birthday cupcakes: earl grey tea (aka london fog) cupcakes

My sister's birthday was back in September and she chose Earl Grey as her birthday cupcake flavour and I was pretty excited to get baking. I already had a great Earl Grey buttercream recipe (why is everyone surprised by that?) so I figured it would be pretty simple to create a cupcake recipe around this.

These turned out pretty awesome - the subtle flavour of Earl Grey got stronger after sitting for a day, so when Suzy picked them up, they were pretty good. The best thing is that she really enjoyed them - at a rate of one cupcake a day.  :)

I also loved the cute cupcake papers I found for these Earl Grey cupcakes - they were a pretty blue with pink flowers - perfect for a tea party!

I also like to refer to these as London Fog cupcakes. One of my favourite drinks is the London Fog - a drink created in Vancouver, Canada that incorporates Earl Grey tea, vanilla and milk - very much like these cupcakes!

brown rice pudding

Growing up in a Chinese household, I ate rice. A LOT of rice. Plain white rice. Every day. Every single day. So...needless to say - I've had more than enough experience cooking plain white rice. It was my "job" as a young child to "wash" the rice and measure out the water, so I can pretty much make rice with my eyes closed with a rice cooker.

However, my experience with brown rice? That would be a big fat zero. So when I was asked to cook a recipe using USA brown rice, I was happy to take on the challenge. Did you know that 65% of the rice consumed in Canada is grown in the US? I sure didn't!

Some other pretty interesting rice facts:

• rice is grown in six US states: Arkansas, Lousiana, California, Mississippi, Texas and Missouri.
• rice has been produced in the US for more than 300 years
• there are thousands of rice varieties. 
• one seed of rice yields more than 3,000 grains. It's the highest yielding cereal grain and can grow in many kids of environments and soils (it's grown on every continent except Antarctica

With these cool facts in mind and brown rice in hand, I wanted to create something we had never had before. Rice pudding is one of Paul's favourite desserts, so I thought it would be fun to try creating this comfort food dessert with brown rice instead of the usual white.

This dish was really nice warm, and would be perfect for a winter evening, but it's also great cold (which is how I like to eat my rice pudding).

birthday cupcakes: cherry cola cupcakes

Paul is a HUGE fan of Cherry Coke. Actually, he's a huge fan of Cherry Coke, Cherry Coke Zero, Vanilla Coke and Vanilla Coke Zero. All of which are tough to find here in Toronto (some convenience stores sell individual cans, but it's next to impossible to buy these by the case at a reasonable price). So whenever someone we know makes a trip to the US and offers to pick up something for us, we often ask for pop.

Recently, my co-worker was kind enough to bring Paul back a case of Cherry Coke and for his birthday, Paul chose Cherry Coke as his flavour of choice for his birthday cupcakes.

treat petite: pumpkin spice cupcakes

For Thanksgiving (which we celebrate in October here in Canada), Paul's family always gets together for a big turkey feast. Everyone contributes a little something and we end up with A LOT of food (this year there were 36 of us and that was only a small part of the family!). I decided to bake some cupcakes for the party - and in keeping with the big trend these days (and the fact that Thanksgiving is never complete without something pumpkin), I chose to make some Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes.

As an added bonus, these cupcakes are perfect for my second "Treat Petite" challenge from Stuart (aka Cakeyboi) and Kat (aka The Baking Explorer). The theme for October's challenge, hosted by Stuart, is "Halloween" and Halloween definitely isn't complete without PUMPKINS!

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

birthday cupcakes: lemon curd cupcakes

My mother-in-law chose "lemon pudding" as her birthday cupcake flavour, which really put my mind into a tailspin. Lemon pudding? In a cupcake? How the heck was I supposed to achieve that?

And then, inspiration just dropped into my lap. Actually, it was delivered to my front door in the form of Mackays. You see, the lovely folks from Mackays over in Scotland have put out a #bakingwithmackays challenge to food bloggers and I was lucky enough to be sent a package of their goodies to experiment with. One of the lovely jars I received was their Lemon Curd.

So, confession time - I've never had lemon curd before. I may have had it in a dessert at some point, but if so, I don't remember. So I wasn't sure what it would taste like when I opened up the jar, but I was hoping it would be a suitable lemon flavour to base a cupcake around. Oh. My. God. This stuff is AWESOME! I ate about 3 huge spoonfuls before I had to remind myself that I needed some to bake with. But seriously, where has lemon curd been all my life?

