Dessert By Candy

Wafu (Japanese Style) Sandwich Cookies

Baking inspirations come in waves and recently I have more ideas than I can keep up. An interesting opportunity has come up recently and baking may take on a much bigger role in my life. It’s both scary and exciting at the same time. The scary part I need to face with unbiased analysis and determination. The exciting part is the reason behind this latest of burst of inspiration.

I keep a notebook of ideas. Most of the time it is simply a bunch of words I jot down with little meaning without explanation. More mature ideas I like to include sketches to flesh out how I envision the dessert. Yesterday I went for a run around my neighbourhood and an idea came to me without warning. Obviously I did not have my notebook with me. As soon as I got home, I decided to keep the notebook and jumped directly in the kitchen. Experimenting can be such fun.

My favourite chocolate chip cookie is Heidi Swanson’s Mesquite Chocolate Chip cookies. Over the years, it evolved in my kitchen and eventually became Kinako Chocolate Chips Cookies (recipe). Yesterday I transformed it some more and got rid of chocolate chips entirely and added a buttercream sandwich filling. The kinako (toasted soybean flour) inspired an even stronger Japanese taste profile with addition of sesame seeds, toasted nori seaweed, and miso.

Persian Orange Torte with Cream Cheese Frosting

One of my most memorable pastry experiences in Sydney was Black Star Pastry in Newtown. The closet-size store was packed with customers at any given time and with good reasons. Never mind that I felt so out of place in hipster central. Everything was prepared with great care and absolutely delicious. I only wished I had stomach room to sample more from their creative selection of cakes, pastries, and cookies. It’s been over 10 months since I returned home and I still dream about their Orange Cake with Persian Fig.

I did a bit of digging around and discovered to my surprise that the cake is gluten free. The incredibly moist crumb is result of using whole boiled oranges in the batter. Using whole boiled oranges is not a usual practice with cake baking. How curious! These two clues led me to Claudia Roden’s Middle Eastern Orange Cake recipe. It appears this is a common cake to serve in cafes in Australia. Black Star Pastry’s interpretation included a luscious cream cheese frosting and loaded with rose petals, pistachios, dried figs, and quince paste. I set out to recreate this cake in my home kitchen.

Knock Off

One of the many joys of being sufficiently competent in the kitchen is the ability to recreate dishes from taste memory. A couple of weekends ago I bought an assortment of salads from Whole Foods’ take out counter and really enjoyed them. They were pricey for what they were but the convenience factor was hard to beat. As I sat in my hotel room shovelling bites of delicious salad in my mouth, I thought “wow I have to make this once I get home”.

Of course the urgency waned off once I was surrounded by the comfort of my own kitchen. It took another road trip and a visit to a Whole Foods 900km from home before I actually did anything about this inspiration. This Fennel Artichoke Edamame Salad tastes refreshing even on hot summer days. Don’t be fool though, the ingredients are easily available year round so you can enjoy it any time of year.

Cake For Breakfast

Blueberry. Buckwheat. Buttermilk. Maple syrup. I don’t read minds but I bet you’re thinking about pancakes. I love weekend pancake breakfasts as much as everyone else but it is not practical on weekdays. I am gingerly stepping back inside my kitchen and want easy recipes that do not test my culinary limits. Luckily, I came across Orangette’s pancake-inspired recipe yesterday and it was just what I needed to fire up the oven once more.

At its heart, this Blueberry Maple Buckwheat Bundt is a quick bread. From the ingredients to the mixing method, it is no different than mixing up a batch of pancake batter. Instead of frying up each pancake individually, you pour every drop into a Bundt cake pan and let the oven take care of the rest. There is much to love about that. As the designated pancake maker of my family, I can’t say I am a huge fan of all that waiting and flipping. On an empty stomach, no less.

Another plus of this handsome cake is the satisfaction of eating cake for breakfast. It feels just a little indulgent, a little reckless. I can use a little bit of both in my life right now.

Matzo Granola

I used to think oats and granola go hand in hand, you can’t have one without the other. Oh how narrow minded I was! Striped down to the very basics, granola is toasted grains mixed in with nuts, seeds, and/or dried fruit. The toasting part can be taken one step further to become caramelizing. That involves fat and sugar. My favourite granola recipe, for example, glazes the grains and nuts with olive oil, maple syrup, and brown sugar to create the most addictive caramelized cereal. As for grains, rolled oat is the most common choice but certainly not mandatory. I used a mixture of millet, rolled rye, rolled spelt, and quinoa before. But what if I take a step back from whole grains? That was when matzo granola caught my attention.

A few weeks ago I made my first batch of matzo toffee and could not keep them around long enough. The crunchy (yet bland) unleavened bread was the blank canvas to support decadence like toffee, chocolate, and toasted nuts. Along the same vein, it can also serve as the blank canvas for granola. Just as long as you take the time to smash the matzo to smithereens. Oh what fun!

Rebellious: Semlor After Easter

I am infatuated by Scandinavian dessert lately but learning about them outside of their native countries is not so easy. While there is an over abundance of recipes on French, North American, Italian, and to some extent, Austrian style dessert, the popularity of dessert from other culture hasn’t caught on in Toronto. That’s too bad because based on limited exposure in my travels, there are lots to admire. Especially if you love marzipan as much as I do!

