Lemon Glazed Baked Mini Donuts
One of the best parts about being a baker is that at Christmas time instead of getting socks, or bottles of wine that only last an evening, people buy you kitchen stuff. Stuff that most people would never use, and stuff that you might not be able to justify buying yourself. Things like vintage bundt pans and ice cream scoops, or teflon scoops that are only to be used for scooping out dry ingredients. And the pans. The one use kind of pans that are hard to spend money on because you know you’ll only use them a couple times a year. I have lots of those.
I have a mini baked donut pan that I got last year. I mean the name says it all doesn’t it? You can only make it if you want baked donuts and you want them mini. I don’t think I have that urge all that often, but yesterday morning I was very happy to have such a pan because it made these little numbers.
Here’s the thing about baked donuts. People always say at the top of recipes that it’s just like the fried ones and you can’t tell the difference. And I am going to tell you these are not just like the fried ones. The fried ones are yeasted and take ages and then you have to heat up a gallon of oil on your stove top. And you can produce incredible donuts like that, but you also have to be very aware and awake at a very early time if you want donuts on Saturday morning.
I do not like frying things on my stove top that early. I just don’t.
One of these days I will do this for you, but in the meantime you can have these. These aren’t crispy and light the way a fried donut is, because it’s not fried. But it is bright and citrus-y and the hint of cinnamon makes them taste a tiny bit like the cinnamon sugar donuts you get at a fair. They are not fried but that does not stop them being delicious. Which is why you’ll notice that because their so tiny you haven’t noticed how just how many you’ve shoved in your mouth!
Hand Printed Tea Towel DIY
When I was in high school I became obsessed with a store called Peach Berserk on Queen West in Toronto. It was an outrageous store with very loud bright cloths that were all hand silkscreened. It was always out of my budget, but I had Peach Bekerk undies and scarves. At one point I inherited a skirt from my sister that made me unordinately happy.
So one year for my birthday my Mom had me go to a silkscreening workshop that the owner put on, and while my Mom even bought me the photoemulsion needed to silkscreen like a professional without a light table it was a hobby that fell by the wayside pretty quickly. Which is too bad because I love printed fabrics- I in fact have 3 beautiful handprinted tea towels framed on my walls.
I have accepted that my dreams of silkscreening are probably not going to happen in my 1 bedroom apartment but with all my free time in my new found unemployment I figured I could at least do some kind of fabric printing. And so I did.
If silkscreening as at the end of the spectrum that involves machinery and fancy chemicals than this is way on the other side. You make stamps out of cardboard and you could use nearly any fabric you have kicking around to make these. I used a soft canvas and though I’m thrilled with how it looks, but I think next time I’ll use something softer and more absorbent, like linen.
Materials
Soft and absorbent fabric cut to the size of a tea towel or an unprinted tea towel.
Fabric Paint
Cardboard
Tape
Hot Glue gun
Iron
Iron your fabric
First decide on your design. I made a chevron pattern first and then made the waves with the boat, the shapes were all very simple.
Draw them on the cardboard and then cut them out.
Take a thin piece of cardboard, roll it up, and tape it shut.
Use the glue gun to attach it to the backs of your stamps to use as a handle.
On a palate put down lots of paint and make sure it is really spread into every corner of the shapes.
Start stamping!
Let the paint dry for at least an hour and then iron it once again to seal the paint. And there you have it, hand stamped tea towels.
Arugula Omelette with Bread Crumbs
Heres the thing of it; I only buy really good bread. Out of principle. Heres the other thing of it; good bread is only good for a day. Heres the other thing of it; there are only 2 people in my household so it’s hard to go through a whole baguette, or a full of sourdough loaf. (note, if Nutella is involved it is not hard to go through a whole baguette.)
So I’m always looking for excuses to use stale bread. Someone told me recently that in Italy breadcrumbs are poor mans cheese, which got me thinking. The friend who told me this had just made braised leeks and sprinkled breadcrumbs that she had sauteed in olive oil with garlic and rosemary and it was a killer dish. The sort of elegant dish Italian peasants have made for the last 300 years. So when I got home that night I busted out my food processor and made great use of the day old bread that always seems to be sitting in my bread box. And then I went to bed because it was late and I had already eaten dinner.
