The card I made for my talented, smart, super fantastic guitar-playing younger brother earlier this month. Also, this matches the colour scheme of his bedroom perfectly. Craft drawer, you pulled it off again.
Month: December 2010
Nana’s Christmas Fruitcake: the continuation of an old family tradition
Happy Boxing Day everyone! Since the stores in Sudbury are closed on boxing day (thanks to a rather archaic bylaw which I quite adore), I took the good graces to extend my annual Christmas “sit around the house and do nothing but read and eat” festival into the depths of December 26. Still being in a disgustingly full state, I decided to settle in and do the only activity you can do while in a food coma: food blog!
Here is the old Duff family tradition around which this post is based:
Every Christmas for the past 25 years, my dad has been the recipient of one of my Nana’s famous homemade fruitcakes. The tradition started when my dad, who moved to Canada 31 years ago, stopped returning home to Ireland for Christmas after he met my mom. Since my Nana passed away almost two years ago, this family tradition has risked extinction. Last Christmas, my dad was eating fruitcake from the year before that had been hidden away in the depths of our freezer, making this Christmas the very first where he would be without his traditional holiday fare.
Christmas Cake Pops: my first encounter with Bakerella’s one bite wonders
Everyone – my life has been changed!!! How you ask? Well, quite simply put, it is through the purchase of this fantastic new cookbook:
I saw this book yesterday while I was in Chapters with my family. Bakerella has been a favourite blogger of mine for sometime now, and I often peruse her site endlessly in my delusional dessert daydreams. Bakerella is famous for these special little cake pops/bites. She is so famous for these heavenly morsels that she even has a BOOK TOUR. Cool, right? Basically, these cake pops are cake crumbs mixed with icing and covered in a candy coating. Not for the light of heart, hyper five-year-old or cavity fearer, but perfect for those suffering from low blood sugar! Once I saw this book, I knew I had to have it. I had resisted purchasing it once (as a partial Christmas gift for best friend Britt), but I could resist no longer. Nope, I was 100 per cent committed to making seasonal cake pops.
And make them I did. My favourite part of Bakerella’s cake pop recipe is that it calls for boxed cake mix and icing from the can. Endless hours of baking from scratch were saved!
Also, the funniest thing happened to me when I was at the grocery store shopping for supplies. Here I was in an unfamiliar baking aisle, frantically flipping through my glossy new cookbook to decide what to buy. I must have been looking completely disoriented and confused when a woman came up to me and said something along the lines of “hey, I made cake pops last week!” This introductory statement led to a 15 minute conversation about cake pops and how much we love Bakerella. Turns out she had made reindeer, turkey and snowmen cake pops earlier in the year, a task which I have yet to conquer. Want to hear something even more weird? The woman, whose name is actually Karina, turned out to be a teacher at a high school in Ottawa where I had gone to write a journalism story last year. SMALL WORLD, right? Anyways, she gave me some great tips for making these (only use 3/4 of the frosting, melt shortening in with the chocolate to keep it from hardening), and it was a neat little conversation that sparked only out of me holding my new Cake Pops cookbook in the store.
After the grocery store I trekked off to the Bulk Barn where I spent a small fortune on chocolate candy coating (those cool little coloured disks of moulding chocolate that don’t look like food), lollipop sticks and sprinkles. My meagre student budget is going to start suffering thanks to the purchase of this book… Also, I partially over-purchased on the chocolate for this one, so I’m going to need to think of something creative to do with 2 pounds of coloured chocolate over the next week… I’m open to suggestions…
The thing with Bakerella’s cake pops recipes is that it’s kind of complicated to let the chocolate set on the cake. Since I decided to make these kind of at the last minute, I didn’t have time to find the styrofoam block that Bakerella requires. This is normally the thing that you stab all your lollipop sticks into so that your cake pops stand up straight. With a little ingenuity and a lengthy trip to the Dollar Store, I created a cake pop standing device out of foam cups and masking tape. Baking challenges, bring it on!
