Bake with abandon!
According to my mother, I have loved butter ever since I was old enough to sneak a one-pound brick of it out of the grocery bag, quietly peel back the foil, lick off a good inch, rewrap the evidence and slip it back in the …
These are elephant ears. Or palm ears. Or palmiers. Or French hearts, or butterflies or glasses. No matter what you call them, these sugar-laced puff pastry treats are one of my all time favourites. Like most things worthwhile, they are a labour of love. And …
One of these days I’ll learn how to take notes, shoot pictures and eat, all at once. This sort of multi-tasking would have come in very handy last week when I attended a paella class at Pimenton in Toronto. Greeted by a table full of tapas, …
Shrove Tuesday doesn’t have to include pancakes. Today is really about gorging on rich foods before the 40-day fast of Lent. Pancakes just happen to be cooked in grease, filled with eggs and topped with more decadence. It’s okay to think beyond the griddle. Any …
It’s time to strike another item off my Culinary Bucket List. In an uncharacteristic display of patience, I tackled preserved lemons. They require endurance, not because they are hard to make, but because they take 4 weeks to cure. In the meantime, to scratch my …
Email. Some days I love it. Some days I hate it. And I was hating it something fierce recently when my computer insisted it had to “rebuild” my inbox and in doing so resent random emails from March 2010. This elicited confused responses from the …
One of the items on my culinary bucket list was granary bread. I wanted to create my own version of a seed-loaded hearth bread I used to get from a local bakery. Their bread was dense without being heavy — something you could sink your …
As a food writer, I’ve dabbled in the gluten-free world. I’ve bought guar gum and xanthan, various rice flours, teff, sorghum and nutmeals. They’re taking up a lot of room in my spiffy new pantry along with the gluten-loaded all-purpose, whole wheat, cake & pastry, …
Last year, due to circumstances beyond my control, I didn’t do any Christmas baking. Not so much as a single shortbread came out of my kitchen. But this year? I’m making up for the loss. The rumballs are rolled, the eggnog is chilling and now it’s …