The next morning though I woke Jordan up with omelettes, just simple ham and arugula omelettes but I sprinkled breadcrumbs on the top and they were suddenly these elevated into something much more interesting. The crispness, the toasted flavour, the spike of rosemary, it was a glorious combination that, because I had already made the breadcrumbs, it was a no brainer painfully easy addition. Which is exactly what I want in my breakfasts.
Grilled Spot Prawns with a Thai Mango Salad
In Italy they celebrate the first asparagus with festivals all over the country (though I’m told especially in Veneto), ringing in the first of the local produce after a long winter of root vegetables and grains. I remember being told that in cooking school and feeling a little left out, a little cast to the side that we didn’t have these traditions, that my deep and very self important 19 year old self had missed something important. That some deep rooted cultural practise that I believed in had just passed me by because I lived in Canada.
And while that was many things, self indulgent definitely among them, it’s also not true. We may not have the long standing history of it, but Vancouver has spot prawns. And with them the Spot Prawn Festival.
I didn’t really realize before I moved to Vancouver that seafood is just as seasonal as produce, but it makes sense once you think about it. If you want the best salmon in BC you wait until mid-late summer, you’ll catch the fattiest trout in the fall, but of all seafood nothing is as seasonal as the spot prawn.
They are the first things out of the water in the Spring, big prawns that are bright coral and marked with two namesake white dots on their tails. They are tender beyond any shrimp or prawn I’ve ever had and they have an unmistakably sweet flavour. You have probably seen them in Asian supermarkets swimming around, or on Japanese menus as “ama-ebi” or sweet shrimp, but the taste of them fresh from the water is a completely different experience.
They are also one of the only sustainable shrimp/prawn fisheries in the world, and we are incredibly lucky not only to have these glorious little guys swimming around our local waters but also to have a sustainable fish shop 2 blocks away from our apartment.
Now, spot prawns are not cheap, they cost a pretty penny, so these are not for everyday, at least not on my budget (they average around $15 a pound!) but they are worth buying a few every Spring to celebrate.
I made a light dinner of them the other day, with a simple Thai inspired mango salad and grilled the prawns until just they are just barely cooked. With a cold beer, you’d be hard pressed to find a better summer meal!
Rhubarb Breakfast Cake with White Chocolate Yoghurt Ganache
I am about to write the most pretentious thing I can think of. Are you ready? Are you sure? I just happened to have some white chocolate yoghurt ganache in my fridge. I know. Who am I?
In my defence it was there because I had failed miserably at making some macarons that I had been planning on filling with said ganache, but none the less. I happened to have some white chocolate yoghurt ganache in my fridge. Oy.
I have never been a huge white chocolate fan, unless your buying the really pricey stuff that is way out of my league, it’s just very sweet. Too sweet I think, but the yoghurt really mellows it out and brings in enough acid that makes you want to lick the spoon. It’s sort of like grown-up cream cheese icing.
So with this glorious stuff in my fridge, I made a very simple rhubarb cake, a buttermilk breakfast cake not to sweet with a wonderful crumb and slathered this ganache on top. Just enough to make you want to eat the top first and be a little spiteful of the bites that didn’t get any.
Oat Soda Bread with Herbed Ricotta and Scrambled Eggs
We might be moving to the country. It’s not for sure yet, but there is a real chance we might pick ourselves out of the most expensive city to live in in North America and curl up on Vancouver Island. This appeals of me on many levels, mostly because when I think of living in the country and I don’t think of isolation or hard winters. Instead I day dream about long summer days in the garden. I fantasize about growing my own veggies and taking long walks in the fields at sunset. I get a glazed over look when I think about hanging my sheets out to dry or having a fire place or having enough room to build the bed I’ve always wanted to make. And when the logical man I would be moving with tells me I’m absolutely ridiculous and there are other things to consider when making a move like this I simply make this wonderful rustic bread, and strain some ricotta cheese and imagine that my eggs came from my yard, and I slip back into my imaginary world. Because fresh eggs and oat stuffed soda bread arecompletely at home there.
