Dessert By Candy

Soup Season Is Here

It’s been over a year since I started cooking with French Fridays with Dorie group and it’s amazing to see the sheer number of dishes I cooked from Around My French Table. Out of the 42 dishes in my archive, five of them are soup and all require pureeing. Good thing I invested in an immersion blender last Christmas! This week’s Spiced Squash, Fennel, & Pear Soup is no exception and my favourite small appliance got another good workout.

I make roasted squash soup on a regular basis as soon as soup season arrives. It is low in calories yet its warmth and heft feel so satisfying this time of year. I can eat bowl after bowl without guilt. However, squash soup can be a bit one-dimensional in taste. It is a welcome change to see a recipe incorporating plenty of other vegetable and spices to give this winter standby a makeover.

Indignant About Macaroons

I've been meaning to make Flo Braker’s Ultimate Coconut Macaroon for some time. Most macaroon recipes are quite straightforward with a simple mix of egg whites, sugar, and coconut but hers is different. I enjoy lots of great results from Braker’s Baking For All Occasions and her recipe promises a crunchy outside and soft tender inside. That’s exactly what I like most about coconut macaroons!

So what makes this recipe standout from the rest of the pack? First, the list of ingredients includes butter for richness and corn syrup for moist texture. As for technique, it requires cooking the batter over the stove until it reaches 120F before shaping and baking. This technique is very similar to that of making financier, a favourite treat of mine. I had high hopes for these macaroons.

From Slow Cooker Came “Barbecue”

This ought to be my 1000th post at Dessert By Candy except I fail at counting (go BMath degree!). I’ve been tossing and turning all weekend trying to come up with something really special to bake for this milestone post yet came up short. So instead, I put my slow cooker to work and prepared dinner for Little Brother and myself while I was out hiking on a beautiful fall day. Way to go procrastinator! I’m glad I didn’t do something extra extra special because apparently I overlooked seven draft posts that I keep in the folder. Phew, I still have some time before I hit number 1000!

However, this barbecued beef brisket meal I prepared is still quite special in my books and Little Brother’s appetite agrees. Fall-apart tender slices of beef brisket was well-seasoned with brown sugar chipotle rub and slow cooked for hours. I served it with barbecued beans, squares of northern-style buttermilk cornbread, and cucumber cranberry slaw. Aside from the salad, all recipes come from the vault of America’s Test Kitchen, my reliable source for North American cooking.

Mommy & Baby Tartine

The traditional Japanese dish of oyako don always amuses me with its morbid humour. Oyako literally translates to “parent and child” and it is a comforting bowl of rice topped with chicken and egg in a sweet savoury sauce. As I set about cooking Dorie Greenspan’s Twenty-Minute Honey-Glazed Duck Breast for this week’s French Fridays with Dorie, I decided to take this Mommy & Baby theme for a Gallic spin.

Juicy pink slices of seared smoked duck breast are served on top of toasted San Francisco sourdough bread with drizzles of balsamic honey lime glaze. Next to the tartine is a small salad of heirloom lettuce topped with duck egg fried in duck fat. This simple yet elegant dish is perfect for brunch.

Anticipation-Worthy Buffet

I have a love/hate relationship with buffets. When I was a kid living in Hong Kong, a family dinner at the buffet was a huge deal. More likely than not, the restaurant is located at a fancy hotel and there would be starring features like oyster bar, lobsters prepared in multiple ways, prime rib carving stations, and of course dreamy dessert table that seems to go on forever. It’s quite possible that my memory is skewed by a child’s inexperienced palate or just glorified over years of longing. The trend of quantity over quality of buffets in Toronto leaves me disappointed too many times and I avoid such establishment at all cost now.

A few years ago, I had the pleasure to test the validity of my positive impression of buffets in Hong Kong. Is it really an abundance of elegance as I remember? Tiffin’s dessert buffet is one of the granddaddy of dessert buffets in the city and I went one evening by myself to try everything. Yes, every single item of the spread. The presentation certainly fit the bill with delicate and intricate details on every serving of sweets. Tubs of ice-cream nestled inside frosted silver urns waiting to be transformed into a towering sundae. Taste-wise, I  have certainly experienced much better dessert but I would not call the offerings pedestrian either. It was a dining experience that I would not hesitate to repeat.

I deliberately did not make any plans for last weekend’s trip to Honolulu. Relaxing is not something that comes naturally to me so I figured if I had no plans, I had less chance to cram my supposedly leisurely schedule. I would let the day unfold by following my instincts and my instincts suddenly told me I crave an over-the-top fancy buffet. A quick internet search led me to Orchids’ famed Sunday Brunch Buffet at Halekulani Hotel.