All posts by Stephanie

About Food

Cupcake Party!!

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Cupcake Party - solitaire

Last weekend, I completely gave into my cupcake obsession by holding a cupcake party.

The rules were simple: bring “gourmet” cupcakes.

You could purchase a few from a bakery, cupcake shop or otherwise “good’ place, or you could bake cupcakes (as long as they were made from scratch!).

My contribution was a batch of chai mini-cupcakes, topped with one of two frostings: condensed milk icing, or vanilla almond buttercream. I got the recipe out of the Martha Stewart Cupcakes book. I really liked how they turned out, but found that they started to feel quite dense the day after. I’m not sure if that happened because they were mini, or maybe I did something. Who knows, I’m still getting the hang of this cupcake thing!

Cupcake Party - My Chai

My chai mini-cupcakes, with condensed milk icing.

My girls did NOT disappoint, and we were treated to a fantastic variety of flavours, textures, and styles.

A couple of us had the same idea, and both ended up making chai cupcakes!! They were based on different recipes, and were different in almost every way. One comment that was made was that the chai cupcakes had a flavour reminiscent of a muffin — I think it comes down to the fact that we don’t often think of cupcakes as being spiced, despite the fact that there are many recipes for spiced cake cupcakes.

I’ve asked a few people what they think the differences between cupcakes and muffins are… it’s a pretty interesting topic, and maybe I’ll get into it in another post. This one is already chock-full, so I’ll stop myself from writing a novel.

I took pictures of most of the cupcakes, but unfortunately none of the lovely ladies! I really did mean to take pics of everyone in their nice outfits, cramming cupcakes into their faces, but it just didn’t happen. I got caught up in the cupcakes, the discussion, and the lovely day. I’m sure they’re happy they get to remain anonymous (dodged a bullet there, ladies!).

On that note, here are some pics of our cupcakes, before they fulfilled their cupcakey destiny.

Cupcake Party - assortment

More of my mini chai cupcakes, topped with buttercream frosting (back-left), and a different take on chai cupcakes with cream cheese frosting – Yum! (front-right)

Cupcake Party - Swirly Bunch

A crazy assortment of cupcakes from Swirl’s!

Swirls – http://www.swirlscupcakes.ca/
Highlights: Mangolicious, Lemon Luau, Red Velvet,

Cupcake Party - Cop-out Vanilla

“Cop-out?” No Way! Light and fluffy vanilla cupcakes, from Starbucks.

Cupcake Party - vegan

Three kinds of filled vegan cupcakes – heavenly!

Cupcake Party - chocolate

Devilish Chocolate Cupcakes with ganache or icing.

(not pictured)

The Cupcake Shoppe – http://www.thecupcakeshoppe.ca/
Highlights: After Ate (chocolate cake & mint buttercream), Sticky N Sweet (vanilla cake, dipped in caramel), Pretty N Pink (chocolate cake, raspberry buttercream)

Challenges, Recipes

Daring (New) Brunswick Stew

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(New) Brunswick Stew

The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club.

I opted to make a variation on the first recipe given. I usually don’t eat meat, so this dish posed quite a challenge for me. I think there were three or four different kinds of meat in the recipe… I replaced all of the meat with shrimps and seitan, the broth with a vegetable/shrimp broth. Since this likely changed the flavour quite a bit, I’ve jokingly labelled my variation of the recipe (New) Brunswick Stew. Any Canadians reading this will get the New Brunswick/seafood reference… right? (I’m sure there is nothing specifically New Brunswick about it. I just wanted a cute title).

I started by making a broth, which I based on one I got from a Seafood Gumbo recipe I plan to try eventually. I also had to make some seitan, a vegetarian meat substitute made with wheat gluten (sorry, GF folks!). Both of these things added to the cooking time, since I had to make them from scratch.

Next, I fried up some chile peppers. I got some fun dried chiles called Chilhuacle Negro that have a medium heat (5/10). I’m pretty new to chiles, so I didn’t want to get any that were too hot. That said, I should have kept some of the seeds in for a little more heat. This was where the excitement starts – the smell of the peppers and the oil in the pan are heavenly!

Chilhuacle Negro

Chilhuacle Negro

Here is what the stew looked like in the early stages – the seitan is still in large chunks (to be sliced into thin strips in a later stage). While the broth started off looking quite red (from the chile peppers and the smoked paprika), it mellowed into a nice warm golden colour by the end.

(New) Brunswick Stew - in progress

(New) Brunswick Stew – in progress

Here is the final product, and the shot that everyone on Daring Cooks seems to be doing – the standing spoon shot. This came from the original recipe. To describe the texture of the finished stew, they said that Brunswick stew is not done properly “until the paddle stands up in the middle.”. Everyone has been doing their version of this shot, so I felt obliged to do the same. It was a hearty hearty stew, but the broth was not too thick and gloopy.

(New) Brunswick Stew - Standing Spoon

(New) Brunswick Stew – Standing Spoon

In the end, the stew turned out great! It was a bit of a challenge deciding what to use instead of meat, but I think the seitan worked wonderfully! This is definitely something I wouldn’t have known to seek out, and there’s no doubt I’ll be making this again.

Recipe after the jump.

Continue reading Daring (New) Brunswick Stew →

Cookbook Diving, Recipes

Vegetable Toad-in-the-Hole

Toad-in-the-Hole - plated

This is another episode in the ‘Cookbook Diving’ series. Today’s recipe comes from “Classic Vegetarian Recipes” cookbook by Sue Ashworth et al. (p.186)

Toad-in-the-hole is traditionally NOT a vegetarian dish, and is generally not considered a meal in itself. This dish, however, is both. The addition of a variety of vegetables and fresh herbs makes it a hearty and flavourful light meal. We ate this with an avocado and tomato salad on the side.

This can also be eaten as a side dish for fish – a simple grilled salmon filet would be a nice pairing.

One thing that makes this recipe is the use of mustard to flavour both the bread batter and the vegetables. The result is not a strong mustard taste, but a nice tangy hit that helps to bring out the flavour of the vegetables. To mix it up, you can always add other root vegetables (turnip would be really great with the mustard), or substitute pesto for the mustard.

Toad-in-the-Hole - casserole

About Food, Challenges

April 2010 Challenge – No Repeats! (Week 1)

At the beginning of this year, I found myself in a rut. I realized that I, by default, would make slight variations on the same few meals every single week. Cooking became a chore, as much as I enjoy eating and (usually) enjoy cooking, in general.

That realization was one of the main things that drove me to start this blog, and I believe that blogging has been the driving force that pulled me out of cooking boredom.

This month, I am challenging myself to not make the same dinner twice.

Veggies

Obviously, I can’t avoid using some of the same ingredients but I have to focus on making things in different ways. That doesn’t mean I have to cook every day… but when I do, it has to be something I haven’t made this month. I won’t post recipes for every meal I make, but I’ll try to list the dishes (and include links if I got the recipes online).

This first week (and a bit) was a good start, although we weren’t home to cook for the first weekend.