Cake successes

A few months ago now, Charissa and I took the next level of the cake-decorating class, this time learning how to make flowers out of royal icing.

The course ended right around the time that fundraising for the CHEO bike ride was supposed to start. So of course, knowing that practice makes perfect, I decided to offer decorated baked goodies as an incentive for donations. More money raised for CHEO, more baking and decorating practice for me, delicious goods for my coworkers – perfect!

I agonized over donation -> kind of baked treat mapping for a while, but eventually settled on a scheme that I thought was manageable. Cupcakes for most of the “tiers”, with a cake being the reward for the highest “tier” of donations. In my fundraising email, I made a flippant/brilliant comment (I still can’t decide whether I was serious or not) about how I was almost hoping not many people would donate that much, so I didn’t need to make too many cakes.

Well then. What I didn’t expect was the uptake of my offer – luckily I only sent it out to a subset of coworkers. 5 of them donated enough to earn themselves a cake, with the others getting various numbers of cupcakes. And over the course of the last month, poor hubby has had to watch a stream of cakes leaving the house, none of them available for him to sample. My poor patient man!

Read Full Post »

Pickling Herring

A few weeks ago, a swedish friend invited me over to hold a herring-picking experiment. Who knew that swedish and ukraininan/russian cuisines had so much in common? I like herring too!

But first, we had to have lunch. And what a lunch it was!

I discovered a new-to-me dish that I’ll be trying to sneak into our meals at home – mashed cauliflower. Easy as it sounds, and tasty – and surprisingly doesn’t taste as much like cauliflower as I expected it to taste!

Of course, we also had to go overboard and try some of the herring. We had to modify the recipe when we realized it wasn’t going to work (the dill was supposed to be the filling, but our fillets were already cut), but I think I like it more this way. The crispy dill crust was extra-tasty! And Anna wowed me with her fearless “deep frying in a skillet” skills.

I don’t remember everything that went into the crust, but at the very least it included dill, lemon, flour, and egg whites. The mixture was sticky enough that I managed to pat it down onto the fish and have it stick. However, a few days later I read a very useful-sounding tip for cases like this – once the crust mixture is on, give it a spritz of oil spray to keep it together.

We also made salmon burgers, fried in a skillet, which were delicious as well.

As for the picked herring? A success, I say! So successful, in fact, that I completely forgot to take a picture of one of the recipes (in mustard/horseradish sauce) before husband polished it off. The other one was a more traditional pickle with onions, carrots (needs more next time) and leeks.

For the mustard herring, the herring was actually supposed to pickle on its own for a few days, at which point you were supposed to mix in the mustard mixture. Anna generously gave me a few handfuls of the different-coloured peppercorns which needed to be crushed and mixed with the mustard, and when I got home I set them aside on the counter until a few days later. Except that this is what I came home to the next day.

The process itself couldn’t be easier – start with salted herring, soak it in water overnight to draw out some of the salt. Cut up the herring and the veggies, (artfully) cram everything into pickling jars, boil up some vinegar and sugar, let cool and then pour into the jars to cover. I’d like to know whether they can be canned for longer storage (probably not since a water bath may cook it too much?), but on the other hand the batches we made were small enough that they can easily be consumed within the couple-week recommended window.

What story about cooking would be complete without mischievous cats? These are the above-mentioned peppercorns. Scattered across the floor. Outside the crinkly plastic baggies they were in. You’d think I would have learned that my cats will play with anything wrapped in crinkly plastic after coming home one day and finding a plastic bag filled with breadcrumbs (which used to be bread slices in the morning) on the floor. I guess my cats thought I needed a reminder.

Now go and make some pickled herring. It’s delicious!

Read Full Post »

Cake

With Easter around the corner, I decided to practice my cake-decorating skills again! I even went so far as to get a new tip, since I didn’t have a tip for making the basketweave.

