Two types of crème brûlée, and pears poached in port

Sometimes, rather unexpectedly, you find yourself living in a largely Francophone city, working at a vegetarian restaurant, and learning fun new names for common foods. Pomme de terre, petis pois, pamplemousse.

Even more unexpectedly, one day your chef might catch wind of your excitement for baking, and set you challenges, recipes scrawled on pieces of paper, and a promise that if you can succeed in these then "you are a chef!"

Anyhow. I don't like to do things by halves, so when I told my friend Jesse about said recipes we stocked up on wine, poured ourselves some calvados, and embarked on a 48 hour dessert marathon. Here are the results.

There was also an apple rosemary sorbet, stirred and tended to every half hour until it set, though suffice to say we'd drank a bit too much of the calvados by that stage, so the frosty pink end product never got photographed.

 x CB

Psssst, guys.

Jesse and I are in the kitchen making extravagant French desserts.

More to come...

xCB

 

From tree to crumble, and other adventures.

Montreal autumns are driving me nuts.

I don't know whether it's the smell of falling leaves, the chillier weather making me crave comforts, or simply having a kitchen and people to cook for again, but I am churning out baked goods like a mad woman.

This morning we went apple picking about an hour out of the city near Laval. Sadly the season was close to over so we didn't officially get to pick a full bag (though a fair few limbs were climbed to rescue the last remaining few on the trees), but it was a spectacular day none the less. I tried a maple cider that blew my mind completely, and ate probably the best doughnut I've ever tasted.

Upon returning home, 5lbs of apples in hand, I thought it fit to put the pie dish my housemate gifted me - possible ulterior motive, there? - to good use and make the ultimate spiced crumble, complete with candied apple peel garnish.

Other recent baking adventures after the jump.

Tarte à la citrouille

The past 3 weeks I have been living on the couch of some of the nicest, most genuine people I've ever met.

Arriving in a city where you know no-one can be a challenge at the best of times. Throw in an elaborate Craigslist housing scam, a language you don't speak being prerequisite to most employment opportunities, and just enough adventures and new friends to make you addicted to the place, and it can be damn near impossible.

It's been a tough month. But I'm pleased to inform not only do I now have a house and a job, but a circle of friends I know I'll keep even when oceans get in the way again.

This weekend is Thanksgiving in Canada. A concept as foreign as I am, and an excuse to bake as many Fall related items as humanly possible. The first? Pumpkin pie with candied walnuts and maple whipped cream.

For Jade, Jenn, Hailey, Matt, and all the people - both here and across continents - who are making Montreal a home away from others.

xCB

The summer camp edition.

So I had a bad day back in December and decided that the perfect fix would be to apply for a job in Vancouver, BC. Then I actually got it.

Fast forward 8 months and I have just finished up the most intense 9 weeks of my life. It turns out that working at a residential camp for kids with special needs is more draining than pulling all-nighters at University ever could be, but also a lot more quotable and for the most part very fun.

There are two treats I have tried this summer which have probably blown my mind. The first, Nanaimo bars.  Thought to have originated in the town of Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, in the early 50s, these little no bake cookies have 3 layers of delicious; chocolate biscuit base, vanilla custard center, dark chocolate topping. Worth sneaking into the kitchen after curfew for.

The second of the Treats I Stole From Canada is apparently a campfire classic - Bannock. The origin of this one is controversial; some swear it is an indigenous quick bread while others claim it is of Scottish origin, but whatever the case it takes no time to make, has four ingredients, and is especially tasty when you add chocolate chips to it. I assume the oven baked version would be equally as nice, but there is something particularly satisfying about mixing ingredients up in a bag, wrapping it around a stick, then accidentally setting it alight over a campfire.

This time in 2 weeks I will have moved East and be wandering the streets of Montreal eating pastries and attempting to learn French at ILSC. In my Quebec fantasies I work at a patisserie, spend my days baking croissants and pain au chocolat, and my evenings drinking homemade chai and going on adventures with my housemates - who will obviously be dreamy bilinguals with exceptional taste in music, clothing, books, and crockery. In reality? Watch this space. At the very least it will be nice to have my own room with a bed, and access to a kitchen again.

Until next time.

xCB

My new favourite celebrity baker

As it turns out, Jamie Oliver is a baking god. My two most recent baking adventures - which, I'll admit, have been few and far between of late - have used recipes from his website.

In January, the most incredible chocolate brownies which I made for the first - and disappointingly only - installment of my summer 'dessertation' project (work in progress, that one)


And, just this week, toffee apple tart to take to a friend's place for dessert.