Obviously, you can substitute any lemon curd into this cupcake (or even a different flavoured curd), but for me, it's pretty much always going to be Mackays Lemon Curd (unless of course, it's their Lime Curd...oooohhhh).

birthday cupcakes: chocolate Nutella cupcakes

Both my brother-in-law, Dave, and my sister-in-law, Alex, answered with an emphatic "chocolate" when I asked them what flavour they wanted their birthday cupcakes to be.

After a little more thought, Alex added that she wouldn't mind Nutella cupcakes either. Since I was delivering the cupcakes to both of them on the same weekend, I decided to cheat a little and bake them both chocolate Nutella cupcakes. 

I never ended up eating any of these cupcakes, although I did have a few mini bites made with the leftover batter. I did, however, get lots of comments from the ones that did get to eat the cupcakes so I have a fairly good idea of how they turned out.

birthday cupcakes: Crown Royal whiskey cupcakes (aka Boozy Cupcakes)

I never gave my father-in-law a chance to choose his birthday cupcake flavour - it was always going to be Crown Royal cupcakes.

You see, many years ago, when Paul and I were still dating, I gave a bottle of Crown Royal Canadian whiskey to his dad for Christmas after Paul told me it was his favourite. The tradition was born. Ever since, I have gifted Paul's dad with a bottle of Crown Royal every Christmas.

Many bottles of Crown Royal later, I didn't hesitate that this would be the flavour to kick off my birthday cupcake series.

birthday cupcakes for the family

Earlier this year, I had the crazy idea to bake cupcakes for each of my close family members on their birthday. But, not just any cupcakes - these were going to be special birthday cupcakes based on a flavour that was either requested by them or chosen by me based on what I think they'd enjoy.

This was going to be a great learning experience for me because...well, first off - I'm not that great at baking cupcakes. They generally come out okay (in other words, edible), but not swoon-worthy. Plus my piping skills are horrible. And I mean horrible, I mean HORRIBLE.

However, since my last cupcake attempt many months ago, I have managed to become a little better at managing my oven (thanks to my macaron experiments), plus I have an amazing buttercream recipe that has become my standard frosting/filling, so I figured this would be a good time to pull out the old cupcake tins and give it another go.

If nothing else, it would make for a fun series of blog posts, right?

So, I hit the store and bought a variety of cute cupcake liners, large frosting tips (I never realized that there were HUGE frosting tips, which I'm hoping would improve my piping skills and pulled out the cupcake carrier I got from Alex (my sister-in-law) at Christmas.

I then announced my plans to my family.

You could hear crickets, I swear.

After they figured out what the heck I was trying to explain ("yes, you get to choose the flavour, but not EXACTLY the flavour, I'm going to INTERPRET the flavour you choose.") they got into the spirit and gamely told me what kind of cupcakes they would like for their birthday.

Some, of course, were easier than others: Chocolate? I can handle that! Beer? Ummm...I think I'll need a few practice batches for that! But overall, I think this is going to be a fun ongoing series of blog posts. I'll be sure to also mention how successful (or not) each recipe was!

Check back soon as I'll start sharing my birthday cupcake series results!

granita di caffe con panna

The Missing Ingredient Challenge: coffee

One of our favourite discoveries we travelled to Rome for the first time last year was the Tazza d’Oro, a small coffee shop that sits by the Pantheon and is famous for its coffee. There were some wonderful coffees on the menu, but Paul and I only had eyes (and taste buds) for one - the Granita di Caffe con Panna (coffee granita with whipped cream).

Consisting of layers of thick whipped cream and coffee granite (made with a deep, rich espresso), we had this almost every day that we were in Rome and it was one of the first things that Paul tried to create in our kitchen once we returned home. After a few tries, he's come up with a recipe that's pretty darn close. It's super simple to make, but still manages to be an impressive dessert - perfect to end a a meal on a warm summer evening.

afternoon tea at butter avenue

Recently, Yvonne from th3hungrycat invited me to join her and her sister for Afternoon Tea at Butter Avenue and I didn't hesitate to accept. I was excited for a few reasons:

• Yvonne's tweets about Butter Avenue always have me drooling
• from their website, it looked like Butter Avenue's Afternoon Tea would have a modern twist
• one word: macarons. Yes, macarons for Afternoon Tea.

Butter Avenue is a small, peaceful little cafe, with a clean, simple look that really liked. After settling in, we were given a Tea Menu to choose our drinks from - you can actually open up each little jar to smell the tea before making your choice. Calvin, who co-owns Butter Avenue with his sister Tina, mentioned that Roasted Almond is one of their most popular teas, so that's the one I chose. It has a lovely, nutty smell and steeps to a beautiful deep pink colour.

