Month: November 2012

Guinness chocolate cupcakes with Bailey’s buttercream (Movember cupcakes)

~ Hilary ~ 13 Comments

We had another bake sale at work. Jen, Ian and I bake an absurd amount of things for these occasions.

Our contribution: six banana bread loaves, three dozen cookies, three dozen cinnamon buns, 16 moustached cupcakes

(Also, work and life have been super busy lately, hence my tendency to slack on blogging)

Unlike bake sales past that have lined up nicely with some festive celebration (Thanksgiving and whatnot), this mid-November bake sale could not be pegged to any calendar date. Or so I thought. That’s when I was inspired by facial hair – the fuzzy upper lips that are driving our society into a state of barbaric teenstachedom. Movember.

Other than lip fuzz, the other thing I think of when someone says “Movember” is Ottawa chocolatier Jen Winter with koko chocolates. Last November Jen came out with a brilliant quartet of chocolates in what she considered “manly” flavours: a double-smoked bacon with a hint of maple, a milk chocolate ganache infused with Glenmorangie scotch, espresso and “the koko” – a 75 per cent Venezuelan dark chocolate ganache. With part of the proceeds going to prostate cancer research, Jen’s chocolates were sweet for more than one reason. I saw Jen again earlier this month at Urban Craft in Ottawa, and was pleased to see she had continued her Movember line – adding these amazing seasonal ‘staches to the mix.

Inspired by Jen’s chocolates, I set out to create a chocolate dessert of my own. I knew I wanted to incorporate lots of alcohol into these cupcakes, so I adapted Smitten Kitchen’s Car Bomb Cupcakes (which look unbelievable) and used the Bailey’s buttercream icing recipe I first created for my green velvet cupcakes on St. Patrick’s Day last March. While much of the beer flavour baked off, it did leave the cake with a moist and even consistency. Absolutely delicious, though I regret eating my cupcake prior to icing and moustache-ing.

In an appropriate turn of events, all four people who bought these cupcakes were men, two of whom had decided to take part in this month’s furry fundraiser. I delivered the cupcakes and snapped their picture.

In other news, chocolate ganache remains the bane of my existence. The chocolate-whipped cream combination insists on seizing up as soon as I’m about to do anything with it. On the bright side, I think I would be positively masterful at making chocolate truffles. My first batch of ganache solidified in the piping bag, and, after shovelling fingerfuls of it into my mouth to soothe my sadness, I mixed it with a bit of boiled water and was on my way. The moustaches need a bit of grooming, but they’ll do.

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Living the life of leafsure (fall wrap-up, Halloween, and orange chocolate yogurt cake)

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments
Forgive me for that pun.

An end-of-Fall blog post seems inappropriate at this point in November.

Most parts of northern Ontario have already had their first encounter with a snowy friend, and leaves that once clung to the maple trees in our front yard have since drifted to the ground. Fallen, rotten, raked. I am justifying this blog post now on the presumption that it is still autumn in the community where you’re living. Also, a slight Halloween wrap-up post is totally necessary because I believe my frugal AND seasonally-appropriate costume choice must be shown to the world.

But first: fall. Jen and I spent a few hours raking the front and backyard two weekends ago. Ian had done the same just days earlier, however many more leaves had fallen since, creating a matted gold carpet atop the grass.
I’m not a particularly effective raker, however I do happen to be an accomplished leaf-jumper. I am of the belief that no pile of leaves is complete without being collapsed in at least once. Jen and I did our part to ensure this.

Since our front yard clean-up corresponded with the last weekend before Halloween, I was also faced with the task of finding a costume for a get together at my friend’s place that night. I inherently leave Halloween until the last minute every single year, and had already used my procrastination-heavy, improvised-as-hell costume idea last year when I paired my rainbow screen inspired Douglas Coupland shirt dress with a pizza box and donned pipe cleaner antennae. Thats another thing – I’m not a fan of slutty or uncreative Halloween costumes. For the past three years I’ve taken pride in my costume being something you’ve probably never see before – something a little bit kooky. That normally translates to my costume being difficult to understand for anyone who has been drinking. Case in point: I was a California Roll in third-year university, and people kept asking me if I was a soap dish. A soap dish!!! Really??!? Is anyone ever really a hand sanitation holder for Halloween? Anyways, Halloween is something I give no thought to until the day of the party, when, in typical Hilary fashion, I go completely bananas with panic.
The Hilary of Halloween’s past: harajuku girl and a California Roll
And so, with no Halloween costume at 2 p.m. on the day of my party, I set out to transform myself into a leaf bag. I had already been inside one of the bags, after all, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch.

Head pieces also prevail when designing my last minute costume. Be it a tiny cardboard sushi headband or pipe cleaner antennae, I’m going for the head-to-toe look. So naturally I used a needle and thread to sew freshly plucked leaves onto a headband. Matched with these earrings I made in September (see, this costume was as totally meant to be), I was all set.

Jen and Ian also took a last minute approach to Halloween, and came up with equally as creative and downright topical costumes.

