Cathy from Aficionado submitted this lovely nasturtium petal syrup. Nasturtiums are a pretty flowering plant that is also often a weed… and Cathy wanted to be economically and environmentally friendly and use it to make something delicious! I love it.

Michelle of Big Black Dog made these lovely Biscuit de Savoie. It’s a jelly roll with her own home canned nectarine raspberry jam, and also includes Drambuie and Cointreau. Yum!

Sarah of What Smells So Good? submitted “Not A-Nutter” Carrot Cake, with carrots from her own backyard, strawberries from a farm local to her, maple syrup from a sugar bush 15 minutes from her house and Canadian canola oil. Now that’s local!

Anna from Baked By Anna submitted this delicious looking Lemon Chiffon Cake with Lemon Curd Cream. She says she’s in Oxnard, Southern California, where lemons are a staple crop and available year-round. She even has her own lemon tree! She thought a Iight, airy chiffon was a great way to end a meal in these dog days of summer, and I’d have to agree.

Eliza from Notes from my Food Diary baked up this Black-Bottom Peach-Almond tart. She just had to make a peach tart for the summer, and the peaches are, of course, local! I love the peach and almond combo.
 
 
 

Dilek from à la Dilek submitted two tasty baked treats: Caramel Panna Cotta Törtchen and White Chocolate & Raspberry Cheesecake. The picture here is of the Cheesecake, but do visit her blog for more photos! The raspberries are local to her – yellow ones, no less!

Kitty from Fahrenheit 350° submits this Pretty Pear Tarte. She says her mother-in-law has a gorgeous pear tree growing in her garden, so she used those pears for her tarte. Yum!

And of course, I made Vegan Strawberry Ice Cream with local strawberries I picked up from the farmer’s market a 5 minute walk from my house.
 
 
Thanks so much to everyone who participated! All your baking has made me really hungry for something sweet. And a special thanks to Jennifer, the Domestic Goddess, who created the whole Sugar High Friday concept back in 2004.

Next month’s host is Rivka of Not Derby Pie, who has chosen the theme, “Toasted”. Good choice for the colder months ahead! I can imagine lots of toasted nuts are going to get used this month.

Have a fantastic weekend, everyone!

I would love to see more entries – what I’ve received so far has been great.

All the details on how to participate are in my previous entry.

This year I’ve been able to go several times so far, which has been really lovely for summer cooking inspiration. So I knew if I just wandered down there last Wednesday afternoon, I’d find exactly what I needed to make something for Sugar High Friday.

I passed a booth with local peaches and plums, but while they sounded good, that wasn’t really what I was in the mood for. I took a few minutes to go get some heirloom tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers, and then turned my attention to the berries on display. Having not yet had lovely local strawberries yet this year, I added a container to my day’s haul.

This past weekend was unusually warm. It seems summer has hit rather late for most of us in Ontario this year! So I felt like making ice cream out of those awesome strawberries, the kind that tastes like real fruit and not like, well, chemicals. But of course, I can’t have milk or cream right now, so I had to look for a good recipe for vegan strawberry ice cream. Fortunately, Vegan Ice Cream Paradise had exactly what I was looking for! This recipe makes a really good tasting, non-dairy ice cream. You do need to use full fat versions of your soy/rice/almond/coconut milk, otherwise the ice cream will free rock hard once put into the freezer. If that does happen to you, I find either leaving the ice cream on your counter for 15-30 minutes will soften it enough to scoop, or, you can nuke it in your microwave for 30-45 seconds.

Awesome Vegan Strawberry Ice Cream

If you don’t like soymilk, you can substitute other types of non-dairy milk such as rice, almond, or even coconut. Your total ‘milk’ volume must be 3 cups. Just remember to use full fat versions of whatever you choose for the best tasting results.

1½ – 2 c. strawberries (fresh please! Frozen will work, but do defrost them first.)
2 c. soy creamer
1 c. soymilk
¾ c. sugar
2 T. cornstarch
1 T. vanilla

Mix ¼ cup of your milk of choice with the 2 tablespoons of cornstarch and set aside.

Slice your strawberries. Measure out 1 cup and set those aside for later.

Combine the remaining strawberries, soy creamer (if using), remaining milk of choice, and sugar together in a blender and puree. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and bring to a boil. When the mixture just barely comes up to a boil, remove it from the heat and add in the cornstarch mixture. As you stir, the mixture should thicken a little bit; you’ll find it thickens even more as it cools.

Add the vanilla, then place the ice cream mixture into your refrigerator to cool for at least a few hours. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. Add in the left over strawberries in the last 5 minutes of freezing.

