Yes, you heard me. Green velvet. A festivity of food colouring, if you may. Ever since catching word of Bakerella’s take on traditional red velvet cake, I’ve been dying to try this one out myself. And what better time to do so than on St. Patrick’s Day?!
Festivities (and sneaky cupcake eating!)
March 17 is always a weird day for me. Even though I’m more Irish than 90 per cent of the population (what up, dual citizenship?), I always feel a little weirded out by a holiday that us North Americans have created just so we have another excuse to patio drink (which, hey, I’m totally fine with). I don’t know, I’m fine with people getting hyper-patriotic, but I wish they knew what they were celebrating. But I digress…
Normally on St. Patrick’s Day I’m busy baking for another celebration – Brittany’s birthday! But that did not happen this year. Shipping a cake (or pavlova) to Paris is sort of pricey. Virtual wishes were sent this year. And so, I focused all my attention on these.
Woah, they were cool.
A few things:
1. Cake flour is probably the best thing to have ever entered my kitchen. It makes all the difference in cake-making, especially once you realize that the self-rising stuff already has the salt and baking powder added. May have missed that important point a few times…
2. Lucky Charms topping St. Patrick’s Day cupcakes = a hit. The marshmallows rehydrate themselves after sitting in the icing.
3. A strong, spiked buttercream frosting is sometimes enough to give you a head start on the day’s 19+ festivities. Especially when you’re eating rather large globfuls of it for breakfast. *burp*
4. It is essential that you up the Irish ante on these cupcakes and bake them in gold liners ($3.99 from Bulk Barn). Be incredibly pleased when the revelling crowds realize they look like tiny pots of gold.
It has been a busy week at school. Wait, let me rephrase that. It has been a busy, third-last week at school. Holy cow. Where has March gone? WHERE HAVE MY FOUR YEARS OF UNIVERSITY GONE? I am now appreciating my days off more than ever before.. my sleeping in until 9:15 a.m. and late, leisurely lunches. My student life is coming to an abrupt end, and I intend to pump the remaining month-and-a-half for all it’s worth.
I had a free morning on Friday, and decided to get up early and bike to the grocery store. It had been too long since I last did groceries, and I relied far too heavily on eating out/Tim Horton’s bagels this past week. Bad Hilary. The week before was so good, too, blogging and eating wise… After carting my bounty home in my purple backpack and handy dandy saddle bags (a half-roast chicken almost exploded in one of the bags: spring-on-bike, take one), I could hardly wait to start cooking. I made this salad for supper. It was healthy and delicious.
It also helped me start doing one very important thing, that being the clearing of my Ottawa cupboard.
Since I’m moving away from my beautiful home in this beautiful city at the end of April, I need to start using up my dry pantry goods. And woah, there’s lots of them. Three different varieties of cute pasta, a couple of cartons of beef stock (must have been on sale), an IKEA storage container filled with quinoa… It all must go. And so begins Operation Clear Cupboard. Over the next few weeks, I will slowly utilize all my random leftover goods, in hopes that nothing will go to waste.
First up was my black rice. I keep trying (and failing) to remember what meal I bought this for in the first place. It is really perplexing me, and I am frustrated that it appears to be a dinner that I never blogged about. Regardless, this salad will be its Hilary Makes claim to fame.
So check it out: we’re now 1/94538459 re: cupboard clearance. More to come.
Aren’t radish slices gorgeous?
PS: It is FINALLY outdoor food photography season again! Thank you, extra hour of sunlight and non-frigid temperatures.
One of my favourite bloggers lately has been Alexandra. I met Alexandra in Copenhagen when my friend Gordand I stayed at her apartment as part of our European adventure. Reading Alexandra’s blog, She is Red, is a guilty pleasure of mine, and I love drooling over her beautiful outfits, stunning accessories and gorgeous photo shoots (I seriously want to visit Oregon thanks to her pictures).
Anyways, in one of Alexandra’s most recent blog posts, she writes about this beautiful black bead necklace that she made using homemade clay beads. I thought the finished piece looked so super that I wanted to make something similar myself.
My inspiration - Alexandra's DIY necklace (Photo via She is Red)
Since I’m not really one to do anything sans colour, I decided my version would be inspired by the seven colours of the rainbow. Mr. Roy G. Biv himself (did your mom ever teach you that trick to remember the colour order? red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Now you know). Since I didn’t have the time or money to buy seven different colours of clay (though I do love the medium), I did the next best thing – took a trip to The Sassy Bead Co! I love this place. Mini mason jars filled with every bead imaginable line the walls. Clay beads, glass beads, big beads, little beads… all lie in small velvet boxes on a centre table. Two middle aged women sit by the front window making small talk and tiny beaded flowers.
I spent half an hour looking for the perfect beads. These choices can’t be taken lightly, you know.
My initial choices sit atop miles and miles of boxed beads
I finally settled on my favourite ones, and popped over to the counter where the friendly salesperson helped me string the beads onto a thin wire and attach it to a delicate gold chain (ok, she did this last part). I love the end result. Love, love, love it. It screams Hilary and I will wear it everywhere.
PS: It was such a beautiful day in Ottawa. Inspiration is pouring in.
So I’m 22. Holy. I remember when the big 2-2 was just another number in my 11x table. A lot has changed since elementary school multiplication drills.
Toddler Hilary, circa 1993. Snake-shaped chocolate cake decorated with Smarties.
To celebrate that I’m one year closer to death, a year older and therefore 366 days more awesome, I decided to bake myself a cake. A four-tiered, rainbow cake with chocolate whipping cream frosting, that is.
