Pastéis de nata (Portuguese custard tarts)

I say “natas”; you say “custard tarts.” We’re both right and they’re one of the simplest, most delicious pastries around. You’ll find a little history behind this popular sweet and tasting notes on natas from some Toronto bakeries in my “A Tart for All-Comers” piece published over at Continue reading ...

Celebrating Grandma and Grandpa’s birthdays, Christmas 2009

This December, my grandparents turned 81 (grandma, on December 21) and 87 (grandpa, on December 24). On Christmas Day, when we sang the birthday song and watched them together blow out the candles on their banana-chocolate-walnut chiffon cake — my grandmother’s recipe, my uncle, the baker, told us — they were barely two weeks ...
Continue reading ...

Round crusty loaf from Offshore Bakery in Southampton, Ontario

One of the treats mom and I brought back to Kincardine from Southampton during our August vacation. All things good food in Grey and Bruce Counties can be found via the Grey Bruce Agriculture and Culinary Association.

Lime tart with fresh raspberries

I know. I know! It’s yet another dessert post.

I’m just as surprised as you are, as I’ll gladly side with savoury over sweet every single time. But what can I say? There are worse things in which to revel than sweets, and revelling in them I have been indeed if my recent food ...
Continue reading ...

Coffee blondies

I would make a terrible Got Milk? poster girl.

It wasn’t always this way. For most of my adult life I bought, and consumed, at least a litre of milk every week: I was a dunker of all manner of cookies, a lover of cereal well soaked, a tippler of tall cold ones. But then something happened. I moved in ...
Continue reading ...

Pizza with spring toppings and fontina

I choose to view the last year and eight months as a lesson in simplicity, in determining life’s essentials from its frills. As it happens, having a full-sized oven is a frill, but oh — how much sweeter culinary life is when you have one at your disposal.

You might remember that back in March I ...
Continue reading ...

Lemon loaf

I can tell you precisely when I started to cook — not just help in the kitchen, but do full-fledged home cheffing pretty much on my own. It was Summer 1990, as recorded in Candles and Parsley, a entertaining record book I got as a gift and starting filling in with meticulously detailed dinner-party notes not long after receiving ...
Continue reading ...

An old friend: lemon meringue pie

Lemon meringue pie and I go way back.

I have filmy, fragile memories of my mom making it in the kitchen of the house I lived in until I was eight. In those days there was Tenderflake lard for the crust, Shirriff mix for the filling, and after being amazed every single time that clear, viscous ...
Continue reading ...

Raspberry punchkie (paczki), Polish fruit-filled doughnuts

Jam-filled doughnuts, pancakes, sweet dumplings, king cakes. What do they have in common? You bakers out there will know that they all contain a few simple, basic ingredients: eggs, milk, butter, sugar. And those simple — yet rich — ingredients just happen to be forbidden during Lent. Enter Fat ...
Continue reading ...

Gingerbread cupcakes with lemon cream-cheese frosting

Today’s my birthday, and I’m turning thirty-six. I’m now closer to being forty than I am to being thirty. How did that happen?

Cake is good on birthdays, and I plan to have some at one of the little cafés on main street in Peterborough, where Michael and I are heading for a ...
Continue reading ...