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The Daring Bakers do Bakewell Tart… err… pudding

After missing last month’s lovely challenge of Strudel because we were moving, I knew I’d have to get this month’s challenge done.

The June Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart… er… pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800’s in England.

Wait, what? Is it a tart or a pudding? Well, here’s the thing: Traditionally in the UK, ‘pudding’ just means dessert. You know that line from the good ol’ Pink Floyd song Another Brick in the Wall: “If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?” I do believe they meant dessert, not what we North Americans think of as pudding. Although maybe they meant a Bakewell Tart. Hmm, someone get Pink Floyd on the phone and ask them?

Ahem, right, where was I? So the challenge was to bake a shortcrust pastry and top it with some jam or preserves and some frangipane. The shortcrust and frangipane needed to be from the recipes provided, the jam could be anything we wanted. I decided to make some simple ‘no cook’ sour cherry jam, using the recipe that came with my box of Certo.

To be completely honest, making the jam was the most difficult part of this experience. The jam involved pitting (by hand! I only found a cherry pitter at my local kitchen supply place a week later….) and chopping all those cherries and then getting the quantities just right to make real jam. But the pastry was delicious and not difficult to whip up, and the frangipane was pretty simple as well. I think as long as you don’t have a fear of pie crust/shortbread dough, you can totally do this recipe.

Rich and I enjoyed the tart but I’m not sure I’d make it again. We like almond well enough, but we don’t love it. That said, it was pretty addictive while we had it in the house. I kept sneaking little pieces here and there, since little slivers don’t have any calories, right?

If you’d like to make this yourself, pop by Jasmine’s blog for the recipe. And I encourage you to take a look at some of the other versions of this tart by visiting some of the Daring Baker’s blogs!

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Vegan Cupcakes Take Over Freshbooks!

As some of you know, Rich works for Freshbooks as their Network Operations Manager, which in non-geek speak means ‘head IT dude’. Every two weeks they release a new version of Freshbooks, and they almost always have some sort of cake to celebrate.

Back in February, I made a giant vegan chocolate cupcake with normal-sized cupcakes to go with it for the staff as their post-release treat. Why vegan? Well, a few of the staff can’t have milk, so I already had to do dairy-free, and figured I’d might as well go the whole way and do it fully vegan. I used my standard chocolate cupcake recipe, which is already vegan, and used the yummy buttercream icing recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which substitutes in margarine for the usual butter. They were a hit! So when I was asked to do their cake again, I knew I’d have to come up with something really tasty, lest they think my vegan baking skills are slacking.

A quick flip through Vegan Cupcakes led me to the pretty simple idea of adding oreo cookies to chocolate cake batter and icing to make crazy chocolate-y goodness. Yum! Fortunately, oreo cookies are already vegan, so I didn’t have to buy anything super special there. I just grabbed a thing of Earth Balance for the icing and I was ready to go. And the results?

Sorry for the poor photo quality… I was pretty tired after baking almost 3 dozen of these babies. But I’m sure you can still tell how tasty they were. Hard to go wrong with chocolate, vanilla and oreos!

The recipe has been reprinted on Chow, so go there if you’d like to make these yourself. Which you should. But just be careful not to eat too many, lest you get a sugar coma.

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All moved in, and ready to bake!

Sorry for the silence for the last few weeks, folks! Rich and I were moving to our new place here in the Annex, and didn’t have much time for food. Most of our meals for the last few weeks involved takeout or veggie burgers from whatever grocery store we happened to be near that day. Now that we’ve moved and we’re about half unpacked (and most of that half was the kitchen, hah!), I can go back to cooking and baking like I normally do.

One of the things I always do when I move to a new place is test out the oven. I know, that sounds like something obvious to do, but I’m always curious to see how the oven measures up as compared to previous apartments. Will it have a nice even heat? Will it have a decent broiler? What quirks will it have?