I had the privilege to visit parts of Denmark and Sweden in the company of locals with the biggest sweet tooth. They introduced me to various dessert made famous in different parts of towns on our sugar-filled road trips. Unfortunately, I visited in the warmer time of year with plenty of sunlight and missed out on the annual semla craze. This Swedish treat is only available between new year and Easter. I invite you to find out more about semla in the Sweden Tourism website. It’s a really fun read on the dessert’s history and current popularity. Swedes take their semlor seriously.

My own search for semla began with an enticing photo in Saveur magazine. I love the haunting taste of cardamom in baked goods and it led me to that recipe. Upon a closer look, my enthusiasm dampened. The proportions and directions of that recipe just looked wonky. The scathing reviews did not help either but I learned one important thing. Aside from cardamom and cream, a semla is not a semla without marzipan.

Delayed Take Two

Some recipes demand immediate action to transform words to food. Others can be a drawn out affair lasting months or years. I first made BAKED’s Chocolate Root Beer Bundt Cake last year after a year-long search for ingredients. I never wrote about it even though it was one of my most unusual tasty memories from that Saturday of tasting 19 different cakes. I wrote at length about my Mont Blanc, which was my last minute back up. The Mont Blanc was regal and ethereal. It only made the brown on brown confection all the more homely. I long to rave about the soda fountain fun of a cake that mixes root beer and chocolate in harmony.

But I didn’t because I was too embarrassed about the photographic evidence of my first attempt. No amount of food styling skill could save my sad looking cake. And so I forgot about it for months. Last night was one of those miserable rainy evenings. I finished my rehab exercises early and was looking for things to do. I looked in my pantry and realized I had all the ingredients for Chocolate Root Beer Bundt Take Two.

Roman Holiday: Chewy Ricotta Pistachio Caramel

I was going to share another not-so-successful candy making experience with you today but got too excited by my new creation. I am familiar with making chewy soft caramel candies so it is no longer a culinary challenge. Last year, I made smoky maple and vegan coconut lime caramels with wonderful results. I learned that by using different sugar, syrup, liquid, fat, and flavouring components, there is endless room for creativity. Thanks to Dan Lepard’s master recipe and detail explanation in Short & Sweet, I have free rein to experiment.

Traditional caramel uses cream to create a velvety rich smooth texture. However, it is not a hard and fast rule. I used coconut milk in a vegan version. Liddabit Sweets have a signature ricotta fig caramel that is one of my favourites. I love the idea of incorporating ricotta into caramel but not a big fan of the super soft rendition with Liddabit Sweets’ recipe. The high ratio of dairy and low cooking temperature create a candy that melts much too fast in the mouth. I want something with a bit more chew and longer lasting enjoyment.

With ricotta as my starting point, I took inspiration from signature Italian ingredients. Roasted salted pistachios, olive oil, orange zest, and orange blossom honey play well with each other and my new creation is born. Did I just throw every Italian cliché into one pot?

A Different Chocolate Coconut Cream Pie

Are you ready to celebrate Pi Day this Friday with pies? My friends and I continued our proud tradition of a pie-centric potluck party leading up to March 14 (last year was epic too). It was an indulgent lunch of sampling a buffet of savoury and sweet pies. With so many culinary enthusiasts under one roof, it went without saying that the pie selection was anything but ordinary. We seized the opportunity to tackle unusual recipes, complicated multi-day productions, or pies that fell out of favour long ago. It was absolutely a treat to sample and take home such a variety.

row 1: Basteeya, Keller’s Quiche Lorraine, ADPC’s Tourtiere, Cottage Pie
row 2: Keller’s Chicken Pot Pie, Tuscan Sweet Spinach Pie, Nesselrode Pie, Milk Chocolate Pudding Pie with Salted Peanuts
row 3: Eccles Hand Pies, Key Lime Pie with Chocolate Almond Crust, Chocolate Coconut Cream Pie, Buttermilk Maple Pie
row 4: Rhubarb Almond Tart, Shaker Lemon Pie, Moon Pie, Chocolate Marshmallow Pie
Check out boneats' amazing album for all the pies!

I originally planned on an encore of Tangerine Almond Shortbread Tart, reliable and just on the side of unusual. About a week before the party, inspiration struck. I had vision of chocolate and coconut creamy confection. Despite of the pedestrian name Chocolate Coconut Cream Pie, it was anything but.

Kale Salmon Farro Salad

Sunday family dinner can be inspiring as a successful result of pantry diving. Lately I am not motivated to tackle any complicated cooking projects even for the weekends. When Sunday 5pm rolls around, I panic a little trying to figure out what to serve. Luckily I found a new staple that bailed me out of trouble the last few weeks: prewashed chopped rainbow kale! The clamshell box looks similar to most salad greens but it offers so much more. You don’t need me to extol the nutritious virtue of kale. What I can tell you is its versatility.

Eaten straight out of the box, I can’t say I’m a fan. The pieces are too large, too unwieldy for a fork. Mature kale doesn’t have the tenderness of most salad greens I’m used to. Munching on them makes me feel like a grazing cow. The magic happens once I shred them into tiny pieces with my trusty food processor. The shredded dark green leaves hold up well in the fridge even after tossed with salad dressing. In fact, they wilt just enough to be flavourful and easier on the teeth. Similar to cooked grains, they add so much bulk to whatever salad I make too. But unlike grains, shredded kale contribute mega vitamins without mega calories. There is so much to love.