I started with the lemon mascarpone cream cake (which I was somewhat disappointed with to start, but got progressively better as the cake sat for a few more days). The icing had a bit too much cream and was a bit… fluffy for my liking. But the cake and lemon curd were delicious – so delicious, in fact, that next time I would cut each layer in two to make a 4-layer cake instead of a 2-layer one, and add lemon curd between each of the layers. I iced the cake with the basic icing and let it sit.

For decorating, I made a separate batch of decorating icing. Good thing I had remembered to bring my gel colouring with me. Isn’t the basketweave pretty? (Yes, I really should buy some pretty platters for serving cake on. No, I probably won’t get around to it anytime soon.)

Read Full Post »

The work habit

No, I’m not usually a workaholic. Here I’m talking about another habit I developed at work – coffee. Don’t get me wrong – I drank coffee in university, but simply as a treat because I was heading out past Starbucks, or especially later on when I needed a quiet place to get some work done on my thesis. I know some people will argue that a coffeehouse is rarely quiet, but to me it is quiet in the “non-distracting” sense. Sure, there’s noise – but it’s all background noise. No sounds stand out, and for me it was just a perfect background to a few hours of concentrated reading and editing. But it was never a daily occurrence.

But once I started work, coffee became a social thing. And that’s where I got suckered in. I resisted for quite a while, drinking water or tea, only getting a coffee once or twice a week.Then, I was introduced to Roll up the Rim (yes, the location of choice for my coworkers was a Timmies), and… well… yeah. Once a habit is built up for two months, it’s that much more difficult to kick. (For those not familiar with Roll up the Rim or Tim Horton’s, the former is a contest run by the latter, which is a chain of fast food/coffee restaurants, where the indication of whether you’ve won a prize is printed on the inside of the rim of your disposable cup)

So recently, I thought I’d put this little tidbit gleaned a few years ago to good use – given that I was now drinking coffee pretty much on a daily basis, I wanted to cut back on the sugar content. And you know what? – it worked. After about two weeks of half the normal amount of sugar, I tried one with the old amount of sugar – and it tasted way too sweet! Score one for building up better habits. Of course, the coffee habit is also much less annoying now that we get good coffee for free at work…

And finally, to satisfy a certain someone’s complaints about too few pictures – check out these pictures. They are simply unbelievable.

Read Full Post »

Cake decorating course – final week

Yesterday was our last class, *sniff*!

This is clearly where my lack of creativity shows through. I’m pretty disappointed with this cake, although it tasted divine. Dan gave me a 3-cake penalty when I kept complaining about how this one looks, so hopefully I can improve with practice.

I’ll need to work more on my roses, too, although a big part of the problem was that between all the chatting, I was holding the bag with icing for so long that it had started warming up, softening up the icing way beyond what is practical.

For my next project, though, I think I’d like to try something more like this beauty (see third image in the link). Just hold the 2 oz of red food colouring, please (seriously??? why do people even make red velvet cake? 2 oz of red food colouring is beyond disturbing to me).

Read Full Post »

Cake decorating course

Oops. Look at the time, how it flies! The lack of blogging hasn’t been for lack of things to write about, but rather for lack of time to do so. Probably the most exciting thing over the last few weeks has been my cake decorating course – more on that below! The less exciting, but much more time- and brain-power-consuming, has been a busy time at work. Hopefully, that’s mostly under control (for now).

Now, for the really exciting part – the cake decorating course! I’ve been thinking/talking about this for a while, and after New Year’s I finally convinced Charissa to join me. I may have done that by signing both of us up for the course… but who’s counting?

The course is a Wilton cake decorating course offered through Michael’s. Basically, it’s a vehicle for them to peddle as much Wilton stuff as possible, but there are lots of useful skills to be learned as well. It starts with having to buy a course kit (thank you Michael’s for 40% off coupons, because at $50 I wouldn’t see much value in this kit), but it does come with most things you’ll need for the course. You also need to make both the icing and the cake/cupcakes, but for me that’s the easy part.

First week was introduction and practice on cookies. Meh. I kind of wish we’d gone right into decorating a cake (or even cupcakes as in lesson 3), because honestly, I just don’t really think cookies and icing go together that well.