This time around, the quirk is the size of the stove/oven:

It might be hard to tell from the photo without another oven right beside it to compare, but ours is smaller than a ‘normal’ sized one. My large cookie sheet just barely fits into it, and you wouldn’t be able to place two round 8″ or 9″ cake pans side-by-side in there. When I first realized the oven was tiny, I was a bit worried it would be a problem; after all, I probably spend about 50% of my ‘hobby’ time in the kitchen! But so far the oven has served me very well. It heats quickly and pretty evenly, and much more accurately than my stove at our previous place. So far we’ve made a few different things in it, including cookies and muffins. I also have a loaf of bread in there right now.

The muffins I made in an attempt to have some quick, healthy snack food to take with me to work. They’d also make a tasty breakfast, if I do say so myself.

Oatmeal Raisin Spice Muffins - original recipe by Daily Decadent, modified by me

* 1 cup vanilla soy milk
* 1 cup quick-cook oats (not instant)
* 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
* 1/2 tablespoon baking powder
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* pinch of salt
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
* 1/2 teaspoon cardamom
* 1/2 cup brown sugar
* 1 teaspoon of vanilla
* 1 egg, beaten
* 2 tablespoons of butter, softened
* 1 cup raisins
* boiling water to ‘plump’ raisins

Place raisins in a heat-safe bowl and pour boiling water over top, just enough to cover. Set aside to allow the raisins to plump up. This step can be done the night before if you wish.

Preheat oven to 400F. Grease or line with paper a 12 muffin tin.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine oats and soymilk. Stir in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices. Then whisk in the brown sugar.

Once the raisins are looking nice and plump, drain off the water and add the raisins to the oat mixture along with the butter, vanilla and beaten egg. Stir to combine.

Place batter into prepared muffin tins and bake for 15 minutes, or until lightly browned on top.

Makes 1 dozen muffins.

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Carbs and greens and spices, oh my!

I’ve been so swamped lately I haven’t had much time for cooking. Between packing boxes (we move in two weeks!), the infant massage instructor’s course I took over the weekend, and having a fairly busy spring at work, I’ve been eating a lot of prepared stuff. So tonight I really wanted to make something simple and delicious for dinner.

Rich and I purchased a copy of Veganomicon a few months ago, figuring we could certainly add more vegan dishes to our diet. So far, all of the recipes I’ve tried have been really great, but I think tonight’s tops the list. The recipe was for lentils and rice with caramelized onions, served with spiced pita crisps. To that I added a simple spinach dish I grabbed from Leslie at Definitely Not Martha. The results were fabulous - homey comfort food with lots of flavour and pretty healthy too! The only changes I made were reducing the amount of oil used to lower the fat content, and not cooking the dish as long as they said it needed - I found the lentils were cooked through a good 15 minutes before they said they would be.

Lentils and Rice with Caramelized Onions

3 large yellow onions, sliced into rings
1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup brown basmati rice
1 cup red lentils, sorted and rinsed
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin

Preheat the oven to 400F. Place onion rings into a large baking dish and cover with oil, tossing to coat. Put into the oven and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until nice and deep brown. If they are slightly burnt on the edges, that’s ok too - they’ll still be really tasty. Set aside to cool.

Bring 4 cups of water to a boil in a large pot. Once boiling, add in the rice, cinnamon stick, allspice and cumin and allow to return to a boil. Lower the heat to medium, cover, and let cook for 15 minutes.

Now add in the lentils and stir gently. Bring the mixture back to a boil and then turn the heat to low. Cover again and allow to cook for 30 to 45 minutes. I found it was done after 30 minutes, the original recipe says 45 - just check to see if the lentils are nice and tender and that’s when it is done. Remove from the heat and allow it to sit for 10 minutes, then fluff the rice and lentils with a fork.

Remove the cinnamon stick and add in the onions with the oil. Serve with pita crisps and your choice of greens.

