When you bake, who are you really baking for? You, your partner, kids, friends or co-workers? It has to go beyond your own enjoyment- unless you’re the type who can polish off a triple-layer cake in one sitting (and if you are, my respect and condolences). Read more…
It’s been cold in the UK this winter. Cold and snowy- two things the Brits are definitely not used to. Up and down the country roads are blocked, schools are closed and trains aren’t running. People are turning up the heat, bulk-buying at the grocery store and generally indulging in a spot of controlled panic. This Canadian is viewing it all with detached bemusement, but I can’t say the Dickensian weather isn’t affecting me; it’s influencing what I cook, after all. Read more…
I was whipping up a batch of these last week (a much-needed treat after a particularly grueling couple days), when I realised that despite all the sweet things I’ve written about here- all the cookies, cakes, tarts and other treats- that I’ve never shared this go-to brownie recipe before. If I’m honest, brownies aren’t my favourite indulgence- Andrew is the chocolate fiend in this household. But if I’m gonna have them, they’ve got to be good. Read more…
When I was 17 or so, I caught whooping cough. There was an outbreak in several of my city’s primary schools, and I caught it from some kids I was babysitting at the time. On the surface, whooping cough isn’t all that bad. You cough a lot, you get a couple weeks off school- as highly contagious diseases go, it’s pretty great. The thing you probably don’t know about whooping cough (unless you’ve had it yourself) is that even after you’re not contagious anymore, even after you feel healthy again and go back to normal life, you keep coughing. For several months. Read more…
Look, I tried. To the best of my ability, I attempted to hold off the holiday season until next month. It’s only mid-November, and nobody really wants to be bombarded with Christmas recipes yet. But through a (misguided) desire to review my copy of Nigella Christmas on Kitchlit, I accidentally opened the floodgates. Because reviewing means recipe-testing, and recipe-testing means recipe-posting. So here I am, waving the white, red and green flag in surrender: it’s started. Bring on Christmas! Read more…
Some recipes are just meant to find us.
When I borrowed my sister’s copy of Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache, the “healthy cake” cookbook I reviewed the other day, she informed me that she’d “decided” I should make this recipe: Sunken Apricot and Almond Cake. Seeing that it called for tinned apricot halves, I immediately rejected the idea (if there’s anything I dislike more than cooked fruit, it’s canned fruit). Instead, I turned my attention to finding something else to make. Read more…
A few weeks ago, after Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt’s house, I had my first taste of pumpkin pie. I know this will seem both unbelievable and incredibly sad to the pumpkin pie enthusiasts among you, but I can’t lie: until recently, I believed pumpkin was possibly the grossest thing one could put in a pie. Read more…
I’ve just realized that I haven’t put anything sweet on the blog this week. Since I know that’s completely unacceptable, I wanted to quickly share this recipe, which I made last week, before I head out to the farmer’s market. Read more…
I’m well aware that “danishi” isn’t really the plural of danish. But it’s my blog, and I’ll use my Eleisms as and when l please. (It’s a good thing I don’t talk about large mammals here very often, or we’d get into the whole moose/meese thing. I’m quite passionate about that.) Danishi is a term my friend MH and I coined during university, when the only acceptable reason for going to a lecture at the ungodly hour of 8am was the promise of a cup of coffee and a sweet treat from Tim Horton‘s. Read more…
This post is not going to start with a fond childhood memory of eating Oreos accompanied by a tall glass of milk. I didn’t have that kind of childhood; my Mum doesn’t like sweet things much herself, and so endeavored to raise my sister and me to have similar tastes. When we were really young, the health quotient in our house was high. Cookies were always homemade (ginger snaps sweetened with molasses), peanut butter was natural and snacks consisted of a cup of frozen peas. We even drank unsweetened grapefruit juice, for heaven’s sake. Read more…