This recipe makes a soft-serve consistency ice cream. To harden it further, store in freezer.

For those who are not familiar with the idea of Sugar High Friday, it is a monthly blogging event where we create a delicious, sugary treat based on a theme of some sort. For example, last month’s theme was Vegetable Surprise, creating treats involving vegetables of some sort.  July’s theme was All Time Favourite Dessert, where you had the perfect excuse to bake your favourite sugary treat and blog about it.

This month, I want folks to create wonderful, sugary creations highlighting one (or more!) locally produced products. Maybe you’ve got a fantastic farmer’s market where you get awesome blueberries you’d like to use in a tart. Maybe you have an apple tree in your back yard and want to make a great apple cake. And of course this theme is not limited to local produce; eggs, milk, butter, cheese, flour, chocolate… as long as it’s locally produced and is one of the main ingredients in your creation, you’re all set!

Want to participate? I hope you do! Here’s what you need to do:

1. Grab your local product(s) and bake a tasty treat.
2. Take a picture and blog about it! Somewhere in the body of your post, please put a link to this announcement post, so if someone else wants to participate, they can.
3. Email me at nyxie [at] nyxie [dot] org, with “SHF-Locavore” as your subject. Please also include:
   • your name (or nickname, if you prefer)
   • the name of your blog
   • a link to the post you are submitting
   • the name of the treat you have created
   • a sentence or two about why you chose the local product you did (which can be as simple as ‘it tastes good’!)
   • a thumbnail image of your creation. It should be no wider than 100 pixels, in jpg format, and should be named the same as your blog. For example, my image would be named mmmtasty.jpg.
4. Submissions must be in by midnight (EDT) on Monday, September 21st

If you do not have a blog: please just reply to this post with your recipe, a link to a photo (from photobucket, flickr, or where ever you want to store photos) and any info you want to share, and I’ll include you in the roundup.

I’ll post the roundup on Friday of that week, so please do check back here to see everyone’s delicious creations!

As always, thanks to Jennifer, the Domestic Goddess, who created the whole Sugar High Friday concept back in 2004.

Looking forward to seeing everyone’s submissions! Now I just have to figure out what kind of treat I’m going to make…

Ever since Sugar High Friday ‘All that Glitters‘ was announced, I knew I wanted to participate, and I knew exactly what I wanted to make.  These Peanut Blossom cookies are so simple but so tasty, and are a popular treat during the holidays.  I mean really, what’s not to love?  Peanuts, hershey’s kisses and a sprinkle of sparkly sugar on top.  Yum!

For the dough I used Anna Olson’s ‘Ultimate Peanut Butter Cookie‘ recipe, which I’ll copy below.  My modifications in order to make Peanut Blossoms are noted.

The Ultimate Peanut Butter Cookie
Yield: 24
* 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 1/2 cup brown sugar
* 1 egg
* 1 tsp vanilla extract
* 1/2 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
* 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1/4 tsp salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350° F.

Cream together butter and sugars until pale and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla and stir in peanut butter.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. Add to peanut butter mixture and blend in.

To make these cookies sparkle, roll dough into 1 inch balls and then roll each ball in some sugar. I recommend using fruit sugar, as it coats very nicely, but use whatever kind you like! Then, place dough balls on cookie sheet and flatten slightly with a fork, making a criss-cross pattern.

Bake for 9 to 11 minutes, until cookies just start to colour around the edges. Remove from pan immediately onto a cooling rack. While cookies are still hot, gentle press a hershey’s kiss into each one.

Thanks to Susan for hosting this month, and of course to Jennifer who started the whole Sugar High.

Recently I made two pretty different cupcakes I wanted to share with you all.

I’ve been doing a bit more vegan baking lately.  I really enjoy the recipes, and usually discover a new ingredient or two.  But also, I have a friend who is allergic to eggs, and so vegan recipes are the perfect solution for baking when he’ll be one of the people eating the final product.  It just so happens his girlfriend recently had a birthday, and so I needed another egg-free recipe.  She said she really likes spice cake, like gingerbread or that sort of thing, so I googled around a bit until I found this awesome recipe for chai latte cupcakes. They honestly do taste just like a chai latte, and they even sort of look like one if you ice them and sprinkle some cinnamon on top!

The cake itself is 100% vegan, but for the icing I went with standard buttercream. To keep things vegan, you could easily top them as recommended by the original recipe (with spices and sugar), or, you could make vegan buttercream.

Chai Latte Cupcakes

Recipe originally from Post Punk Kitchen and also appears in the book Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. Lightly modified by me,  so the cake base is still vegan, but my icing is not.