Spiced Pita Crisps

4 whole wheat pitas
olive oil for brushing
spice combination of your choosing: I used garlic powder, cumin, salt and pepper

Slice the pitas open along the edges and carefully peel the two halves apart. Brush each with olive oil and then sprinkle with the spices of your choice. Bake in a 350F oven for about 10 minutes or until browned and crisp but not burned. Allow to cool, the store in a ziplock bag.

Really Freakin Tasty Spinach

Ruthlessly stolen from Leslie at Definitely Not Martha

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 lb fresh baby spinach
2-3 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari
1 tablespoon brown sugar

Heat vegetable oil in a large frying pan or wok on medium-high heat. Add in the garlic and cook just until slightly browned, then add in the spinach. Cook until slightly wilted. Add in the soy sauce and brown sugar and toss to coat. Eat.

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Green Living Show

Rich and I checked out the Green Living Show on Saturday, thanks to two free tickets from Ecochick. We missed the show last year and had been looking forward to checking out all the green products this year.

There were lots of vendors showing off non-food items like home decor and appliances, clothing, cars and bikes, and building supplies, but hey, this is a food blog, so I’m going to talk about the food!

Tons of great food vendors were on hand to display their products and answer questions from the huge crowd. While the show was pretty busy on Saturday afternoon when we arrived, the food sections definitely had the biggest crowds!

Lots of local and semi-local organic and natural food vendors were at the show, with a huge variety of products to try - baked goods, chips, chocolate, soy and rice milk, dairy-free ice cream, sauces and more. We tend to shop at stores that have a lot of these products, so we already knew about most of the companies that were in attendance. Some of our favourites include Sweets from the Earth (love the biscotti), Natur-a (their maple soy ice cream is really good), Shasha (ginger snaps!), Neil Brothers (chips and salsa, plus products from a lot of other companies they distribute here in Ontario), Taste of Nature (granola bars) and Yoso (soy yogurt and soy cream cheese).

This year’s show also had a Fresh Farm Fare section, where local farmers and local chefs were paired together to create amazing food. Tickets were just 2 dollars each, or a pack of 5 for 10 dollars. Most dishes were 1 ticket, although some of the meat stuff was 2, but as vegetarians Rich and I didn’t try those.  What we did try, however, was fantastic.

In the photo below we’ve got Sovereign Farms Early Spring Ontario Greenhouse Panko’d Tomato Goat Cheese Salad, Cottage Cheese Gnocchi with Wild Leeks and Preserved Lemon, and a selection of three Ontario cheeses: feta, goat cheese, and a sharp cheddar.  Ok, so we went for a lot of cheese, what can I say? All three were really lovely, and probably would have cost 10 bucks each if we’d ordered them at a local restaurant, so 2 bucks each was a bargain. My favourite was the goat cheese salad.

After stuffing our faces with food, we decided to check out the Grapes and Hops Tasting Pavilion. Tickets here were also 2 dollars each or 5 for 10 dollars. We assumed that for that price, we’d be getting a little tasting pour of wine or beer, so opted to buy 5 tickets, but soon discovered that most places gave very generous pours for 2 bucks, as you can see from the photos below.

First we tried a Riesling from Inniskillin. It was really lovely, dry and crisp. We’ll probably pick up a bottle or two of this over the summer, as it was the perfect wine for a hot summer day.

Next we decided to get two different rosé wines and compare them. On the right is Ladybug rosé from Malivoire. On the left is Canada’s first biodynamic wine, a Cabernet rosé from Southbrook Vineyards. Both were nice, but we preferred the Cabernet rosé from Malivoire, finding it a bit better rounded and less ‘young’ tasting.

I didn’t get a shot of the beer we sampled, but it was Cameron’s Auburn Ale. It wasn’t anything amazing but it was a nice, drinkable beer, a bit on the sweet side, and with a bolder hoppy taste than we were expecting. A good beer for parties, we figure, since it’s something many will like.

After sampling all that food, beer and wine, we were pretty stuffed, so figured it was time to head out. Overall it was a fun show, and a great place for foodies to get samples and learn about new organic products coming out. We’ll be back next year!