Since it is CHRISTMAS EVE (can you believe it?!) I spent my entire day…I mean HOURS, coating and hand decorating a dozen and a half little Christmas trees. The end result was totally worth it – I mean, come on, you need to admit that they’re cute! If you plan on making any of these, make sure you follow Bakerella’s recipe to the tee, since she has everything perfected. On top of the Christmas trees, I made little tuxedo (as my mom calls them) cake bites, with half white chocolate and half semi-sweet chocolate. A little less extravagant than the trees, but fun and tasty nonetheless. Pour yourself a big glass of milk to go along with these and you’re all set!
To end off this post, I am happy to announce that we delivered some cake pops to our neighbours across the street, and in return they gave us a freshly baked apple pie! What a trade off!
Merry Christmas!!
Love, Hilary
Happy Birthday Ariel!
To one of my best friends Ariel (whose birthday is actually today so I’m not even late on this post) I give…
– A shopping trip filled with all the shoe and boot purchases she desires. I promise not to give her a hard time and make her take inventory of the shoes she already has;
– A magical device (maybe they’re called brakes?) that can be installed in your car to prevent you from (a) driving off cliffs on the Sea to Sky and (b) warns you of oncoming speed bumps; :)
– Nail polish in every colour of the spectrum;
– A new red lipstick to replace the one I wrecked at our Christmas party, and;
– A magical evening with Andersoon Cooper who just happens to be feeling straight and frisky for the night.
But MOST IMPORTANTLY, I give her this card!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MERFACE! I hope you’re having a lovely time at home and that you have a fabulous time at your fancy birthday party!
PS: I hope your Ottawa birthday celebrations assist in creating many more of these Kodak moments:
Cheesy Shepherd’s Pie
I AM DONE EXAMS WAHOOOOOOO! Other than half of a take home exam that I need to finish for tomorrow night, I am now officially on Christmas break. This means that I finally have time to do things other than sitting in my bed/library studying and eating Costco-sized Toblerone bars. For the next two weeks, I will have all the time in the world to blog, relax, play Super Mario with my little brother, cook and spend endless amounts of my day watching my new favourite tv show, How I Met Your Mother.
So ANYWAYS…
I realized the other day that I haven’t been testing out many of the recipes that have been in the recent issues of Canadian Living. For a few months I was on a real roll, and had been trying out nearly half of their recipes from each issue. Since I am now regularly getting their monthly magazine sent to me at home (thank you cheap student subscription rates!), it should be easier for me to try out their stuff, right? Well regardless of the answer to that question, I am just going to have to make a conscious effort to review more of their recipes, starting now.
Making this recipe was actually what saved me from complete unhealthiness last week. With leftover tourtiere in my freezer and this, I was eating somewhat decently for at least one meal a day, something which I am sure my stomach appreciated.
This shepherd’s pie recipe is found in the December issue of the magazine. For some reason that boggles my mind, the recipe is actually called “cheddar cottage pie.” The only reason I didn’t call it this in the title was because I really had no idea what a cottage pie was. After several debates with Britt and our other friend Freya, we came to the conclusion that this name was because the pie was a “warm winter cottage-like food.” Apparently we were wrong. Here is what the ever helpful Wikipedia says:
The term cottage pie is known to have been in use in 1791, when potato was being introduced as an edible crop affordable for the poor (“cottage” meaning a modest dwelling for rural workers).
Alright, so we were completely off there. But we ARE students after all, and “affordable crops” are always a plus. Thank you again to Wikipedia for the endless bank of wisdom.
So this one was pretty good, but unlike many other Canadian Living recipes, I found this one to actually be a bit bland. Ever since I started cooking in the summer, my taste buds have somehow gotten super sensitive, meaning I’m always craving some sort of spicy kick. I think it’s probably just me and my neuroses, but I’d add a little extra thyme, salt and pepper to this one just for safe keeping.
Also, happy first day of winter! To celebrate, here is a picture of the circumstances that I’m going to have to photograph under until the day I decide to make myself a light box. I get even more weird looks from the neighbours now that I’m dragging a chair out to the front steps…
The final product. I think my potato level was a little dominating in a “I’m going to crush the life out of your meat layer so it’s not photogenic” sort of way, but so such is life. The half Irish in me screams that you can never have too much of our little spud friend.
Hilary Makes 