Archive for the 'Family Kitchen' Category
(Oatmeal Cookie Pancakes)
I don’t know anywhere near enough of this website stuff considering the number of years I’ve spent doing it. (4 1/2 years! But who’s counting?)
(Chocolate Chunk Browned Butter Blondies)
Also? My calendar is made out of paper and hangs on my wall.
We still own a VCR.
And I can’t update my index (it tells me it’s full) or even figure out how to put two or three or four photos together like everyone else seems to be able to do. I just default to 585 px wide.
(Swirly Nutella Cupcakes!)
But – there’s this website that lets you add cool effects, and so I’m playing with my food and calling it work. I can’t figure out SEO or RSS or other computer acronyms, but I can totally click and add cool filters and vintage film borders.
(Overnight Steel-cut Oats)
I’ll try not to think of how many years I spent learning to make black and white prints with chemicals and an enlarger, and retouch them with a paintbrush and retouching fluid.
(Burnt Orange Creme Brûlée)
April 26 2012 | Family Kitchen | 15 Comments »
Seeing as the house has been officially brought down by the flu – the Who’s Teenage Wasteland is stuck in my head, only with Kleenex in place of teenage – and we’ve (conveniently) been living on soup and smoothies, it occurred to me that there were some other recipes you may have missed this month. Like these Slutty Brownies (sorry, I didn’t name them) I made for the bake sale – they’re made with layers of chocolate chip cookie dough, Oreos, and brownie batter.
Or these Nutella swirl brownies, made for no particular reason.
These Panko baked cheese sticks would totally be on the menu for tonight’s Oscars, if I had the gumption. (I don’t.) Luckily, soup is sippable on the couch.
And this no-knead cheese bread is completely divine with this surplus soup. You wind up with cheesy tunnels and pockets throughout the bread, which is also pretty fab toasted with grape jelly.
My most popular post this month has been the strawberry cheesecake bites – hulled berries filled with sweetened cream cheese and sprinkled with graham crumbs, if you have them. These took approximately ten minutes to make – and look how adorable!
Seeing as it was Valentines’ Day, I posted a recipe for basic chocolate ganache truffles – the same ones I brought in little Chinese takeout boxes to the bake sale a couple weekends ago.
And heart shaped chocolate chip cookie pops – which really don’t need to be relegated exclusively to Valentine’s day. Any day calls for heart shaped cookies on a stick, don’t you think?
Nor do heart-shaped pretzels.
And there were those mugs of hot chocolate with raspberry whipped cream hearts. Did you know you could spread out and freeze whipped cream, and cut it out with a cookie cutter? Me neither. Methinks there are plenty of applications for this.
The red wine caramel sauce was not as popular as I thought it would be. Red wine caramel sauce!
I’m pretty sure my favourite thing this month was the real baked beans with bacon. Honestly. There’s nothing better. And the best time for it is the bleak midwinter. Bacon counts as a local vegetable in February, right?
February 26 2012 | Family Kitchen | 11 Comments »
Still laid up, haven’t made it into the office yet to upload photos. I attempted to shower and get dressed this morning, and it did not go well. We made a batch of peanutella a couple weeks ago I’ve been dying to tell you about. You know Nutella, yes? Well the same can be made with chocolate and peanut butter – a classic combo if there ever was one. This stuff is like spreadable peanut butter cups, and takes approximately a minute and a half to make. If you’re in a pinch and need something delicious to bring to a party, wash out a jar and fill it with this. And maybe a spoon, tied on with a ribbon. For midnight snacking, you know.
I’ve been plugging away with my posts over at Babble – I also made a sticky toffee pudding with chocolate and dried cherries I think you should know about. It’s not authentic sticky toffee pudding, but if you want a far more streamlined version you don’t even have to share, you can stir it up in a mug in a matter of minutes. When mine came out, I sprinkled some chocolate and cherries overtop, and let the chocolate melt with the warm pudding-of-sorts. Oh yum.
And then there’s the Momofuku Milk Bar Compost Cookie. They’re total cupboard cleaners – made with chocolate chips or chunks or bits, and then salty snacks, like bashed up pretzels or chips.
And I made maple walnut swirl cookies for something or other – it’s one of my faces, mapleized – which as a bonus makes your house smell wonderful.
Now to load up on painkillers and make my way to the office. Back soon with cookies – and perhaps even a vegetable.
December 12 2011 | Family Kitchen | 8 Comments »
Like these fab apple pie pops! I didn’t want you to miss those. Especially since hearing the sad news of the closing of Sugar Pie Bakery – we’ll have to make our own for awhile.
