the serious matter of creating homemade edible gifts in the holiday season, baking and confectionery are my obvious answer. Over the last year, I've been devoting a lot of time and effort in becoming a more proficient homecook. Along the way, I picked up many new skills. Preserving and canning is one which translates well to edible gifts.

I've only been introduced to chutneys in the last couple of years but I am completely smittened. I love the balance of sweet, tangy, spicy, and savory in a simple condiment that pairs so well with meat and cheese. In terms of difficulty, it is so much easier to make than jams and jellies. All you need to do is to chop up a bunch of ingredients and simmer in vinegar, sugar, and spices. I came across a recipe recently over at BBC GoodFood for Pineapple Fig Ginger Chutney. It's a hodge podge of vibrant flavours with fresh pineapples, dried figs, russet apples, fresh ginger, and red onion.  The headnote says it is perfect partner with cold meat and cheese so of course I take up the offer.

Charcuterie is the art of preserving meat and most cold meat preparation involves charcuterie one way or another. What started out as necessity in pre-refrigeration days is now a big culinary trend. As a complete novice, I chose to begin my foray with pork rillette, an entry-level project. Pork shoulder is slowcooked in fat and homemade stock until fork-tender. It is then shredded and tossed with the cooking liquid until it turns into a rustic meaty spread. A layer of lard is used to seal the spread for longer storage. Sounds pretty simple, no?

I followed the direction from Wrightfood with adaptation to ingredients available at home. My pork rillette was seasoned with Grand Marnier, orange zest, thyme and cooked in homemade beef stock, Berkshire lard, and duck fat. It is often said that "fat is flavour". I cannot agree more with this rillette. It's porky! The mix of lard and duck fat adds a silky texture to the shredded pork. Simply add a loaf of country bread and you have the makings of a quick picnic.

It is the idea of an instant picnic that inspires my savory holiday hamper. A good number of my friends actively avoid refined sugar so despite my good intentions, a gift of homemade cookies and candies is not terribly thoughtful of me. I filled a small seagrass basket with a jar of pork rillette, a jar of pineapple fig ginger chutney, a bamboo spreader, bacon pecan pralines, and macadamia pumpkin seed brittle. The sweets are included because no picnic is complete without dessert (and I strongly encourage sharing). I chose the more savory candies from my collection to continue with this theme of not-too-sweet gift. I would love to receive one myself, picnic-fanatic that I am.

This is part of my holiday gift 2010 series. See what other goodies I came up with this year!

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