Ingredients
1 cup soy or rice milk
4 black teabags or 2 tablespoons loose black tea ** I used chai tea instead
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup plain or vanilla soy yogurt
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
pinch of ground white or black pepper

Buttercream Icing
6 tablespoons butter, softened
3 tablespoons milk or soymilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1 teaspoon nutmeg, and 1 tablespoon sugar, for the tops

Directions
Preheat oven to 375F.  In a small saucepan heat soymilk until almost boiling, then add the tea bags, cover the pan, and remove from the heat.  Let sit for 10 minutes, then squeeze the teabags to release as much tea as possible before removing the bags from the soymilk.

In a large bowl whisk together oil, yogurt, sugar, vanilla and tea mixture until lumps are worked out. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves, and pepper into wet ingredients. Mix until large lumps disappear; some small lumps are okay. Pour batter into lined cupcake tins and bake 20 to 22 minutes until a sharp knife inserted comes out clean.  Allow to cool completely.

For icing: Beat together butter, milk and vanilla until smooth.  Add sugar a cup at a time until you get the consistency you want.  If icing seems to runny, at more sugar, if it seems too thick, add a bit more milk.  Spread or pipe onto cooled cupcakes.

Mix together the cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar, then sprinkle a bit onto the top of each cupcake.

Yum!

For my second trick… remember the giant cupcake pan we posted about last year?  Well, Rich found me one at a nearby Winners a few weeks ago, and I knew I’d have to put the pan to good use.  So now I present to you a giant cupcake, covered in buttercream and topped with smarties (the Canadian chocolate version, not the American candy version) as large sprinkles.

I know my decorating skills could use a bit of work, but since this was only about the 5th time in my life that I’d used a piping bag, I hope you’ll forgive me.  I hope to have more projects to practice my piping on soon.

For the cake base, I decided to go with an old Daring Bakers challenge, Dorie’s Perfect Party Cake.  I made 1.5 times the recipe in order to accommodate the large cupcake pan, which needs more cake batter than the typical recipe provides.  The cake turned out well, save for a few snags that are due to how the pan is designed. The bottom half of the cupcake cooks more slowly than the top half, because it is thicker.  However, as you can see from the picture, the two halves are contained within a single pan, so you can’t just remove one half of the cupcake when it is done. The solution I came up with was to turn my oven down to 325 degrees and turn the pan so that the bottom half was in the hottest part of my oven. Even then, the top of the cupcake came out a bit dry, while the bottom was just barely cooked enough. Next time I think I’ll cover the top with some aluminum foil once it’s nearly done, to help keep it from over-baking.

Another problem I ran into was the fact that the cake rose exactly as you’d expect: it domed up at the top, which meant that in order to join the two halves of the cupcake, I’d have to slice off some cake to make it flat again.  This was pretty obvious, but it wasn’t included in the instructions of the cupcake pan.  Even so, I didn’t mind doing it, and it gave me some extra cake to nibble on while I was decorating.  Win-win situation, I say.

Once baked and cooled, it was really fun to decorate!  I made bright blue buttercream for the top and chocolate buttercream for the base, and pipped it on following the pattern of the pan.  I used a bit of the blue to join the two cake halves, and put a row of smarties around the middle to help hide the imperfections.  About an hour or so of piping later, and I had this!

If you’d like to make this yourself, you can probably find the Wilton Cupcake pan at your local department store or baking supplies shop.  I’ve linked you to Dorie’s cake recipe above, which make an awesome, lightly lemony cake.  Just remember to make 1.5 times the recipe, and watch the pan so your cupcake top doesn’t burn.

I would like to humbly submit both of these to Sugar High Friday, hosted this month by the lovely Foodbeam. The event of course originated with Jennifer, the Domestic Goddess many, many baked goods ago.

I’ve been craving Strawberry Shortcake for months now.  It was a summer favourite in my family while I was growing up. I’ve been telling Rich I’d make some for weeks, but never really got around to it. However, today was one of those lazy Sundays – rainy, grey, and a good day to stay in and get some things done around the house.  Lucky for me, Rich was willing to run to the grocery store for strawberries for me so I could make these.

I took the base recipe from Cooking Light, but modified it to my own tastes.

Strawberry Shortcake

3 1/2 cups strawberries, quartered
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons lemon juice

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
3 tablespoons chilled stick margarine or butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup vanilla soymilk

Combine 1 cup of the strawberries, 1/3 cup sugar, vanilla, and lemon juice in a bowl, and mash with a potato masher. Stir in remaining strawberries (unmashed).

Preheat oven to 425F.

