Bake with abandon!
My bedroom closet houses clothes, shoes, a cat-clawed housecoat, my knitting needle collection and a food dehydrator. Too wide for our narrow pantry, this unit spends most of the year in a corner of my closet looking like an abandoned R2-D2 action figure on Boxing …
As the late-summer harvest reaches its peak, I’ve been covering the basics of homemade jams and jellies. Making delicious, well-set preserves isn’t alchemy but you do need to have a few basic pieces of equipment and understand what’s required to make jams safe. Below is …
Even with a solid recipe, good ingredients and the right equipment, telling when a jam or jelly is set can be tricky. If you don’t cook it long enough you can end up with fruit sauce. If you cook it too long you have a …
For those who are coming late to this series on homemade preserves, you might want to read the two previous posts. 1. Essential Tools for Making Preserves and 2. Key Ingredients for Great Homemade Jams and Jellies. For those, like me, who just want to …
So, now that you have all the preserving equipment at hand, what goes into a delicious, properly set — and safe — batch of jam or jelly? Other than a recipe written and tested post-1989? Not all that much. You actually require more equipment than ingredients …
I made my first batch of jam with nothing more specialized than two Dutch ovens and mismatched mason jars that had been collecting dust and dead spiders in the basement. Because I feared spiders more than bacteria, I put all my effort into sterilizing the …
My Cherished Canadian Recipe Everyone in my immediate family uses the same shortbread recipe. We got it from my mother, who got it from her mother, who got it from a rather odd neighbour. My grandmother wanted the recipe so badly she dutifully wrote out …
The other day I admitted I had a great big culinary knowledge gap. Oh, I was willing to share my apricot ignorance, but I was a bit smug about peaches. I considered myself a veritable Ms Know-It-All when it came to my favourite stone fruit. …
Ever feel like you’re the last person to learn something? For example, did you know WTF does not stand for “What’s the fuss?” Or maybe you were absent for the lesson on narwhals. How else would you know they’re real creatures and not some Disney …