Recipe: Perfect Elephant Ears (Palmiers)

Recipe: Perfect Elephant Ears (Palmiers)

March 5, 2012

These are elephant ears. Or palm ears. Or palmiers. Or French hearts, or butterflies or glasses. No matter what you call them, these sugar-laced puff pastry treats are one of my all time favourites. Like most things worthwhile, they are a labour of love. And I love my father. So I made a batch to [...]

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Thumbnail image for A lighter approach to olive oil ice cream

A lighter approach to olive oil ice cream

February 29, 2012

This isn’t the best ice cream photo in the world, but it was perhaps the best ice cream experience I’ve had in a long, long time. And to think, I was prepared to dislike it. Despite my recent revelations regarding misguided food biases, I still haven’t fully learned to open my mind when I open my mouth [...]

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Thumbnail image for Recipe: Paella

Recipe: Paella

February 26, 2012

One of these days I’ll learn how to take notes, shoot pictures and eat, all at once. This sort of multi-tasking would have come in very handy last week when I attended a paella class at Pimenton in Toronto. Greeted by a table full of tapas, fellow bloggers chopping vegetables and a warm and welcoming Chef [...]

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Thumbnail image for Recipe: Homemade Clotted Cream

Recipe: Homemade Clotted Cream

February 21, 2012

  Shrove Tuesday doesn’t have to include pancakes. Today is really about gorging on rich foods before the 40-day fast of Lent. Pancakes just happen to be cooked in grease, filled with eggs and topped with more decadence.  It’s okay to think beyond the griddle. Any rich, fatty food will do. For pancake enthusiasts, these [...]

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Thumbnail image for Recipe: Preserved Lemons

Recipe: Preserved Lemons

February 17, 2012

It’s time to strike another item off my Culinary Bucket List. In an uncharacteristic display of patience, I tackled preserved lemons. They require endurance, not because they are hard to make, but because they take 4 weeks to cure. In the meantime, to scratch my immediate-gratification itch, I started a Tumblr — a place to [...]

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Thumbnail image for 6 Chocolate Recipes and $100 off Rouxbe

6 Chocolate Recipes and $100 off Rouxbe

February 13, 2012

Despite my passion for chocolate, I have never been a huge Valentine’s Day fan. I try to ignore it, not because I am cynical about love, but because I believe affection, gifts and surprises should be dictated by the heart, not the calendar. Or at least that’s my normal stance. But Rouxbe Online Cooking School [...]

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Thumbnail image for Smoked Sugar and What Stratford Chefs School Taught Me About Myself

Smoked Sugar and What Stratford Chefs School Taught Me About Myself

February 6, 2012

This is how much of a sugar addict I am. I drove an hour on a dark, cold, rainy January night just so I could sample smoked sugar. What’s smoked sugar you ask? It’s sugar. That’s been smoked.* As eager as I am to try new sweets, I am equally entrenched in my culinary dislikes. [...]

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Thumbnail image for Recipe: Spicy Spinach Soup

Recipe: Spicy Spinach Soup

January 23, 2012

Email. Some days I love it. Some days I hate it. And I was hating it something fierce  recently when my computer insisted it had to “rebuild” my inbox and in doing so resent random emails from March 2010. This elicited confused responses from the unintended victims recipients. I spent the weekend  cautiously checking email [...]

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Thumbnail image for How to adjust pan size in baking

How to adjust pan size in baking

January 16, 2012

What’s happening to me? The minute I went to photograph this dessert I thought, “Rats! I should have made the cobbler in a cast iron frying pan. It would have looked so much more rustic.” Great. It’s not enough that I’m criticized for being a food snob. Now I’m about to push myself into a [...]

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Thumbnail image for Recipe: Healthy Seed Bread

Recipe: Healthy Seed Bread

January 12, 2012

One of the items on my culinary bucket list was granary bread. I wanted to create my own version of a seed-loaded hearth bread I used to get from a local bakery. Their bread was dense without being heavy — something you could sink your molars into and chew with satisfaction. The seeds crunched while [...]

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Thumbnail image for How to make perfect cakes

How to make perfect cakes

January 6, 2012

If you read my 2012 Culinary Bucket List, you’ll see I have a lot of baking to do. In case a from-scratch cake is on your list, I thought I’d start the new year off with some baking tips I learned from Camilla V. Saulsbury, author of Piece of Cake and 750 Best Muffin Recipes. [...]

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