Pool Party Cake (!!!!!!!)

July 22, 2010January 1, 2012 ~ Hilary ~ 9 Comments

Before I begin this post, I feel it is important to note the following:

What you will see below is the cake of my childhood dreams. When I was young, my mom had a copy of Canadian Living’s “Kids in the Kitchen“cookbookwhich I would flip through occasionally, wondering how in the world one was able to cook. Now, a decade later, I return to my humble beginnings to complete the pièce de résistance of all Canadian Living cakes: The Pool Party Cake(each word deserves a capital letter because, to me, it is a holy entity of awesome). To be honest, I’m a little surprised my mom didn’t make me this cake as a child; I guess there were very few pool parties to go to in Northern Ontario and my birthday was in winter…

When I first heard back in June that we were planning to have a potluck at work, I very nearly had a happiness heart attack. I KNEW that the time had finally come for me to make this cake, and that the world was finally prepared to be exposed to its sheer wonder. Also, the cake kind of doubled as a surprise birthday cake for one of my wonderful work supervisors, Jeremy, who was (against his will) getting a belated birthday celebration at lunch.

Let the cake-making begin: Buying all the candy supplies was the hard part – I spent a solid half hour in the Bulk Barn, carefully measuring out gummy candies and determinedly marching up and down the aisles in search of the elusive vanilla wafer cookie (turns out I needed to get them at Walmart). A short time later, my shopping was complete, and with my new 9×13 glass cake pan filled with goodies, I waltzed (bused) home, anxiously wondering what the results of my cake attempt would be. Due to some sort of miracle, the cake turned out perfectly. Despite a minor meltdown that occurred when a deep crack developed through the middle of the cake, the process was rather uneventful and my neuroses was kept at bay for the most part…

Of course, my adventure to deliver cake to potluck continued this morning when I had to find a way to transport said item to school. Normally I would just ride my bike, however, I had invested too much time and emotion in this cake to see it slide off my handlebars and run over by my Schwinn bicycle. And so, my worried ass took a cab to school and, in an attempt to pay the driver with my debit card, almost granted the cake a death-by-debit-console-falling-in-pool disaster. Luckily, everything except my sanity made it to work in one piece.

I would also like to note one final thing: if someone on Ace of Cakes somehow stumbles on this post, please give me a job and/or let me tour your shop. I promise I would only freak out a little.

Hilary and Cake: an intimate moment. Also, note the wafer cookie entering my mouth…this was because of a failure in cake architecture that caused several half-wafer pieces to come unattached from their other sides. Beware future cake-makers.

Some happy potluck-ers/amazing co-workers, pre-cake arrival, pre-food coma.

Arrival of cake for the birthday boy!

Happy Belated Jeremy!
(Thank you Iman and your ever-speedy facebook uploads for these last two pictures)

END OF STORY? I am addicted to making cakes. Next time, I try conquering fondant.

Chicken Noodle Stir Fry

July 21, 2010January 1, 2012 ~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

Well I have finally gotten sick of all the salads I’ve been making.

Even though all the salad main dishes I’ve made over the past two weeks have been delicious and healthy, I was craving something a little more substantial for last night’s dinner. Searching through pages and pages of chicken recipes on Canadian Living’s website, I finally stumbled on this one for a chicken noodle stir fry. Since this recipe was only the second stir fry I have ever made, I wasn’t 100% sure of how well it would work out. All the ingredients were really simple, EXCEPT for baby bok choy. Waltzing through the produce section of the grocery store, I found a tag for normal adult bok choy. Alas, the adult’s baby was nowhere to be found, and I had to settle for using defrosted spinach as a disappointingly wilted alternative.

With the chicken marinated in a tasty soy sauce/sesame seed oil/garlicy mixture, and the added honey hoisin sauce at the end, this dish satisfied my every dinner desire.

Gord’s Dinner, Part Three: Chocolate Volcano Cake

July 20, 2010January 1, 2012 ~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

BY FAR THE MOST DELICIOUS, DELICATE AND DIFFICULT THING I HAVE EVER MADE. I am so proud.

I’ll keep this short and sweet. In my mind, these chocolate volcano cakes are the Holy Grail of dessert and, being a self-proclaimed chocoholic, I knew I would go to extreme measures to ensure that they were completed perfectly. The recipe was from Canadian Living, obviously, and the preparation instructions originally scared me to death.