Although the latter took upwards of 6 hours to make in total it was pretty tasty, and making everything from the pastry right through to the dulce du leche satisfied my inner homemaker.



Conveniently I had enough pastry left to make a few tartlets as well. Hello, afternoon tea.

Recipes here and here.

x CB

Kahlua chocolate cake

Dinner parties are one of my greatest pleasures, and a last week we had a few people over to our house for a night of delicious food and wine, and seriously bad youtube.

We started off with potato and leek soup, followed up by two baked pasta dishes - lasagna and cannelloni - and finished with kahlua chocolate cake.


A rich cake topped with kahlua cream cheese icing and two types of Lindt chocolate. Over indulgence in it's finest.


x CB

Vegan gingerbread with lemon icing

Sometimes there is nothing better than baking when it's awful out.
On Tuesday there were thunderstorms in the Springs, and I spent the afternoon in the kitchen baking a vegan version of a personal favourite - gingerbread.

I realised pretty early in that I don't have my cookie cutters at my flat as yet (have to track those down before my next cookie adventure, I think!) but despite not looking quite as amazing as the Post Punk Kitchen batch the recipe came from (I used golden syrup in place of molasses) these tasted delightful and went down a treat with a cup of tea post-Slammers workout.


The icing for these, a must know: juice of one lemon, icing sugar, and vanilla extract to taste. Tart but sweet, so perfect.

xx CB

Chaos Cakes: They hold the inside line

A few weeks ago the Alpha Beta Slammers' pinkest Scot, Mazzy Chaos, accepted an amazing job and headed back to her homeland.

Although sad to see her go (it's not every day you make friends with a pack-savvy blocker with a penchant for "eating the baby" and listening to the Go! Team, after all) we threw her quite the Boozy Tuesday leaving party, complete with spontaneous dress ups, plastic wine, and "Chaos Cakes".


For some reason the food colouring I used in the mixture caused the cupcakes to rise in funny directions, so they were a bit weight heavy on one side. No worries, however! Nothing a little frosting couldn't fix and, as aptly pointed out by Scheisse Minelli, these pink and yellow adorned creations look like they're "holding the line"!


Enough with the roller derby references, I'm off for a nap and some snacks.
Stay tuned for more frequent posting (I promise!) and some very exciting projects in the coming months.

xx CB

Treacle tarts and crown lynn delights

Hello sweet treaters,

It's certainly been a while!
Since I last updated I've been busy with assignments, skating, and eating (but not so much baking) delicious treats.

I also moved house, and now have the pleasure of being able to cook in a beautiful kitchen with a gas hub and oven. Even better than that, though, is that both of my flatmates are also crockery enthusiasts, so our kitchen is a mashup of Crown Lynn delights. More on that later.

For now, treacle tarts!
If by chance you managed to hide from all social networking and news media over the past fortnight and hadn't caught on, last night was Kate and Will's wedding. Apparently the wedding of our generation an incredible 2 billion odd tuned in to watch, and viewing parties popped up all over the place. I'm not usually one who buys into media hype or the royal family but I am most definitely a fan of British desserts, so when Amber from Code For Something invited me to her Royal Wedding TV Special I put on my best frock, some heels, and tried out Heston Blumenthal's treacle tart recipe for the occasion.


Heston Blumenthal is a freaking genius. Though I can't claim to have made the pastry cases myself (not enough hours in the day, it would seem) these turned out absolutely delicious. The recipe called for brown bread instead of white, and a considerable amount more golden syrup than other recipes I've found. I'm glad I ended up halving the recipe because even with half quantities I ended up with 12 mini tarts and 4 cupcake sized tarts (sans pastry).

Making a beurre noisette with the butter was absolutely worth it, and added both colour and a nutty flavour to the final product. I also sprinkled the pastry cases and cooked tarts with vanilla bean sugar, which is my new favourite thing. Yum!

Leftover tarts for my flatmates

Peak at the best kitchen ever!

xx CB

Multi-coloured icing.

The best thing about frosting, apart from the fact it is made mostly of butter and powdered sugar, is that you can make it in so many colours and pipe it into delicious patterns. Ruby sent me a website tutorial on making swirly, multi-coloured icing a few months ago and this weekend I finally got around to trying it out.

Lemon cupcakes with orange and vanilla frosting.

