Hilary makes dessert

Father’s Day Meal

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

Since I went home for Father’s Day weekend, I decided to take full advantage of the occasion and the home food resources to make a meal for my family.  Also, I took a trip to the local Chapters yesterday, where I got a few new cookbooks, including Canadian Living’s Make It Tonight cookbook!!  Oh happy day!  I also got two other new cookbooks, which I’m sure I will be mentioning in future posts, so stay tuned to find out more about those.

In honour of this new cookbook purchase, I decided to take two recipes from it to make tonight’s dinner.  Something noteworthy: I tried black olives tonight for the very first time, as they were an ingredient in the pasta I made.  As you can see below, I entered my quest to try olives optimistically…

…BUT, that smile very rapidly deteriorated into a cringe, when I decided that I wholeheartedly DO NOT like olives.  At least I tried them right?  All that was left on my plate at the end of the night was a sad looking pile of olives.  Apologies Veggie Gods.

Okay, so back to the meal…for the main dish, I made Pasta with Peppers, Tomatoes and Olives(yuck to the olives, YUM to the rest of the meal).  It was kind of odd to have a pasta dish without a semi-dominating sauce, but this was something new that took advantage of some amazing, fresh produce.  Also, I love home-time… we had fresh parsley!!  This never happens!!  It was great.


For dessert, I made a Layered Apple Cake, also from the Canadian Living cookbook.

It had a delicious graham cracker crumb base and top, with a soft, scrumptious apple cake centre.  SO GOOD.  Add some ice cream, and I have officially reached my foodie heaven.  I seem to be starting a trend…whenever I bake at home, it always seems to be a pasta dish and a cake crumble.  Perhaps I will try my hand at BBQ-ing next time?

Back to Ottawa tomorrow, and back to my student house hole-in-the-wall-kitchen.

Cheesecake Brownies

~ Hilary ~ 3 Comments

Welcome to another weekly posting of my Friday treat!  This week’s treat was requested by our team leader at work, Kristina, and was inspired by the cheesecake brownie recipes I have been frequently stumbling on this entire week.  An unrelated side note: as I type this post, I am listening to the blaring sounds of my mom’s new iPad.  It is currently being controlled by my 16-year-old brother, and he is showing me some neato 2009 megamix thing as well as commenting on Miley Cyrus’ midriff in her new album cover.  Oh weekend trips home.

I have never made brownies before, so you can probably imagine how worried I was when this recipe called on me to make them FROM SCRATCH.  Walking around the grocery store collecting my ingredients, I paused for an extended period of time in front of the “brownie-in-a-box” Duncan Hines mix.  Wouldn’t it be nice to just add three ingredients and magically have a delicious brownie batter?  Alas, I refused to give in, and promptly snatched up bars of semi-sweet chocolate and unsweetened cocoa powder.  That’s what I get for stubbornly refusing to make boxed food.

Anyways, since I couldn’t find a cheesecake brownie recipe on Canadian Living, I turned to dear Martha Stewart for this recipe.  Technically these are called “cream-cheese brownies,” but when you add the word “cheesecake” to a recipe, it always becomes more fun, right?  Since I don’t have a double-boiler (and didn’t fully know what one was until I googled it late Thursday night), I just heated the chocolate and butter right over my stove element, cautiously aware of the fact that I had burned an entire chocolate bunny in a similar manner just years earlier.  IT WAS PERFECT.  Once I mixed the batter together, it was like magic.  It was delicious and rich and smooth, and so much better than I could ever imagine the consistency of a brownie batter to be.  I came face-to-face with the Dessert Gods, and I loved it.

The recipe told me to bake the brownies for 50 to 60 minutes at 350 degrees.  Obviously in our oven, this translated to 30 minutes at 300 degrees.  Oven temperature…I have conquered you.

The picture can really not do these brownies justice.  I’m usually pretty humble with my cooking skills, but these were perfection.

PS: I have been CHALLENGED by my friend Gord to a cook a meal using tofu (my mortal enemy).  I have hesitantly accepted, and will be making something tofu-fied sometime in the next week.  Watch out world.

Chocolate Marshmallow Fudge

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

I was feeling unmotivated last Thursday night, so I knew I wouldn’t be making as elaborate a Friday treat as I usually do.  I bought a can of evaporated milk earlier in the month, and knew that I finally had to use it.  Not knowing what else you can make with such an ingredient, I made the one thing I knew used it – chocolate fudge!  This entire recipe took me all of ten minutes to make, but I think it turned out rather well.  It’s not as photogenic as some of my other desserts, but I tried!  I still have some evaporated milk leftover, so I’m thinking of this recipe for next Friday’s treat…thoughts?

S’mores Cupcakes

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

I’ve started this thing where every Friday (this was my second Friday, it’s not quite a pattern yet..) I bring in a delicious baked treat for my wonderful co-workers.  Last week’s baked good was the cheesecake, so I knew I had to do something dramatically different for this week’s surprise.  I asked our team leader Kristina on Thursday what she would like me to bring in for the next day, and she eagerly suggested that I make the s’mores cookies I photographed earlier for this blog.  Since I didn’t want to start with food re-runs already, I knew I needed to find a new way to incorporate s’mores into a delicious recipe.

Just when I thought all was lost, my favourite dessert blog Bakerellasaved the day!  I was just scanning through the pages looking for a white cake recipe when I stumbled on her recipe for “s’more-or-less cupcakes.”  The second I saw them, I knew I needed to make them.  Two hours later, voila!  These cupcakes were decadent, and the recipe made the perfect amount for all the staff in our office.

Just so you all know, I still have leftover s’mores ingredients, so expect a s’mores cheesecake sometime in the near future.

As for tonight’s dinner?  I’m going back to my “can’t cook” roots and having soup noodles.


New York Cheesecake with Strawberry Sauce

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

Since I’ve been promising myself for about a week that I would make a cheesecake, I finally got around to doing so last night.  Let me tell you, it is quite the time-consuming process.  The ingredient mixing is the fun part…then comes four hours worth of baking, cooling, chilling and stressing out about whether or not your cake will be destroyed by the base of the spring-form pan.  Luckily, after watching a helpful, random video on topic, I was successful, and the rest is baking history!  I pretty much whipped up the strawberry sauce so the cheesecake wouldn’t look boring.  You know me, I’m all about colour!

Cheesecake verdict: my first time making this wonderful dessert was a huge SUCCESS!!!  Other than a few minor challenges served up by our psychotically hot stove, this was a rewarding experience.  Rewarding in the sense that I got three pieces of cake…