Besides drinks, Afternoon Tea at Butter Avenue consists of three components:

1. amuse-bouche
2. macarons
3. mini tarts and cakes

After ordering our teas, we were invited to go to the counter and choose three macarons. It was a tough choice, I tell you, but I ended up going with a tea theme and chose Matcha, Earl Grey and Lemon.

haupia (coconut pudding)

Paul and I both have a soft spot for Hawaii. It was where we spent our honeymoon (two glorious weeks - one on Oahu and one on Kauai) and we hope to go back in a couple of years. Although I wasn't as food-obsessed back then as I am now, we still did manage to eat really well while we were there - fancy restaurants, local watering holes and fruit stands on the side of the road - we tried it all. 

The one thing about Hawaii is the fresh ingredients - there's so much amazing local produce and the flavours are so different than what we normally find here in Canada.

To that end, when I saw a photo of haupia on Pinterest, I knew I had to make it. 

Haupia is a traditional Hawaiian dessert that is basically a coconut pudding. It's slightly thicker than custard, but not quite as resilient gelatin (which I found out when I attempted to cut it). The flavour is very subtle, so if you want an intense coconut flavour, this dessert isn't what you're looking for. But, it has a wonderfully true coconut flavour, cool and refreshing. It's actually a perfect dessert for a hot summer day or after a spicy meal.

Haupia is traditionally thickened with pia (Polynesian arrowroot), but since that's hard to find, I've used the more common cornstarch, but I do hope to get my hands on pia soon to see if that makes a difference to the recipe.

p.s. I was watching Hawaii Five-0 and eating haupia while typing up this recipe because nothing goes with a sweet Hawaiian dessert like watching the H50 team in action. (Yeah, you totally just found out one of my guilty pleasures!)

cocoa meringue bites

As we get closer to December, I've been doing a lot more baking than usual. Partly because I've been trying new recipes ahead of the busy holiday baking blitz, but also because I wanted to try some new cookie recipes for my upcoming Cookie Advent Calendar.

I pulled these meringues out of a baking cookbook that I've never used before (I seem to have a lot of cookbooks that fall into that category). They were super-easy to make, although I have modified the recipe a little for my own tastes.

After posting a photo of these meringue bites on Twitter, I ended up in the midst of a debate (with some really amazing bakers) on whether or not meringues (and macarons) should be classified as "cookies". I have never thought of meringues as cookies, but then again, I had never thought of bar desserts (ie. brownies, lemon bars) as cookies either and apparently they are. That's what I love about this whole food blogging adventure - I'm learning so much every day!

In any case, I think of these meringue bites more of a dessert (or confection) than a cookie. Especially because I think they would make a lovely base for a dessert - either crumbled up with some ice cream or (if you flatten them out before baking) as a base for some jam and whipped cream.

Whether you eat these plain like a cookie (like we have been) or use them as part of a more fancy dessert, they're delicious and very easy to make.

lemon shortbread bars

I love lemons. I love their scent, their taste and their bright, sunny yellow colour, so it's definitely one of my favourite ingredients to cook with. It's even better if a recipe calls for zesting lemons - then the entire kitchen smells heavenly!

I've never made lemon bars before and I've also never made shortbread before (although Paul makes amazing shortbread cookies), so this recipe was definitely something new for me on all levels. It was a fairly simple recipe to follow (I've tweaked it a bit based on my experience with it) but it does take a while to finish the bars and there's a lot of waiting involved, so make sure you have an afternoon set aside to make these.

Now, my own personal test for any recipe is alwaysPaul's reaction. He's brutally honest when it comes to tasting my cooking/baking, and I can usually tell within 10 seconds if a recipe is a success or not. So, when he tried these lemon bars for the first time and didn't say anything at first, I feared the worst. I anxiously asked him how they were and he said (and I quote), "You can't serve these to people. If they taste them, they'll keep asking for more." Haha - they're a hit!

A couple of things to keep in mind, especially if you're baking these ahead of time for the holiday season:

• dust them with icing sugar ONLY if you plan on serving them soon afterwards. If you plan on storing these covered, the icing sugar melts into the lemon topping (it leaves a shiny glaze, which isn't terrible, but just not as pretty as the sugar dusting)
• if you eat the bars on the same day that they're made, the shortbread is almost flaky and crispy; if you store them covered overnight, they lose their flakiness and take on a more buttery and cookie feel (both ways are delicious and highly recommended!)

