Hilary makes dessert

Much-needed baking bliss: Lemon olive oil cookies and orange-raspberry muffins

~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

As written on Thursday evening…

I was going to go to bed early tonight. I swore to myself that I was. Early these days is anything before 10:30 p.m., FYI, so that I can wake up at 6-something and listen to CBC’s morning show. I have failed to wake up before 7:20 a.m. three times this week. And tomorrow’s not looking too hot, either. Next week I’ll adapt to this full time work thing. Promise.

Anyways, how am I supposed to go to sleep when I had such an amazing evening of baking and creating things? I am on a DIY high, and no matter how tightly I shut my eyes, sleep will not come. I’ll blame the sugar – the mouthfuls of cookie batter and almond glaze that was transferred from mouth to belly this eve.

It seems as though Thursday has become my baking day. I’ve discovered that if I do not bake, I get really anxious and grumpy. Back in Ottawa I would bake at least three times a week, and it’s an activity that has been significantly cut down post-grad. No more running to the corner store in my sweatpants to buy icing sugar and cherry pie filling. Perhaps this is for the best… Anyways, my point is that baking relaxes me and makes me feel like my normal self again. Baking is something I know and am always sure of. It’s a chance to make something beautiful out of nothing, a principle that I’ll hopefully be able to apply to my journalism work over the next few months.

But enough of the personal ramble. Let’s talk food and flowers.

One half of the food-flowers super combo

I’ve wanted to make lemon cookies ever since Brittany made these delicious little cookie morsels that burst with lemony flavour. I still don’t know what recipe Britt used and, since I started making these cookies at 1 a.m. Paris time (remember? She’s on an exchange!), I figured I wouldn’t disrupt her slumber for the sake of my own personal cookie pleasure. Anywho, I used a Joy the Baker recipe because she is my favourite cookie recipe source ever. These were a little untraditional – lemon scented olive oil cookies with almond glaze. Yeah, you read that right. Olive oil. What the hell, right? Ah well, Joy knows what she’s talking about. And god knows the Greeks need me to use all the olive oil that I can.

I also made some orange-raspberry muffins.

Then, in true Hilary fashion, I had a photo shoot in my bedroom, where the 8 p.m. sun shines the brightest and my cute desk decorations serve as the perfect backdrop.

I also made a paper flower out of nine paper muffin liners. Yes, it is looped around that bottle of Marsala that I still haven’t put away. Yes, I do plan on making my own muffin liner bouquet should I ever get married. Yes, I did give this flower to my mom as a corsage. Judge. Not.

These are accompanying me to work tomorrow and shall be gifted to my hardworking, well-deserving CBC colleagues. Apparently Hilary Makes Friday Treats is baaaaaack.

Happy Thursday (well Friday now) and cheers to DIY bliss.

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Happy birthday dad! (kick-ass carrot cake)

~ Hilary ~ 5 Comments

This is the second part of my dad’s informal little family birthday party.

Who likes carrot cake? Dad likes carrot cake.

Birthday cakes are a big deal to me. I’ve made colourful cakes, mini cakes, Fourth of July cakes, ice cream cakes and fruitcakes. I think that a cake is the pinnacle of a party. There is nothing more beautiful than a cake done properly.

Achieving this beauty is something that I have failed at previously, and strived to get better at ever since. Need an illustration of said failure? Well, you asked!

Hilary Makes Cake, circa second-year university, approximately five months before I actually learned how to cook

Point is, I don’t take cake-making lightly. Which is why I wanted my dad’s birthday cake to be perfect. He requested carrot cake and so, off I went to browse the big ol’ World Wide Web for something worthy of my time, attention, and family. I found this. Simple and impressive.

There’s something about a tiered cake that really gets me going. It’s like the epic journey of cake making. This would make Odysseus proud. Carrot cake is also just about the most low maintenance, inexpensive desserts out there. Plus there’s vegetables in it. You know how I like cake vegetables.

A good cake layer reminds me of the perfect sandcastle base.

