bacon and egg breakfast cups

I had seen pictures of these bacon and egg "muffins" floating around the internet for a few months now and have always wanted to try them. So a few weekends ago, I decided to pull up a recipe and give them a go. They were ok, but there were a few things I didn't like, so I tweaked the recipe and tried again. 

My second attempt was pretty awesome. I'm a big fan of breakfast foods - whether eaten at actual breakfast time or some other time of the day (yep, "breakfast for dinner" is a regular thing in our kitchen!) so here's my take on bacon and egg breakfast cups!

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

green peas and bacon

For this month's Missing Ingredient Challenge, the new foodiepages blog editor, Devon, asked me to come up with something using fresh green peas. Hmm...green peas. My total experience with green peas has generally been reserved for two options: tinned or frozen. But, since it's summertime, this is the best time of the year to experiment with fresh ingredients, so off I went in search of green peas.

The Missing Ingredient Challenge: green peas

Green peas are currently in season here in Ontario and we recently bought some “just picked” peas from a roadside farm stand (seriously, I actually had a lot of trouble trying to find fresh green peas at the grocery store!).

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).

pan-fried mahi-mahi with honey grapefruit dressing

Ever since our honeymoon in Hawaii many years ago, Paul and I have always been partial to mahi-mahi. Also known as dorado or dolphin fish (relax people, it's not related to dolphins in any way), mahi-mahi is a very "meaty" fish. By meaty, I mean that the texture is much more substantial and "sturdy" (but not tougher) compared to other fish, which are often lighter and flakier. Because of the heavier texture, mahi-mahi is great on the grill or pan-fried and I love cooking with it because it never falls apart on me when I'm moving it around.

The other day, Paul wanted something light for dinner, so I pulled out some mahi-mahi fillets and when I noticed we had some pink grapefruit in the fridge, I pulled those out too.

This meal takes no time to make and is a perfect, light dinner for hot summer evenings!

pesto cheeseburgers

Paul makes awesome burgers. Seriously awesome burgers. One of his secrets is to add some "moisture" ingredient to the meat before shaping the patty - it can be mustard, pesto sauce, barbeque sauce, beer...really, there are an unlimited number of options. But that addition really flavours and moistens the burger.

Our next creation with Maison Le Grand sauces was a pesto cheeseburger. It's barbeque season, so of course, we had to include a grilling recipe!  :)

rustic chicken pasta bake

Paul and I make our own tomato sauce all the time - in fact, we've never purchased tomato sauce before and we have bought pesto sauce, but mainly because fresh basil is expensive and for some reason, basil is the only plant that refuses to grow in our garden. We have never, however, purchased or made rosee sauce. I've ordered pasta with rosee sauce in restaurants, but we've never had it at home.

Maison Le Grand recently sent me some samples of their sauces, including their new collection of rosee sauces, to create some recipes with. I didn't want to use them to make normal pasta dishes with (ie. make regular pasta, cover with sauce), so Paul and I brainstormed some more interesting dishes.

One pasta dish that I always want to make more often is a pasta bake (or skillet bake), so the first recipe we tried used Maison Le Grand's Rustic Rosee Tomato Sauce.

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!

watch out kitchen - i'm making macarons!

If you haven't been able to tell from my blog, Twitter and Instagram feeds - I love macarons. A lot. Paul likes them well enough, but I ADORE them. I even managed to talk Suzie (my sister) into giving macarons out as her wedding favours just so I could eat more macarons. LOL. It's gotten to the point where I get upset when I see people mix up the terms "macarons" and "macaroons" (which I also like, but let's be serious, they are not the same thing).

As my love affair with macarons started getting a little more "obsessive", I realized that my wallet really couldn't keep up with my appetite, so I started looking into baking my own.

As a rookie baker, I'm really nervous when recipes are complicated and generally I tend to stick to simple recipes. After reading all over the internet about how difficult and finicky macarons were to make, I was daunted. Hungry, but daunted. In the end though, my hunger for macarons won out and I started looking for recipes and baking tips.

Macarons from Butter Avenue

There are many, many, MANY wonderful blogs posts, cookbooks and internet articles on how to make this beloved little French pastry but there were four blogs that I returned to again and again while doing my research (and mentally psyching myself up for the challenge):

• For flavour inspiration, recipes and delicious photos, I love scrolling through Amy's Food Adventures and Sylvia's A Baked Creation blogs
• For a ton of macaron making info, I relied heavily on Eat. Live. Travel. Write and Bravetart

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.

pink pepper hot chocolate

The Missing Ingredient Challenge: pink peppercorns

Pink peppercorns look like regular peppercorns and have a peppery flavour, but are not actually related to regular peppercorns. These pinkish-red dried berries can often be found in gourmet stores or bulk food stores (where I found my supply) and are sometimes even found mixed in with regular peppercorns. When Erin from www.foodiepages.ca asked me to use pink peppercorn in my next post for the "The Missing Ingredient" series I was a little nervous - this was something I had never really even heard of before! I mean, I remember seeing a few pink/reddish peppercorns in my pepper mill, but I was supposed to create something with them?

I experimented with a few different tastes by taking recipes I've used before and substituting pink peppercorns into them as the main flavour. This one ended up as one of our favourites – it’s a savoury twist to the always popular hot chocolate.

sriracha mayo

The Missing Ingredient Challenge: sriracha

Sriracha is a hot sauce originating from Thailand that's essentially a paste of chili peppers, distilled water, vinegar, garlic, sugar and salt. One popular version of Sriracha is produced by Huy Fong Foods, which has a rooster on its green-topped bottle, hence Sriracha is often referred to as “Rooster Sauce”.

Frequently used as a dipping sauce or condiment, Sriracha was named as the 2010 Ingredient of the Year by Bon Appétit magazine and its popularity has only increased in the past few years (although it's still a little weird to me to see the Rooster bottle at hot dog carts and small-town burger joints!). Sriracha can also be incorporated into many recipes that call for a hot sauce or chili paste to give it a slightly different kick.

A very tasty use of Sriracha is this extremely simple Sriracha mayo (originally posted as part of my "The Missing Ingredient series over on the foodiepages.blog). Even though it only has two ingredients, it will take your mayonnaise to a whole new level - Paul and I LOVE this mayonnaise alternative.

bacon jam

Several months ago, I connected with Erin, the mastermind behind foodiepages.com - an "online farmer's market" where you can "buy directly from Canada's best food producers, farmers and artisans". Erin had sent out a tweet looking for a new writers for the foodiepages blog, and since I was looking to add to my writing portfolio, I emailed her to express my interest.

What resulted from our emailed conversation is a monthly series of blog posts on the foodiepages blog called "The Missing Ingredient" in which I experiment with a new (to me) and generally lesser-known ingredient each month.

I was a little nervous when Erin first asked me to take this challenge on - being still relatively new in the kitchen, I'm much more comfortable with well-known ingredients and following recipes written by someone else. But I have to admit, I'm having a lot of fun trying to figure out what to do with the ingredients that Erin suggests for me and whenever she suggests the next ingredient, Paul and I always have a fun conversation about 1) where the heck are we going to find the ingredients and 2) what the heck are we going to make with it. Creating my own recipes is also a lot of fun, especially when they turn out edible!

I'll be sharing some of the recipes that I've created for "The Missing Ingredient" here on kitchen frolic, but if you want to see them all right now, you can head over to the foodiepages blog archives.