The competition is fierce in Abbey's Kitchen Stadium! *giveaway*

I have two tickets for this weekend's much-anticipated Abbey's Kitchen Stadium (AKS) event that I can't use, so I'm giving them away!

The Event:
Abbey's Kitchen Stadium: Battle Three (19+ event)
Sunday, September 29, 2013 from 1-4pm
722 College Street

AKS celebrates Toronto's vibrant food culture and brings together some of city’s hottest restaurant, food truck and pop-up vendor chefs to raise money for a local food initiative, My Food My Way. AKS has been modeled after the popularity of reality Food Network competition programs such as Chopped, Iron Chef, and Top Chef.

A secret ingredient will be revealed at the event and four of Toronto's culinary superstars will each prepare two dishes that showcase the chosen ingredient. Each chef will then be invited to present their dish to the celebrity judges on the stadium stage. Attendees will have the chance to purchase the dishes for $5 each.

Battle Three Chefs: 
Carl Heinrich (Richmond Station, Food Network's Top Chef Winner!)
Dave Sidhu (Playa Cabana)
Thomas Davis (The Stockyards)
Dustin Gallagher (Acadia, Food Network's Top Chef Competitor)

Battle Three Judges: 
Vikram Vij (Celebrity Restauranteur)
Alex Lifeson (Rush Guitarist & Rock Hall of Famer) 
Liem Vu (Host for Global TV's The Morning Show) 
Dee Brun (Cocktail Deeva, Stephen and Chris Show) 
Susan Merry (Owner, All the Best Fine Foods)

How to Enter (you can do one or the other, or both!):

1. Leave a comment on this blog post, answering the following question: "If you could pick the Secret Ingredient for AKS: Battle 3, what would you pick?" Don't forget to include an email address so that I can contact you if you win! (3 entries)
2. Follow @kitchenfrolic on Twitter and tweet the following: "Hey @kitchenfrolic! I want to win a pair of tickets to #AKS3 http://bit.ly/16LJQuV!" (You can do this as often as you like - 1 entry per tweet)

Notes:

• Contest runs Thursday, September 26 to Saturday, September 28 at noon. 
• The lucky winner will be chosen randomly through random.org and the winner will be announced (and contacted) shortly after the end of contest.

*** UPDATE ***

Thanks to everyone that entered! The winner was Jeffrey Ngo. Congratulations and enjoy the event!

Hot Bunzz celebrates TUMalum

One year ago, Paul and I attended our first Toronto Underground Market (TUM) and had a lot of fun, eating some really great food while we were there. Reading over my blog post from that event it's funny to remember that Paul's favourite food from that event was the Basil Beef Thai bun from Hot Bunzz because we have eaten A LOT of bunzz since then.

A few TUM vendors have gone on to launch their own bigger projects and have now become part of an elite group known as TUMalum. According to TUM's website, TUMalum are "either (1) a food vendor who started at TUM & now owns a successful & established food business OR (2) a food vendor whose development & success was directly impacted by TUM."

I have been lucky enough to be around to celebrate a few Hot Bunzz moments: we were there at their first TUM (although I didn't know it at the time) and I was invited to the launch of their first brick and mortar place inside Urban Bistro (21 St. Clair W). Well, I can now add another date to my Hot Bunzz timeline: earlier this week, I was there for a Sneak Peek (and First Bite) as they launched a special TUMalum collection to celebrate their first birthday (and TUM's second anniversary)!

For this milestone, Hot Bunzz introduced the TUM Alum Collection - "The first ever Collaboration of fellow TUM Alum friends with a lineup inspired by signature dishes stuffed into our signature Bunzz. 3 different Collaborationzz, 3 different new flavours!"

my week in food photos, september 16-22, 2013

my week in food photos, september 9-15, 2013

birthday cupcakes: frothy beer cupcakes

I wasn't all that surprised when Paul's brother, Mike, chose "beer" as his birthday cupcake flavour - Mike is a big fan of beer. I wasn't sure how beer would translate into a cupcake recipe, but he chose his flavour and stuck by it, so off I went in search of inspiration.

There weren't too many beer cupcake recipes on the internet (I was actually mildly surprised by this) but I did manage to find a few, and using them as inspiration, I whipped up my own version of beer cupcakes.

For the frosting, I took my go-to classic buttercream recipe (I've had fantastic results using this recipe as a base for pretty much any flavour I can think of) and added in beer. Instead of fancy piping (I had decided that manly beer cupcakes shouldn't have fancy-schmancy piped frosting) I used an ice cream scooper to place a large "plop" of frosting on each cupcake. Mike said it reminded him of the foam on top of a frosty mug of beer (hooray!), hence I named these "frothy beer cupcakes".

I have to say that these were the lightest cupcakes I've made in the "birthday cupcake" series. I think the beer added lightness to the batter. They have a subtle, but unmistakeable beer taste and the frosting adds another layer of beer flavour.

You can probably use any beer to make these cupcakes, but I'd recommend sticking to "lighter" beers, like white beers, pale lagers, etc. Something like Guinness might be too heavy and the recipe would probably need to be tweaked to handle that. I used Molson Canadian because we always have a lot of that hanging around.

On a side note, my mom, who doesn't drink beer at all and rarely eats sweets, made 3 of these cupcakes "disappear" over the weekend. I definitely need to make more of these soon!

pink grapefruit marmalade ice cream

The second recipe that I created for #bakingwithmackays isn't technically "baking", but who could say no to ice cream? Definitely not me!

One of the jars that Mackays sent to me was their Pink Grapefruit Marmalade. Now, anyone who knows me well knows that I LOVE pink grapefruit. So, when I had the idea to make ice cream with one of the Mackays products, I immediately reached for the pink grapefruit.

The final product was really creamy (Paul couldn't believe I had made it from scratch) and it had a nice, light vanilla-grapefruit flavour, with spikes of grapefruit "bite" from the peels that were in the marmalade. This is a perfect ice cream for the summer, but if you're like me...really, ice cream is a year-round treat

my week in food photos, september 2-8, 2013

my week in food photos, august 12 - september 1, 2013

In the past two weeks, I haven't taken many food photos, although I'm trying to get back into the habit.

In the meantime, here's a peek at what's been taking up a lot of our time when we're not at work...