So yes, I’ve been in Toronto for the past six days. Meeting with the boss ladies at Parents Canada, then attending the Blissdom conference, and then on Sunday we kicked off the very first part of our book tour at the Cookbook Store. Yes, Spilling the Beans is here! It exists. We saw it in store windows and on shelves. We signed them, talked about them on BT and the Good Food Revolution, did some interviews and then tried to cram the contents of our hotel room (meaning the far too many clothes I brought and stuff we accumulated – like cheese and crackers from Kensington market – back into our suitcases and jetted home.
And because I have some catching up to do and many, many photos (and videos, even!) to sift through, I thought for now I’d bring you up to speed on my goings-on over at Babble. (I do this stuff over there too, and they pay me actual money for it!)
Not long before I left, Em and I made chocolate chip cookie dunkers – wee chocolate chip cookies on sticks that were intended for an event at the Glenbow, but in fact wound up perfect for dunking in milk while doing homework at the kitchen table.
I did a round-up of fun Halloween food for kids – irresistible stuff like these marshmallow zombies from the Decorated Cookie.
I also made peanut butter cookies – the best and easiest recipe also happens to be gluten-free.
We talked about how to make your own brown sugar! In case you, like me, tend to run out of stuff halfway through a recipe.
I put together a slideshow of ways to bake with zucchini – you know, loaves and muffins and brownies and the like, including this fab pound cake by Jamie of Sophistimom. By the way, shredded zucchini freezes wonderfully – just grate it on the coarse side of a box grater and freeze in zip-lock bags to use in baked goods over the winter.
Lots of tasty stuff to keep you going while I get my act together. Back soon!
October 18 2011 | Family Kitchen | 7 Comments »
Sorry for the radio silence – it has been a bit of a whacko weekend. It’s been a bit of a crazy weekend. There was the reopening of Catch on Thursday night – the space has been completely redesigned and made more fun, casual and approachable. Wine lists are – get this – on iPads! – they had an app made especially for the restaurant, so you can click on region, grape, terroir – see the bottle and learn about the wine, even, before you make your selection. Brilliant, no?
(Speaking of wine and Catch, I have some Free Stuff for you! If you’re in Calgary, or planning a visit, they donated two glasses of bubbly and a half dozen fresh oysters!)
Saturday morning I taught a workshop on what to do with the bounty of your community garden, and then there was a birthday party, and then that evening I cooked for 80 at an Art for the Senses event at the Glenbow. The food had to tie in to the movies whose costumes were on display for Cut! Costume and the Cinema (a great exhibit!) which meant a great deal of eighteenth century British-inspired finger food. Eels in gelée, anyone?
On the menu: Cornish pasties w homemade ketchup (any of the eighteenth century British films!), chorizo and potato Spanish tortilla bites (Goya’s Ghost), crostini with goat cheese and apple-rum chutney (Pirates of the Caribbean, in which the only food scenes involve rum or Johnny Depp eating apples), crostini w ham, manchego, and fig jam (Goya’s Ghost), crostini w hunter’s pate (Sense & Sensibility), mini scones with poached plums and Devonshire cream (Gosford Park, Mrs Dalloway), mini pavlova with lemon curd, berries and cream (Defiance, the White Countess), Earl Grey truffles (again, any number of British films) and dark chocolate chunk cookies sprinkled with fleur de sel and baked on a stick, for which there was no movie connection, but I figured no one would complain.
So because there hasn’t been much in the way of proper (homemade) dinners, I thought I’d catch you up on a few things you may have missed, like bananas Foster, wrapped in crepes (see photo, way up at the tippy-top). Breakfast of champions. Or at least of Very Happy People.
There was a warm loaf of Sour Cream Cheese Bread – one of those quick stir-together recipes that make a perfect accompaniment to a warm bowl of soup, stew or chili. Also? Best potpourri ever.
It went well with that batch of Ham and Black Bean Soup we made in the slow cooker. Best reason to roast a ham, possibly. Also delicious with lentils, and great use of dry beans.
I found a formula for gluten-free soy sauce to use in a recipe. Super easy, and helpful.
And for dessert, cupcakes. Coconut Cream Cupcakes, because why should such an awesome flavour be limited to pie? And Vanilla Sprinkle-Dip Cupcakes, because sometimes they’re just a vehicle for sprinkles anyway. Why not dive right in?
September 27 2011 | Family Kitchen | 9 Comments »
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