Combine flour, 3 tablespoons sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl; cut in margarine with a pastry blender or fork until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add soymilk, stirring just until moist.  Dough will be sticky.

Divide mixture into 6 equal parts and shape into biscuits/rounds.  Place onto a greased cookie sheet, or use a silpat on your cookie sheet like I did.  Bake at 425° for 12 minutes.  Allow to cool before assembling your desserts.

When cool: cut shortcakes in half with a serrated knife.  Place bottom into a dish and top with some of the strawberry mixture.  Top with other half of shortcake, and put more strawberry mixture on top.

Serve with a generous dollup of whipped cream, vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt, or as we did, with ‘soy cream’.

Makes 6 servings.

Blueberry Grunt is a somewhat unusual dessert.  A wild blueberry sauce is topped with a sweet biscuit dough (dumplings), and the dough is steamed until puffed up and cooked through.  It is similar to a blueberry cobbler, but is never baked, so the dumplings are not browned.  The dish isn’t really well known outside of the Maritime provinces; mentioning it to the typical Ontarian will get you a strange look.  A bit of research has found that the dish may have originated with the Acadians, French settlers in the Maritimes.

In order to make it, I had to try to find wild blueberries, which was a bit of a challenge this time of year; wild blueberries are really only available fresh in the late summer and early fall.  I tried many different markets in my neighbourhood, but always found only the larger, cultivated blueberries (which we refer to as ‘tame’ blueberries in our house).  I figured that would be the case, but you can’t blame me for trying!  So instead I headed to the freezer case and grabbed a bag of frozen berries.  As I find the cultivated berries tasteless, I figured this would be the better solution.

Blueberry Grunt

Ingredients:
Blueberry sauce:
4 cups wild fresh or frozen blueberries
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup water

Dumplings:
2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp butter or shortening
milk

For sauce: Heat berries, spices, sugar, lemon juice, and water in a skillet.  Boil gently for 5-10 minutes, until well blended and liquid has slightly reduced.

For dumplings: Sift flour, baking powder, salt and sugar into a bowl. Cut in butter and add milk, a few tablespoons at a time, until the mixture is a soft biscuit dough texture. Drop by spoonfuls into hot berry sauce. Cover tightly with a lid and simmer for 15 minutes.  Do not peak into the pot during this time!  After 15 minutes the dumplings should be puffed and well cooked through. Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. Makes 4 generous servings.

Happy Canada Day, everyone!

For those who read us for the restaurant reviews, I’ve got a couple coming soon.

I had some trouble deciding exactly what I wanted to do this time around.  Usually you have to bake or cook something yourself, but because the theme isn’t ingredient-based, they allowed entries to be about anything food related, as long as it says ‘Mmm… Canada!’ to you.  Then today it hit me – why not make some of my old Maritime favourites, the stuff I can’t find here in Ontario?

When I moved to Ottawa back in 1997, I was shocked to find that no one seemed to know what a garlic finger was.  Garlic bread, garlic cheese sticks, and various other garlic-and-dough-concoctions were easy to find, but my old childhood favourite was not. When I relayed this information to my high school friends still living in Nova Scotia, they were shocked.  “How can you live without garlic fingers?” they asked, eyes wide, as if I were saying Ottawa had no water.

What’s so special about these garlic fingers as compared to other garlic-dough recipes?  Well, they’re essentially garlic bread pizza: pizza dough, garlic butter, mozzarella, and sometimes bacon bits.  Dipped into donair sauce (not to be confused with doner sauce).  We’d usually order them from one of our favourite pizza places on a Friday night and eat them while watching some silly movie.

These days most Canadians can find garlic fingers in the freezer section next to the pizzas.  McCain, a well-known Maritime food company, now produces them and sells them outside the Maritimes.  Even so, the frozen ones are just not the same, and they don’t come with any donair sauce. So when I get a craving for these, I just make my own.

Garlic Fingers:

Pizza dough to make one large pizza (recipe below if you need one!)
1/4 cup garlic butter
1/2 cup to 1 cup mozzarella cheese (depends on how cheesy you like them; I used 1 cup)

Prepare dough as needed. When ready to bake, spread out on a pizza stone or round pizza pan.  Cover with garlic butter and top with cheese.  Bake in 425F oven for about 15-20 minutes, or until the crust is browned.  Then put under the broiler for 2-5 minutes to brown the cheese.  Watch carefully, as it browns quickly!  Cut into fingers and eat dipped in donair sauce.

Donair Sauce:

2/3 cup canned sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup white vinegar
1 tsp garlic powder

Combine all ingredients and stir well until fully combined.  Makes a thick, sweet, garlicky sauce.