Second week was icing and decorating a cake, as well as learning a few simple patterns. A big cake seems more intimidating than cupcakes, so I struggled a bit with ideas. The cake itself was delicious, though – a white lemon cake filled with lemon curd. YUM!

Last (third) week was cupcakes, and I thought that was the best class so far. We learned a whole bunch of new techniques, and having multiple cupcakes to practice on meant I could try different ideas out on each one.

I think my favourite one is the all-blue one in the picture above, although I love the shaggy mums (the fluffy yellow ones) as well.

One thing I’m not the biggest fan of is that the class seems a little bit too free-form – we learn the technique for a few icing tips, and then are left to go to town with the item we’re supposed to be decorating. For me, the problem with this is that I’m not so much the arty-creative type. I’m not very good at coming up with random swirlie patterns that magically look good when put together. One of the reasons I took the class was to get lots of ideas for design/decoration, and I have to say it’s falling short in that respect. Which, I suppose, means that it’s Internet to the Rescue for next class, when we’re supposed to come up with our own design for a fully-iced cake.

But overall, the course must be going reasonably well, because when I told my coworkers this week that next week will be the last time (for a while) that I’ll be bringing decorated baked goodies, there was some joking around that maybe they’ll all pitch in to send me on the next level of the course. Sounds like a fair trade to me!

Read Full Post »

Pizza!

I have seen the light! What is this revelation, you might ask? Only THE BEST pizza dough recipe in the land! (I found it here, although the recipe is from Nancy Silverton). I was also informed yesterday that I am way behind the times both on the Nancy Silverton bandwagon and Mozza adoration, and all I can say is that I am eternally grateful for finally making the acquaintance.

We had friends over for dinner, and there were barely a few slices left to take for lunch the next day. Yes, it was that good. It was a true pizzeria dough – thin and crisp under the toppings, puffed up and crunchy on the edges (my favourite part of the pizza is the crust!), with those wonderful airy pockets inside the crust. It had a faint sourdough taste, which may be an artifact of the fridge/longer rise time combination (see below).

After a minor freak-out about the logistics of transferring the very fine and floppy pizzas to the scorching-hot pizza stone (turns out that hubby is a pro at the “flip the raw pizza off the pizza paddle” trick), things went more smoothly. The dough coming out of the oven was nothing like what went in.

I have to admit that on top of the transfer, I also had some trouble stretching out the dough to the correct size without tearing and/or unevenness – but for now, I’m fine with not having perfectly round pizzas. Someday though… someday.

Now for some technical notes. Given that the recipe gives the dough over 4 hours for all the rises, I decided to cheat – because I wanted to make this on a weeknight and didn’t want to eat dinner at 10. So I replaced both the 45-minute rises with about 8 hours in the fridge each (made the dough and let it rise the first time one evening, stuck it in the fridge, kneaded it down in the morning and stuck it back in the fridge, and pulled it out to use when I came home from work). If this method adversely affected the quality of the dough… frankly I couldn’t care less, because it was just THAT amazing as it was. I’ll try it on a weekend sometime soon to see what the difference would be.

The verdict? Lots of room for improvement on the technique front, but the quality of this crust will make all that practice oh-so-worthwhile!

Read Full Post »

Birthday Dinner

For my birthday, Dan surprised me with a dinner at Beckta, one of the city’s top restaurants.

It was a wonderful evening of indulgence in both fine food and fine wine. The restaurant is housed in an old house, and is small and cozy. It’s the kind of place where you get between-course treats compliments of the chef, where they refold your napkin when you leave to go to the washroom, and where instead of a basket of bread you get a bread girl who circulates between tables with a platter of tiny slices of delicious artisanal breads.