I don’t really have much else to say about this dessert, except for that it somehow managed to be both light and fluffy while also including so many delicious different textures, like pineapple, pecans and coarsely grated carrot. The cream cheese icing was so smoothly soft and was sweetened just so.

Dad liked.

Oh yes, and this recipe also made four little cupcakes. They have been hidden in the deep freeze, only to be snuck out at the most sugar desperate of times.

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Creative cookie gifting (and the end of my undergrad degree)

~ Hilary ~ 3 Comments

Yeah, this happened. Because I am a domestically-inclined five-year-old in disguise. Last week I finished my undergraduate degree in journalism at Carleton University. Yikes, I know. The combination of me hitting 22 and graduating all within the same two-month span has been enough to send me spiralling into a tiny quarter life crisis, filled with existential self-reflection moments that normally involve me lying in bed and staring at the ceiling. Ee. But away from all, I have many people to thank for my undergrad success, and these cookies pay tribute to just a few of them: my professors and one former boss. Before you start rolling your eyes (too late?) and calling me an apple polisher, though, please know that I think nice, helpful people deserve to be appreciated. These cards and cookies are my thanks, and nothing more. Journalism is a great little department, and these cookie receivers have always had their doors open to my questions, concerns, and rants. So to those professors, thank you – the passive voice is still something I’d be writing in (hah, get it?) if it wasn’t for them. Oh yeah, this was also an excuse to use up some baking supplies before I left, score! PS: buying a set of half-a-dozen brown paper bags from your friendly corner convenience store is a great way to package all baked goods. These ones were inspired by my friend Martha.

Futon = cookie organization tool

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Birthday cake-in-a-jar

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

On a scale of one to ten, one being foods like cauliflower and lamb (sometimes I feel as though I’m the only meat-eater on the plant who doesn’t like the latter) and ten being arugula, mushrooms and cookies with a dash of lemon, cakes in jars rank in at a 12.

I hope that sentence made sense. I’m worried that it did not, so let me summarize.

Cakes baked in cute little jars are wonderful.

I was in a baking mood this past Saturday. Having made another batch of cookies for my special cookie gift bags (that post is coming up), I decided I didn’t want to leave the kitchen. The stove was making my legs feel fuzzy and warm. So, I did what any reasonable person would do, I decided to bake a cake. Luckily my baking buzz lined up perfectly with my friend Emily’s birthday.

I’m not sure what was once in this jar. I suspect it was marmalade, however, all reminders of its former life were erased when I used it to carry hummus to school when we ran out of Tupperware containers. What a multi-functional little jar.

I’m mildly concerned that the end product was too much cake and not enough icing, so I’ll have to work on tweaking my cake-in-jar logistics for next time. Oh yes, there will be a next time. I’m thinking some sort of layered trifle.

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Cadbury creme egg stuffed Easter cupcakes

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

Think of your most extreme sugar fix ever and then quadruple it. With that level of sugary expectation in mind, I present to you with: these cupcakes.

Doesn't this cupcake look like a volcano that was cut in half?

As much as I’d like to, I can’t take all the credit for the Cadbury creme eggs centres. That diabetes-inducing idea came from the website Bake It in a Cake, which my friend Matt showed me for the first time last Easter. Since I was a little preoccupied creating these godzilla peep cupcakes back then, I filed the idea away for 2012’s bunny-filled holiday.

And so, it was with great anticipation that I greeted this early Easter season. A few of my friends were hosting an Easter potluck for all us out-of-town babies, and so I had both a recipe and a baking opportunity.

Then I just needed the Cadbury creme eggs, the acquiring of which posed a bit of a challenge.

Note to everyone: these eggs are not easy to find the day before Easter. In the end, only eight out of the 12 cupcakes ended up being stuffed with a creme egg. It’s all they had at the grocery store. Don’t worry, I covered up the cupcake absences by saying that finding a filled centre was like a charming little Easter egg hunt! Problem solved.

One more note: if you have an extremely photogenic roommate who also happens to love cupcakes, then you should probably have her pose in a multitude of shots.

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