Here are a few things I learned from these cakes/morsels from heaven:

1. How to separate the yolk from the egg white
1a. When you continuously blend egg whites, a heavenly, peaked mixture comes into existence. I knew this happened, I have just never experienced the magic before.
2. These cakes are called volcano cakes for a reason. One of them blew up as I tried to pick it up. My counter consequently suffered a chocolate flash flood.
3. A set of six ramekin dishes for $9 is the best investment a girl can make.
3a. I need a second job to afford all the extra dishes I am buying to make my food plating a pretty process.
4. The picture below DOES NOT do this cake justice. If I could include a scratch-and-eat feature on wordpress, I swear you would all love me.

Gord’s Dinner, Part One: Chickpea Tabbouleh Salad

July 18, 2010January 1, 2012 ~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

(Eeeee, it has been a week since I last posted, apologies!)

……..

To celebrate the completion of my tofu challenge a few weeks ago, my good friend and fellow blogger Gord made me a delicious dinner of quinoa salad, gazpacho and creme brule (see a few posts back for the scrumptious results). This meal started a pattern of what I now call “reward dinners,” where each of us cooks for the other when a challenge is completed. Gord’s very first challenge was to make a pie from scratch, and the result was an amazing strawberry rhubarb pie, a dish whose tastes boggled my mind one afternoon after a long day in the office (I ate it in a record-breaking two minutes). To honour the completion of his challenge, I knew I had to make Gord a dinner that was just as, if not more delicious than the dinner he made for me.

Knowing that Gord is way more into vegetables than I am, I knew this supper had to incorporate a fair share of legumes. I also happen to know that Gord likes chickpeas. With these two checkpoints in mind, I flipped through my Canadian Living Everyday Favourites cookbook, and found the perfect recipe: chickpea tabbouleh salad. The salad is apparently a Lebanese delicacy, and used bulgur, something that I have been curious to cook with for sometime now. Since I obviously didn’t know what bulgur was before making this recipe (I simply liked that it rhymed with “vulgur”), I have decided to include the Bulk Barn definition below, should anyone also be confused as to what this strange sounding food is:

Bulgur (noun) – bulgur is made from soft wheat kernels that have been cooked, dried and then cracked; thus “cooking” it is simply a matter of rehydration…

Now that we all know what bulgur is, let me just sum up this post by saying that the salad was great, with a lemon dressing and crunchy cucumber (even if there were a few too many vegetables for my liking). The only thing I didn’t like were the tomatoes (raw tomatoes are my greatest enemy, next to tofu), but I simply included them for Gord’s benefit. Alas, they added a gorgeous red colour, which I must admit to loving.

Stay tuned in the next few days as I post parts two and three of Gord’s dinner (appetizer and DESSERT). It just gets better from here!!!

Thai Mango Salad (and a short vacation hiatus)

July 11, 2010January 1, 2012 ~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

With my mangoes finally having ripened, I decided to hurriedly prepare a delicious and nutritious meal for today’s lunch. I say hurriedly because I started making this salad at exactly 11:34 a.m., a short 26 minutes before my family was due to pick me up for my first family vacation in three years. Summer salads with no cooked ingredients actually make the fastest meal ever- gotta love ’em! Gord, if you are reading this right now and wondering why the hell I made this salad without you, fret not, I will find something equally (if not more) scrumptious to make for your challenge prize as soon as I get back from vacation. I promise.

This salad turned out brilliantly, and I got rave reviews from my mom who decided to pack up my leftovers for a picnic lunch later in the day. Bestowing the ultimate honour on my cooking skills, she even asked me for the recipe (which can be found on the Canadian Living website here) so she could make her own version at home. PS: mangoes are the best, most tender fruit ever.

So how is my vacation, you ask? It is quite enjoyable, thank you for wondering! I am currently typing this from inside a gorgeous Mont Tremblant hotel, nestled at the bottom of a group of seemingly endless mountains. Arriving late this afternoon after getting lost several times in and around the Tremblant area (trying to navigate our way using my mom’s iPad = unsuccessful), we finally got to our hotel and quickly began exploring the village.

So far I have been on a handful of gondola rides (see above: I giggle like a child from sheer excitement every time I get on one) and have strolled around the vibrant streets of the village with the famjam. I am proud to say that in true Duff-family fashion, several embarrassing touristy pictures have already been taken:

My favourite part of the day? Going down a steep slope on a luge track, and waiting at the bottom for my mom who abused the brakes on her cart and arrived a complete five minutes after my brother, dad and I.