To be fair, it wasn’t all for me. My friendChristine‘s birthday is a day before mine. This year we decided to have joint birthday festivities at her house. It’s practically a tradition that I bring a kick ass cake to her place. You may remember this little gemfrom last year’s Fourth of July in March party.
"Let's cut the cake like it's our wedding!"
Anyways, we were turning 22. And 22 means adult. And adult means CAKE KINGDOM. Right?
Right. I’m a year older and more wise, remember? This means I’m never wrong.
The layers were made using Dorie Greenspan’s Perfect Party Cake recipe. It’s my all-time favourite and creates a light and fluffy base with just a hint of lemon flavouring.
Note when making a four-tiered cake: buy a real cake pan.
Please listen to me, it will make your life so much easier. If you have an oven that bakes things evenly, buy four pans and bake all the layers at once. All the power to you! Just don’t use a springform pan and bake each layer one at a time. Otherwise, four hours later you will find yourself transformed into a kitchen zombie waiting for that final blue layer to be complete. Le sigh.
Since I didn’t want to spend $20 to make a luscious buttercream icing for this cake (because, lets face it, when you have FOUR layers, that’s a lot of butter), I opted for a light, chocolate whipped cream frosting. There is half a litre of whipped cream on this cake.
Whipping cream turned out to be the perfect choice. It meant the finished product wasn’t unbearably sweet and was far easier to spread than traditional buttercream icing. Which is ideal for someone who is god awful at icing cakes. There is a layer of whipping cream in between every layer, as well as a thin spreading of four-berry jam. Got to amp up the fruit (sugar) content, you know.
(L) Jam layer, (R) One of these things is not like the other
The finished cake was possibly the girliest thing I’ve ever made, and looked like a cross between a dessert worthy of Barbie’s wedding and an Easter egg hunt. It also would have been appropriate for a five-year-old’s birthday party. What can I say? I’m getting older age-wise, but my baking is regressing in maturity appeal alongside.
And to that I say: Happy fifth birthday, Hilary!
PS: A few of my friends made me a surprise birthday dinner! How sweet are they? Here we are… thanks to Freya for taking the picture!
We all have our favourite neighbourhood breakfast retreats. Mine is Carmen’s Veranda, an eclectic little cafe nestled between a maternity shop and a photography studio. In the rush of Bank Street traffic, you’d miss it unless you knew where to look.
Well, I am here to tell you that you should look. Or don’t, so I never have to wait in line for a table.
Carmen’s falls under the category of “I will never be able to write a restaurant review about it because it is a sacred food space.” The heart-of-Old-Ottawa-South cafe is kept cozy in that category by my belovedArt-Is-In Bakery, Stella Luna Gelato Cafe and the Scone Witch. I would be substantially more wealthy and less happy without these four local loves.
My last trip to Carmen’s was this past weekend, on the Sunday morning after my birthday (no, I was not hungover, mom). I went with my two roommates, Freya and Shannon, Shannon’s sister Erin, and my other good friend Tara. They are all lovely people and wonderful brunch mates.
Shannon, Tara and Freya at my surprise birthday dinner (which they made!) the night before
Now, not only is the food at Carmen’s great (more on that later), but the look of the place is spot-on, Hilary-appealing.
There’s colour everywhere, and the tables (the kind like my gramps had, with the opening drawers and winged extensions) have been retrofitted with fun studs (not of the male variety) and patterned tops. Beautiful artist displays adorn the wall, colourful dishes scatter our table, and the front window where we sit fogs up in accordance with our steaming plates of brunch. A piece of plastic mounted in between the two windows is printed with a yellow “8” – something that I just realized meant the number of year’s the restaurant has been open. Happy eighth birthday, Carmen’s!
The brunch menu at Carmen’s remains generally the same, with omelette and quiche ingredients switching up every so often based on the seasonal readiness of items. My favourite item is the poached eggs, which are perfectly cooked and ooze onto the English Muffin beneath and mingle with my potatoes.
Speaking of the potatoes… they are the best. I don’t know what it is about them, but I need them everytime I visit.
Story: about a year ago I went to Carmen’s late in the morning with Freya and my then-roommate, now Paris explorer extraordinaire, Brittany. I ordered my usual poached eggs, my mouth watering in anticipation of that oh-so necessary yolk-potato tango. My conversation with the waitress (indicated as “W”) went something like this:
W: What would you like today?
H (in a sing-songy voice): I’ll have the poached eggs, please! I’m so excited for my potatoes! Carmen makes them soooooooo well!
W: Oh no, we’re actually out of potatoes this morning…
H (GASP GASP GASP): Oh my GOD! But..but.. I know, can I run down to the grocery store and buy you some more? …
I continued to beg, plead and drool until finally the waitress told me that there was, in fact, enough potatoes left for one breakfast serving. She probably just wanted to shut me up, to be honest. Regardless, the potatoes and I were united again. I went back to Carmen’s a few months later and the waitress remembered me: “Oh you’re the one who offered to buy us potatoes that one time!” she said. Guilty as charged.
This past Sunday I ordered the same thing, as did Freya, Tara and Shannon. Hey, it’s just that good, okay? Enjoyable as always.
Step 1: morning cappuccino. Eat a brown sugar cube like you're a horse.Step 2: order the poached eggs, the best thing everStep 3: dessert. Yes, even after brunch. We got a lemongrass crème brûlée and a slice of apple berry pie.A job well done
Two days later, Freya, her cousin Madé, and I recreated this brunch at home. This was after I had already eaten my usual two pieces of toast with peanut butter and apple sauce. I couldn’t resist.
There’s no recipe with this post, so I encourage you to go to Carmen’s Veranda and try the brunch for yourself. I swear on my love of potatoes that you won’t regret the visit.
Hilary Makes 