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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Wild strawberries on Gilmour Street, Peterborough, ON

Meet Fragaria vesca. (What? Based on the title you were expecting something else? These are wild strawberries, not strawberries gone wild.)

Also known as the woodland strawberry in deference to its natural habitat in the forests and meadows of the Northern Hemisphere, out there in the wild the whole plant is a tasty treat — ungulates ...
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Red currants

It is 8:45 a.m. on a Saturday in July. I descend the steps of the 504 streetcar at the intersection of King Street West and Jarvis. As I wait for the light to change to allow me to walk south towards Front Street I observe the knots of people already clogging the sidewalks in amongst the outside vendors at the ...
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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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Frozen strawberry-vanilla swirl

Hope you saved room for dessert.

It’s been a while since I’ve featured something sweet here in the food category, and considering that we are in the most difficult part of winter — snowbanks are dirty and grey; sidewalks are minefields laid with dense, glacial ice; temperatures hang immovably below zero — I thought it particularly appropriate to ...
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