These bars keep in the refrigerator for at least 4-5 days after baking - although I'm not sure if they'd last that long anyway if you live in a house full of lemon-lovers!

pumpkin spice baked doughnut holes

It's been awhile since I pulled out my babycakes cake pops maker, so I figured Thanksgiving would be a great time to try another recipe. We had two Thanksgiving dinners to hit, so I wanted something that featured pumpkin, but that was easy to make.

These aren't the traditional cake pops (the ones that are a mash of cake and frosting) but are more of a mix between a cake pop and a doughnut hole (since doughnuts are traditionally fried, I wasn't sure if they were real doughnut holes either). To make these baked doughnut holes, I modified a pumpkin spice muffin recipe that I love so they ended up fluffy and moist.

I know it's never a good idea to make a new recipe for a large getogether, but hey, I like living dangerously (haha, not really), but I figured that since no one knew I was bringing a dessert, if this turned into a massive fail, I could just leave the entire mess at home.

Turned out that I didn't have anything to worry about - these turned out really good. My brother-in-law, Mike, doesn't like pumpkin anything, but even he enjoyed these, since the pumpkin flavour is really subtle. I coated the first batch in cream cheese frosting, but they're just as good without frosting, if you prefer something a little less sweet.

gelato for breakfast? it's ok, i'm an adult now

As a kid, I always thought that one of the coolest things about "growing up" would be that I could eat anything I wanted...whenever I wanted. Like ice cream. What kid doesn't dream about eating ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

Although I'm well into adulthood now, I don't think I've ever actually eaten frozen desserts instead of my daily meals, but on our recent trip to Rome, I did have gelato instead of a meal at least twice! My excuse was that it was so incredibly hot that I needed the frozen treat to cool me down and keep me hydrated! Haha! Wait, why did I need an excuse? I'm an adult! Bring on the gelato!

Before heading to Italy, I think I've had gelato a whopping total of three times in my life. I was too busy eating ice cream...or sherbet/sorbet, if I wanted something "different" from the frozen desserts menu. So, what makes gelato different? Check out this helpful infographic for more info on the differences between gelato and other frozen scoopables.

When I tell you that there are gelaterias everywhere in Rome, I'm not exaggerating. They're EVERYWHERE. So it was easy to indulge in gelato pretty much from the moment we stepped outside of our hotel until we turned in for the night. (Really, did I need another reason to love Rome?)

We always stuck to the medium size (not sure why) and generally, a medium gelato ran us between 2.50 to 4 Euros. I love that the price was relatively the same, but the quantity and quality definitely varied!

When ordering gelato, you can actually choose more than one flavour for your "scoop" (unlike the ice cream stores here in Canada), and some places will also dollop some nice fresh cream on top of your gelato.

The first gelato we had in Rome was from the Blue Ice chain of gelaterias. Not exactly what you would call "high-end" gelato...but we were walking by and they were very "not-intimidating". This is one of those places where they stick "examples" of the ingredient on top of the gelato so that you can visually see what flavour you may be getting. Since this was our first taste of Italian gelato, it tasted fine to our yet-uneducated taste buds. I had Limone (I had already decided before our trip that my first gelato would be lemon-flavoured) while Paul opted for the ever-popular Pistachio flavour.

After this first introduction to run-of-the-mill gelato, our second scoops were from I Caruso Gelateria. We walked quite far from our hotel for this, but as soon as we heard about this place we knew we had to visit it no matter what (I mean, Caruso)! What a difference! This is the real deal - ral artisan gelato. There's a guy in the shop window MAKING GELATO! And the flavours are listed up on a board. If you look down, there are no colourful flavours or ingredient clues - in fact, the gelato is all covered up with lids. Since the ingredient board was in Italian and the server didn't speak any English, we were on our own.

I opted for Caffe while Paul tried the Amaretto (two words we actually recognized). The gelato was sooooo good. We sat outside the gelateria and after we finished, we went back in for a second scoop. Mine was Ananas (Pineapple), while Paul had Fior de Panna (a vanilla cream). Out of the four, the pineapple really wowed us. In fact, I think it was our favourite gelato of the entire trip (although I did try a close second later on at San Crispino). The pineapple flavour was incredibly fresh and the gelato was smooth and creamy. We would have headed back here again during the trip if it wasn't so darn far from our hotel!