Unfortunately I have lost my camera battery charger, so I am having to rely on awful quality photo booth photos to document my baking adventures. But! These were delicious and (once I'd figured out the best technique) very fun to decorate. I burst a piping bag on my first attempt, so switched to my icing gun, which I think I've decided is my new favourite baking must-have. Whoever decided a contraption that presses cookies, pipes icing, and looks totally badass in the process would be a good idea was a genius. Go. Buy one. Don't let people catch you pulling sweet secret agent moves with it.

xxCB

Grey Lynn Tarts with Tina Rae

It turns out my friend Tina Rae has a penchant for creating swoon worthy cakes. When I first stumbled upon the picture of this sweet little hen my eyes almost exploded, and flicking through her baking album I was unsure about whether it was more important for me to blog about it, or turn up on her doorstep apron in hand.

With bake dates in the pipeline (and permission to blog) I can now photospam you with the most delightful of cakey creations.

Drag cake!

Stove cake. If the hen made my eyes explode you can only imagine how happy this one made me.

So intricate and fun! As it turns out, Tina has just started up a little side project by the name of Grey Lynn Tarts. Baking out of her central Auckland kitchen she is churning out cakes and a variety of other sweet and savoury treats made to order. She takes custom requests too, so hop on over to her facebook page and support a fellow baker!

xCB

The Most Amazing Cookies

I have a soft spot for alliteration and adjectives, so when I came across this blog post on Can You Stay For Dinner I was instantly sucked in.

Writing style aside, these chewy cookie bars look divine and the ingredients list made me hungry just reading it. Lucky for me it was bFM Summer Series this weekend so I had a good excuse for some picnic baking.


General consensus is that these taste as good as they look. Perhaps not surprising given the pecan, white chocolate and brown sugar combination. They are pretty easy to make also, though be sure to leave the bars to cool fully before cutting them up or you'll end up with lots of crumbly bits (which aren't half bad on icecream, by the way...)

Be sure to head across and check out Andrea's blog, the photos are always beautiful and her recipe page is to die for.

xCB

Saturday food porn

Hello sweet treaters,

I had an operation yesterday and university has just gone back so everything is a bit hectic at the moment. Until I can find some time/energy to get my bake back on you should check out these drool-worthy photos of other people's creations (clicking on the image will take you to their blogs)

Cupcake in a jar.

Nutella meringues

Peanut butter candy bar squares

All I can say is "YUM"
Can't wait to try these out, so many good ideas for this year's Jukebox Jamboree.

x CB

Oh baby!

Sunday was the ever lovely Ruby Disaster's baby shower, and for the occasion I made her some cutesy cupcakes.

I have been meaning to try my hand at 3D fondant creations for a while, so it was fun to have a reason to play. I was also finally brave enough to try out my fancy new cookie/icing gun, and to be honest I'm a bit in love. Something about the sight of that swirly icing effect you get makes me so very happy.

Anyway, here are some photos of what I made:

Purple and green baby shower madness.

Mini chocolate cupcakes.

Full size cupcakes in chocolate and vanilla.

Close up on the fondant booties and duckies.

Baby shower itself was hilarious. My new favourite game is "Preggers or Porno", which is pretty much a bunch of facial shots and trying to guess whether it's someone giving birth, or someone having an orgasm. Surprisingly hard to tell the difference!

You can't really expect a tame baby shower from a bunch of rowdy derby girls, can you?

xCB

I have a confession

Baking is a little therapeutic for me. I may convert the kitchen to absolute chaos every time I enter it (the baking that follows resulted in a sink full of glucose syrup and a broken candy thermometer...), but the process of creating things out of sweet stuff is absolutely calming for me.

Pretty much, when I'm baking, I like to listen to things like this:

Pretend I have a kitchen like this:


And make things like this:

Frankie recipe: Cream Caramels

Oh. And like this:

Chocolate and vanilla shortbread

Happy Wednesday everyone!

xCB

Love-themed treats

Happy Valentine's Day!

I have an exam tomorrow, so baking has been off the cards for me this week.

If it hadn't been, however, I would have made these:

And probably this:

Hope your valentines is sugary sweet!

xCB

Sweet treats recipe: Shuku Shuku

I have to say when I first read the recipe for these sweet Nigerian cookies I was a little skeptical. Consisting of only caster sugar, egg yolk and desiccated coconut (plus flour and icing sugar for rolling) they didn't sound like anything too special.

I was pleasantly mistaken!

These little gems are super tasty, a little chewy, and SO easy to make. Simply mix 60 grams of caster sugar, 3 egg yolks and 80 grams of desiccated coconut into a firm dough-like consistency, work into marble sized balls, roll in a little self raising flour and bake on greaseproof paper for 10-15 minutes until golden. Once they've cooled you roll them again, this time in icing sugar.

And the very best thing? They take about 25 minutes to bake all up, and I only made 3 dishes the entire time. Going to have to remember these ones...

xCB