Dan often accuses me of being a foodie, and when I go to a place like this, I have to agree. I love good food. And Beckta didn’t disappoint. One thing that often strikes me at nicer restaurants is how small the portions seem – “It will never be enough!” you think. But it is! A big disappointment for me with most “average” restaurant visits is that I’m so stuffed after my meal, I never want to order dessert. Here, we shared an appetizer and both had desserts, and I was simply pleasantly full at the end of the evening. Yay for variety!

[I apologize in advance for the quality of the pictures - they had some serious mood lighting (read - lack of light) going on, and I didn't want to be "that person" whose camera flash is going off every 5 seconds]

For the appetizer, we went all out and order the foie gras. Mmmmmm. It was the first time for both of us, and it was delicious! Incredibly filling, though, and so buttery/rich that it’s not something I would indulge in very often, even if the price tag wasn’t a deterrent.

Dan had the quail (cornish hen?), which came with a pork belly, beet salsa (I appreciated it way more than he did!), on a bed of greens which I can no longer remember (broccoli rabe?).

On the other hand, I went for the lobster, which came on a bed of delectable smooth polenta, mushrooms, and a balsamic-ey sauce. I really need to plan that trip out east, because I do love my lobster.

Remember how I said that we still had room for dessert? I had a holiday-themed eggnog crème brulée with caramelized chestnuts, while hubby had a sugar tart (which was probably the first time I really appreciated a sugar tart, as this one didn’t immediately make my teeth seize up) with powdered olive oil.

What is powdered olive oil, one might ask? We did as well! As far as the waiter could explain (after checking with the kitchen) it involved cornstarch, tapioca and olive oil… but I’m still not clear on the process.

I also had a whopping two glasses of wine, and they were both amazing (and previously unknown) – Beckta’s other claim to fame is as a wine bar, and it did not disappoint.

It’s definitely a place we’ll keep in mind for future special occasions, but sadly it is a bit on the expensive side for regular outings. I’ve also read that they have a sister restaurant named Play, run by the same people but billed as being more casual, so we may check that one out at some point as well.

Read Full Post »

Christmas potluck dinner

This year, we hosted the annual Christmas potluck. Yet again, it reminded me how much work large parties are, and also why we almost never have sit-down dinners at our parties. Trays of nibbles are so much easier than figuring out the logistics of finding enough sets of dishes, cutlery, chairs, and tables to seat 29 people. As always, I over-prepared, so now we’re left with tons of drinks (and not a small amount of food).

While somewhat stressful, I did perversely enjoy the kick this party gave me to get the house all decorated for Christmas. But that deserves a whole post to itself.

By the way, the “1 pound of turkey per person” guideline? Overrated! Maybe it works if you’re feeding a team of football players… But we got a 20-pound turkey for the 26 people in attendance (3 of the 29 were kids, so I’m not really counting them as turkey-eaters), and I think we’ll be eating turkey leftovers until the end of the week.

There was a gorgeous (if I do say so myself ) tree, which we acquired the day before (more on that in another post).

There was quite a bit of food (you guys are all amazing cooks!),

and good conversation flowed freely.There were some adorable babies,

and tired parents.

The boys decided to forge their own path and congregated in packs (while looking highly mischievous)…

as did the girls, eventually!

The gift exchange was run by hubby the elf.

Much stealing and merriment ensued, although the gift exchange didn’t get nearly as vicious as in prior years.

Although I think Hubby wins the prize for most ridiculous gift exchange gift, and I think Boj’s look here captures it perfectly… “Really Dan? REALLY??!” (if you can’t see it from the picture, it’s a (single) 25-pound dumbbell)

So thank you all for coming to our house and sharing this Christmas dinner with us. We had a blast, and are very grateful for having you all in our lives.

Read Full Post »

Mexican food

Why is it that I need to go to 3 different areas of a store to get ingredients for our taco night (and I’m not even counting the veggies and cheese, which I already had on hand)?

One aisle for the soft tortilla shells. Another aisle for the “generic” taco ingredients like beans, hard tacos, and generic salsa. And yet another aisle for more “specialized” ones like tostadas and fancy salsa. Why, Superstore, WHY?!

Read Full Post »