After reading some reviews online, we had two more gelato shops we wanted to check out - Giolitti (said to be the oldest gelateria in Rome) and San Crispino. Both of these are generally at the top of any "Best Gelato in Rome" lists we found, both online and in guidebooks.

kawartha cravings in peterborough

Last week I had four glorious days off from work so Paul and I scooted up north to relax and do nothing (well, Paul continued building a deck, while I relaxed). In between the sunning, napping and general laziness, we actually went to Peterborough a couple of times, including a trip on Saturday with Paul's brother, Mike, and our future sister-in-law, Alex. I was happy to discover that there was a Kawartha Dairy store in town so (of course) we headed there so I could continue my conquest of the Kawartha ice cream menu board!

I already had my next flavour chosen before I got to the counter (although I still had to take a look at everything on offer). I only went with one scoop this time and tried Muskoka Mocha - "mocha flavoured ice cream with mocha fudge sauce, mocha crumb, and chocolate fish". Yes, after the little chocolate turtles from the Caramel Snappers, I went with little chocolate fish this time. This ice cream is a nice subtle taste and the chocolate wasn't too sweet, with a hint of mocha. Loved it.

Paul ordered a scoop of Black Raspberry Thunder - "a smooth white chocolate ice cream with the tangy taste of black raspberry marble and white chocolate chunks", which I've been told is a very popular flavour. We can understand why. This flavour is now one of our favourites - a nice, strong raspberry flavour with the softness of the white chocolate. Definitely one that we'll be ordering again in the future!

Mike couldn't resist ordering his absolute favourite flavour, Moose Tracks, but was kind enough to also tack on a second scoop of something I hadn't tried before (see the sacrifices my family makes for my blog?). Seeing how he loves his chocolate and peanut butter combo, his second scoop had to be Chocolate Peanut Butter - "chocolate ice cream with peanut butter cookie dough pieces and a ripple of peanut butter". Moose Tracks is still number one. After an initial hit of peanut butter, the rest just didn't have enough PB taste to really leave an impression. Verdict? Moose Tracks is still #1 for him.

After taking a look at the choices, Alex settled on Heavenly Hash - "marshmallow ice cream and chocolate ice cream combined with chocolate covered peanuts". Not exactly the same as other Heavenly Hashes on the market, the chocolate covered peanuts really stand out and make this an enjoyable flavour. For all your purists out there though, this definitely isn't the same as the traditional Heavenly Hashes.

Of the four new flavours we tried, Paul's Black Raspberry Thunder was definitely my favourite of the day and is also one of my favourites overall.

Whew! FOUR more flavours off the list bringing my total up to 14!

another weekend, another kawartha dairy scoop

We spent Canada Day weekend up by Pigeon Lake again and, as always, there was lots of eating, socializing and sunning to be done. Did I mention the eating? More than once, someone was heard to comment, "It feels like all we do is eat up here!" How true.

But, not to fret - in between noshing on Nathan's hot dogs, thick steaks and homemade chorizo, I did manage to convince Paul to take a quick trip to Bobcaygeon so I could cross another flavour off my Kawartha Dairy checklist (actually I crossed off THREE flavours!)

Bobcaygeon was full of people, walking around and enjoying the hot, sunny summer weather (apparently we had just missed the Canada Day parade). The only disappointment was that our favourite place to get butter tarts was gone (after years and years of business) and its replacement...well, let's just say that the price was still high, but the butter tarts were much smaller and not as good.

Good thing I had my double scoop of ice cream as consolation! This time around, I definitely went with a caramel theme and tried Caramel Snappers (on top)  - "caramel filled chocolate turtles in toffee flavoured ice cream twirled with thick English Toffee" and unLOCKED and loaded - "caramel flavoured ice cream complete with a milk chocolate ripple, chocolate coated peanuts and sugar cone pieces". Both were pretty good, but two scoops of caramel-flavoured goodness ended up being a little too much for me. The Caramel Snappers was really sweet (a little too sweet for me), but the caramel filled little turtles were adorable. I liked unLOCKED and loaded more, and Paul enjoyed the sugar cone pieces (although neither of us understood where the name came from).

Paul surprised me again with another unusual ice cream choice. This time he went with Mango - "a smooth and creamy ice cream with that distinctive Mango colour and flavour". I've had mango-flavoured ice cream before, and usually it's never as good as the real fruit. This one was pretty much the same - the flavouring is a little too artificial, although it did resemble mango. Definitely the least favourite of the new flavours we've tried so far.

Unfortunately I didn't get a shot of the Mango ice cream, but here's one of the adorable little chocolate turtles that were scattered throughout my scoop!

So, for those keeping track - here's how I'm doing with my Kawartha Dairy ice cream challenge!