Key Lime Cordial
I relented and bought a new umbrella today. I thought that I wouldn’t need to replace my last lost one because it was May. Because the sun should be shining, and life should be swell but instead it rained all day. And all yesterday, and the day before that. There are these brief moments where the sun almost shines through the clouds and it’s almost like there isn’t a blanket of white and grey over us. And then the moment passes and the sun is completely invisble again. And I go back to day dreams of summer days and picnics on Wreck Beach and drinks on patios watching the sunset.
This is a recipe in preparation for those times, and it also makes use of one of the last reminants of the citrus season, the key lime. This makes an afternoon G & T into something glorious, this with a splash of vodka and some sparkling water is the perfect post work wind down drink. This means you never have to run out to the store to get lemons and limes before a party, because this is better. This is not the lime cordial you buy at the store with fruit juices from concentrate. This is so fresh you can hardly tell it wasn’t squeezed just for your drink. This you want in your house at all times.
Rhubarb Lavender Tart
I’ve been watching rhubarb recipes go up on blogs that I follow for several weeks now. Some of them I pinned to make later, some of them I wrote down flavour combinations for, but most of them I jsut glowered at. I’ve been glaring and frowning and giving the stink eye to every blog written by everyone outside of Vancouver because it seems that everyone else has had a month of Spring already, and we are just starting (knock on wood) to get out of the clouds. It was a slow, cold April.
So last weekend when I noticed a neighbours rhubarb patch looking healthy I started to get excited and I full blown squealed (to the great alarm of an elderly man passing by me) when I found some at my local green grocer a couple days ago. I love rhubarb I really do.
This tart is not as complicated as most tarts, it’s downright easy if you have a food processor, but still totally possible to do without. You don’t need to blind bake the shortbread the way you do with most tarts, and curd comes together in just a few minutes. The lavender is optional if you can’t find it at your local shop although it really does make this extra special. The only hard part is letting it cool before you cut into it.
Floating Vases DIY
Big changes are about to start happening around here. Not quite yet, but pretty soon.
In preparation for this I’ve baked some cakes and had some pictures taken and I’ve been working with some very talented people. I’t pretty exciting.
One of the things that will change soon are the wedding cake pictures, and so recently I filled my house with baked goods and crafted my little heart out, and had a friend come by and take some pictures. And while I’m not quite ready to but those up yet, here is a sneak peak and a little DIY!
Cultured Butter At Home
If a true baguette is a French nobleman, tall and lean, a crusader for tradition and preservation, then butter is the stout and shy wife, staying home and cooking while her husband goes out and gets all the attention. But, if I’m going to keep these metaphor going, she is an unsung hero, because good proper French butter, cultured and flecked with sea salt is beautiful and delicate, and tastes better the next morning that her stale mate.
My love for butter is long stated and probably can be traced back to one of my favourite childrens book to a poem where the King is so distraught that he can’t get butter with his bread that he goes back to bed saying “No one could call me a fussy man, BUT, I do like a little bit of butter for my bread”. A trip to France a couple years ago cemented it for me, butter is a beautiful beautiful thing.
Normandy is famous for it’s butter, and rightly so, but Normandy is a long way away from my Vancouver apartment. So I’ve been looking up ways of making butter recently. I remember doing it as a kid, taking a jar and shaking it until the fat split from the liquid, and I’ve done it in restaurants when there is cream about to go off, but it always makes simple plain butter. The butter I’ve been dreaming about since Paris has a much greater flavour to it.
So when I saw this recipe on Food52 I new it was fate.
Friends, this is damn good butter, as best as I have tried on this continent. The trick is to be patient, to use the absolute best cream you can find and to have some really good bread to spread it on when it’s done.