Locked out NHL player and a Quebec protester
THE FOOD PART
And because I like to include something food-related with every blog post, here are a few pictures of an orange and chocolate marble yogurt cake I made sometime around Halloween. It was super moist (thanks, yogurt) and paired perfectly with a dollop of cinnamon whipped cream.

And because every blog post nowadays seems to end with a picture of Norbert…

I love you, I hate you, I love you, I hate you

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Buttercream icing breakfast biscuits

~ Hilary ~ 13 Comments

Sometimes cooking is an exercise in problem solving.

In case you hadn’t guessed by the bizarre name of this blog post, these biscuits were nothing more than an accidental experiment.

If you cook and bake enough (actually, even if you don’t I feel as though the mistake that follows is a pretty easy one to make), you are bound to mix-up ingredients once in awhile. Be it baking soda with powder, salt with sugar, they’re switch-ups you hopefully notice during the cooking process rather than the eating one. The mix-up this time around? Flour and icing sugar. Rookie Mistake (one that has happened before, in fact, almost a year ago to this day).

Here’s how it happened: Jen and I were in the midst of whipping up what seemed to be a pound of buttercream icing to use during our cake painting party. Having just moved into her and Ian’s house, I’m still familiarizing myself with where the baking ingredients are. When searching for icing sugar, Jen directed me to the smallest of baking canisters. Inside was the white powder, the likes of which I could only assume would become something sugary and delicious in a couple minutes time. So I started mixing, pouring powdery clouds of “icing sugar” into my mixing bowl, blending it with the butter and whipping cream my basic buttercream icing recipe requires. It wasn’t until Jen decided to sample the icing that I knew something was wrong (though I should have suspected something was up when the icing began to look more clumpy than smooth). I asked her if the icing was okay. She gave me a strange “I don’t know how to tell you this” look in return. The pigments in my skin got ready to paint my face a shade of “I’m sorry, I can’t really bake” red. Then, Jen said it: “so, I think that was flour, not icing sugar.”

And indeed it was. A cup of butter, about four cups of flour, and half a cup of whipping cream. All blended together to form the most rich of substances.

Now, we’re not ones to waste.

Jen tossed in a couple teaspoons of baking powder, and we were set. Buttercream icing biscuits it is.

These came out of the oven smelling like heaven and heart attacks. They were like shortbread cookies without the sugar – flakey, buttery treats that crumbled in my mouth and refused to digest without half a litre of milk.

So logically we put lots more rich breakfast food on the biscuits, and had my parents over for brunch.

Kitchen problem: solved.

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Homemade paper and Mod Podge coasters

~ Hilary ~ 30 Comments

When Jen and Ian moved into their new home, they bought a beautiful dining room table.

It’s made of mango wood and was apparently imported from Vietnam. It also has two wings you can add in, making it a whopping eight plus feet long. Medieval feast parties? Totally do-able.

The one thing about buying a new table is that you want to be good to it. Care for it. Wipe it, dry it, love it. My mom and dad also bought a new table for our kitchen, after at least five years of searching for the one. As a result, my mom is hyper-attuned to what’s going on within a metre radius of that table whenever I visit. No glass may sit directly on said table, lest its cold content exude itself into a permanent, circular ridge in The Table. My laptop must sit atop a placemat before going on The Table. The Table must be wiped with a well-squeezed damp cloth, and then wiped carefully again with a dry one. These are the Sacraments of The Table.

But I digress.

Point is, I both understand and appreciate how beautiful and sacred new tables can be. It is, after all, the place where families and friends come together. Where they eat, play board games, and make crafts.

This is a roundabout way of saying that Jen and Ian needed coasters.

And so, in typical form, we set off to create our own.

The journey started with a trip to the local Home Hardware in search of some sort of cork board backing. Luckily, it was sold by the foot, and the clerks kindly sliced it up into smaller squares so I could cram it into the laptop pouch of my backpack.

Next, a trip to the craft store Michael’s found us in possession of some beautiful paper. Printed paper is such a weakness of mine, and had I been the type to have started scrap booking when I was in seventh grade, I would surely be broke today. Michael’s has an entire aisle dedicated to coloured paper, a collection that made me long for the creaky floors and Scotch tape price tag corners of The Papery in Ottawa. Jen, Ian, and I spent at least 20 minutes looking and deciding on our purchases, before coming away with what was a surprisingly cohesive set of colours. Highlights of pale pinks, blues, and greens, collaged with images of flowers, newspaper print, and birds (that’s right, we put a bird on it!).

I also bought some nature-inspired (some more literal than others) paper for the next time I decide to make an outdoorsy birthday card. I couldn’t help myself.

On Sunday night the three of us gathered around the dining room table (though it was covered with a $2 lined tablecloth), and traced, sliced, and Mod Podged the craft ingredients into something that resembled a coaster.

And voila! Glass guarding and crafty creativity.

YOU NEED:
– 1 foot (approximately) cork board backing, $4
– 1, 8 oz jar of Mod Podge (matte), $5 (we had a 50% off coupon!)
– Cheap paint brushes, $3
– Beautiful paper of choice (anywhere from free to $10, depending on what you want and in what variety)
– Fun friends

Unrelated, but cute: Norbert has now taken ownership over 2/3 of my bedroom.