Bake with abandon!
Having stomped the snow from my boots, I place them on the rack and step my stockinged foot squarely into a freshly formed puddle of melting ice. Welcome to winter in Canada. I might get my citizenship revoked for saying this, but hockey does not …
I always assumed sugarplums were plum-shaped candies made of marzipan and dusted in sugar. When I asked friends and family for their theories, guesses ranged from holiday jellies to booze-soaked prunes. We had never seen, let alone tasted one. To us, these Christmas confections existed only in Clement Clarke Moore’s poem …
This recipe is a game changer. It turns baklava into a no-fail dessert for two types of Baklava Balkers — those who think phyllo is too hard to work with, and those who think the classic Greek dessert is too sweet. I’ve blogged about working with …
When I was very little, I thought my mother knew everything. Absolutely everything. If I had a question, she had an answer. If I had a problem, she had a solution. She cured my near-fatal bout of the mumps with teeny-tiny vanilla cupcakes. She could …
Seasons jumble in my head. Apricots and black currants are oh-so summer, except when the apricots are peaches and the currants are jam. Then it’s late fall — Thanksgiving to be specific. Confused? So am I. I started out with two tasks on my agenda 1) …
Writing a book is a lot like working in theatre. “Hurry up and wait!” is the mantra. You learn your lines (or write them in this case), hit your marks (deadlines) and then wait. For months. You watch the clock, the calendar and your nails …
Slice-and-bake shortbreads can be perfectly uniform and not put me off. I’ve no issue when one gingersnap looks exactly like the next. But I don’t trust chocolate chip cookies unless they resemble a culinary version of the Rorschach test. Although roughly the same size, each should bake …
Remember the colour wheel from Grade 6 art class where you learned that blue and orange were complementary colours and if you mixed them together you got icky khaki brown? Eventually, you or the evil genius in the next row figured out all the complementary …
Everything’s behind schedule. The spring bulbs, the roses, the fruit. And me. Especially me. While I chastise myself for tardiness, I’m actually pleased that Mother Nature is dragging her earth-encrusted feet. Here it is, almost July, and I’m harvesting armloads of rhubarb with leaves as …