Go with the grain on Valentine’s Day
Recipe: Whole Wheat Orange Shortbread Hearts
If you're looking for a healthy alternative to a box of heart-shaped bonbons for your true love, we've got just the right solution with whole wheat orange shortbread
By Louise Crosby
There’s a movement gaining steam to make baking more nutritious by using less white flour and refined sugar and more whole grains, nuts, seeds, fruit, good fats, and natural sweeteners. No doubt there have always been bakers who leaned in this direction, but Kim Boyce’s Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours, published in 2010, may have been that groundbreaking book that brought healthy baking into the mainstream. Alice Medrich’s 2014 Flavor Flours built on that trend, and today there’s a profusion of specialty cookbooks focusing on everything from coconut flour to agave nectar.
In my little world, Genevieve Ko’s 2016 Better Baking: Wholesome Ingredients, Delicious Desserts, picks up where Boyce and Medrich left off. ...
Christmas found in Stollen recipe
Recipe: Snidal’s Christmas Stollen
Most store-bought gifts will end up as landfill, so why not fill the tummies of loved-ones with delicious homemade goodies such as German Stollen instead?
By Louise Crosby
(December 14, 2016) - Since my family stopped exchanging gifts at Christmas, food has taken on more importance. This is that one time of the year when you can rationalize buying those fancy Spanish sardines in olive oil, some of that aged-to-perfection, sliced-paper-thin jamón ibérico, that sublime, creamy raw goat cheese from France. Expensive yes, but hey, it’s Christmas.
Of course, it’s also a time for baking. This year I’m making Mexican Wedding Cakes, Chocolate Hazelnut Crinkle Cookies, Coconut Stars, and Pecan Sandies. (Notice that all those cookies contain nuts!) I’m also making this stollen, a recipe that comes from Leslie Snidal, my friend in Nova Scotia who makes it every Christmas, as her mother did. It is baked earlier in December, wrapped up ...
Making the most of fall with Maple Shortbread
Food: Maple Shortbread Bar Recipe
The arrival of cool weather and woolly sweaters offers the perfect excuse to make a maple-based dessert featuring rich and gooey pecan filling over a shortbread base
By Louise Crosby
Well, here it is Thanksgiving already and plans are underway for a family get-together, not at the cottage on Lac Sam, in the Gatineau hills, where we often go for one last look at the lake and splendid fall colours, but here in the city, at my sister’s house, where a huge swing set has just been erected in the back yard for all the young ones to play on. (How’s that for an opening sentence?)
My contribution to our pot-luck feast is a vegetable dish to be determined, and a dessert. I did buy two small pie pumpkins a week ago thinking I’d make pies, but this being a busy time of year, when boilers need replacing, windows need washing, and the garden needs tidying, I’m considering alternatives. I’ll make something with those pumpkins when things settle ...
Tahini Shortbread opens sesame
Recipe: Tahini Shortbread Cookies
The pale, nutty paste is a staple in Middle Eastern cuisine, but tahini's smooth, creamy consistency also makes for a dreamy cookie full of good stuff
By Louise Crosby
Here on this side of the Atlantic, we know tahini best as an ingredient in hummus and baba ghanoush, or as a sauce for falafel and shawarma sandwiches. But in countries of the Middle East, the Mediterranean and beyond, this lovely stuff has been a staple for thousands of years, an indispensable ingredient in countless dishes savoury and sweet. They even put it on ice cream.
Just to refresh, tahini is pure sesame paste made from white sesame seeds that are soaked, then hulled, gently roasted, and ground to a silky smooth, creamy consistency. The paste, blended with garlic, lemon juice, salt and cumin, and thinned with a bit of water, becomes tahini sauce, also used in countless ways. The best sesame seeds come from the Humera region of Ethiopia, and the best tahini is emulsif...
Vanilla is exotic, the proof is in the pudding
Food Recipe: Vanilla Bean Rice Pudding
These days, when people say 'vanilla' they often mean boring, but the Mexican orchid flower responsible for the long, fragrant bean is anything but average -- and the same goes for this vanilla bean rice pudding
By Louise Crosby
This is turning out to be the summer of vanilla rice pudding. I’ve made this recipe – from food blogger Molly Wizenberg featured in bon appétit magazine – three times in the past two weeks, and as I write these words, another batch is burbling away on the stove. Eaten warm or icy cold from the refrigerator, it is rich and creamy and bursting with vanilla flavour, and we can’t get enough of it.
I’ve made the pudding twice with a vanilla bean and once with a generous tablespoon of Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon vanilla bean paste, which makes an excellent substitute if your store runs out of beans. I also threw in a fat cinnamon stick during the cooking of the last batch, making the flavours even more ...