Pizza Dough:

1 cup warm water
1 tbsp quick rise yeast
1 tsp sugar
2.5 – 3 cups all purpose flour
olive oil for the bowl

Put water into a large bowl and sprinkle in sugar, then add yeast.  Allow to sit 10 minutes so yeast can start to bloom.

Mix in 2.5 to 3 cups flour, until dough has a smooth, even texture and is no longer sticky.  Cover with a bit of olive oil and then leave in a warm place to rise, about 30 minutes or until the dough doubles in volume.  Dough is then ready to use as needed.  This is enough for one thick crust pizza or two thin crust pizzas.  For garlic fingers, I recommend you use the whole thing on a single pan.

Tomorrow: another Maritime treat, but this time, a sweet one!

Now, I love cinnamon as much as anyone. However, I find it to be a very fall/winter sort of flavour. For the first long weekend of the summer here in Canada (Victoria Day!) I knew I wanted to do something citrus-based, but wasn’t sure exactly how. So off Rich and I went to the grocery store to pick up the dough ingredients, along with a good sized bag of mandarin oranges and lemons. While putting these together, I decided to toss in some walnuts and dates that I already had, and voilà, these were born.

As they were baking, I was a bit disappointed in how they were turning out. When you bake cinnamon buns, the whole house fills with the amazing scent of cinnamon and other spices, but these buns did not have the same effect; I could detect a hint of orange if I stood near the oven, but that was about it. Fortunately, the real test is the taste test, and these were fantastic. The blend of citrus and sugar, of sour and sweet, of tender dough and gooey icing. I think I almost like them better than the original. Serve them after dinner with coffee, or for breakfast if you have a real sweet tooth. Or maybe both.

Orange Date Walnut Buns – Adapted from a Cinnamon Buns recipe

Dough:
3/4 cup cottage cheese (I used light ricotta instead)
1/3 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup granulated sugar
4 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla extract
Zest from 2 oranges
Juice from 1 orange
2.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp table salt
1/4 tsp baking soda

Filling:
1 1/2 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup granulated sugar
Juice of 1/2 orange
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup chopped dates

Icing:
Juice of 1 orange
Zest of 1/2 orange
1 cup confectioners’ sugar (more if needed)

Heat oven to 400F. Grease sides of a 9 or 10 inch springform pan with cooking spray. If you don’t have a springform pan, don’t worry – a large, round cake pan or pie plate worked fine for me.

Make dough: In food processor, combine cottage/ricotta cheese, buttermilk, sugar, melted butter, and vanilla. Process until smooth, about 10 seconds. Add all remaining ingredients listed under dough and process in short pulse bursts until the dough just barely clumps together. Then remove the dough from the food processor and place onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth (add in a little more flour if you need to), then roll out with a rolling pin to approximately a 12″X15″ rectangle.

Make filling: Brush the dough with melted butter, leaving a 1/2 inch un-buttered border around the edges of the dough. Sprinkle with sugar, then the juice. Cover with the walnuts and dates.

To roll up: starting at the long edge, roll the dough into a long ‘log’, the same as you’d do if making a jelly-roll. Pinch to seal the seam, but leave the ends open. Cut dough into 12 equal pieces with a sharp knife, and place into your greased pan. It is fine if the buns touch, but don’t worry if there are spaces between them; they will rise and spread as they bake.

Bake for 20-28 minutes until golden brown and firm to touch. Allow to cool for 5 minutes, then run a spatula around the outside edge of the buns to release them, and remove the outside of the springform pan. Allow to cool completely before icing. At this point you and your family may test a bun or two, to make sure they are indeed tasty. Rich and I did exactly that. It’s for the greater good, you know.

Icing: Mix well all ingredients listed under icing. You should get a smooth, thick, but pourable icing. If you find it is too thick, add a little more juice (1/2 Tbsp at a time). If you find it is too thin, add a touch more confectioners’ sugar. Pour over the buns and then serve immediately.

So what’s up with the Sugar High Friday image? Well, I’ve been following Sugar High Friday, a concept started by Jennifer of The Domestic Goddess, for about a year now. The idea is simple: Every month, bloggers from around the globe make a dessert based on a theme ingredient or concept. The last Friday of the month, the host blog posts a ’round up’ of the entries, so you can see what desserts everyone came up with, and of course nab some of the recipes for yourself! Anyhow, every so often I think I might want to try participating, but then suddenly it is the end of the month and I’ve missed out again. This month, with the theme being citrus (and hosted by Tartelette), I decided I just had to participate, providing my citrus buns actually turned out delicious. I’ll be watching Tartelette’s blog next Friday to see what other desserts people made!