Baking at the cottage: raspberry pie
Raspberries are special.
They’re intricate. Think of that hive of tiny, hair-studded spheres that slips off its torus when perfectly ripe.
They’re delicate. Eat them from your cupped palm, and streaky stains of their crimson juice will be left behind.
They’re luscious. Deeply flavoured with tart and sweet and floral notes all at once, they taste exactly what you’d ...
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Callebaut dark Belgian chocolate
It’s easy to overlook the ingredients we use day in and day out in our kitchens, but often these workhorses are essential components of a dish. This five-part series celebrates good-quality pantry basics. (Previous series items: Sea Salt; Pasta; Oil.)
It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the experience of unwrapping my ...
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Marmalade and dark chocolate tart
This recipe was born of necessity.
While recently reviewing a cookbook, I tried a recipe for Seville orange marmalade that, while extremely delicious, had the consistency of cement. (I suspect the recipe neglects to instruct followers to top up the water level after the oranges go through their first boil.)
Since it was clear that this marmalade ...
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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 TasteT.O. this ...
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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 into ...
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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 writing is ...
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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 with ...
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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 it. ...
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