Student Cooking

Lemon Sour Cream Loaf

~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

My goodness, I have been such a slacker with blogging this past week!  It has been four days since my last post, a record-breaking amount of time since the summer began.  This is my oath to the blogging world to try and be better.  School is absolutely crazy right now, and I am running around left, right and centre trying to get journalism stories organized before Thanksgiving.  Right now it looks like October may just be the month from hell, but I will try my very hardest to charge on through, treating my hard work with delicious meals every once in a while!

I made this loaf last week.  The reason why the pictures you see below were taken inside was because I made this little baby at 9 p.m. and, by the time the next day rolled around, the majority of it was gone (yes, this was also due to my near midnight snacking, I had a stomach ache).  That being said, no pictures were able to be taken outside, to my great dismay.

This lemon sour cream loaf is actually just Canadian Living’s Lemon Yogurt Loafwith, you guessed it, sour cream.  Why is sour cream in absolutely everything I make nowadays, you ask?  I have no idea, but it is good.  The original recipe called for the use of “balkan-style plain yogurt,” something I have never heard of.  Apparently it’s like a low-fat yogurt or something?  Not too sure.  Whatever, our fridge was crowded beyond belief (I blame all the plastic containers of spinach) and I needed to use up this sour cream.

When Canadian Living says “use parchment paper” in your loaf pan, I definitely recommend you follow their instructions.  Unfortunately for me, our lowly student home had run out of parchment paper  just a few days earlier, and I instead was forced to heavily oil the pan as an alternative.  This worked…sort of.  After the loaf was semi-cool, I could be seen standing over the deep freeze (I use it as a counter), whacking the bottom of that pan like there was no tomorrow.  After a substantial shaking and use of brunt force, the loaf surrendered to my attempts, and plopped nicely down on the cooling rack, with a mere chunk taken out of the bottom.  Needless to say I bought parchment paper the very next day.

Finally, the reason why the surface of this loaf looks like it has reflective properties is because of all the delicious lemon glaze I put on it!  The glaze was just icing sugar and lemon juice, and the loaf soaked it up like a sponge.  Absolute heaven.

Rosemary Garlic Steak with Potato, Carrots and Shredded Zucchini

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

The reason for making this dinner was pretty simple: I was craving steak SO badly, haven’t eaten potatoes in half a year and wanted to use up the rest of my farmer’s market carrots.  This meal took about twenty minutes to make, and allowed me to utilize our beautiful non-stick pan as a BBQ alternative.

I know this is a ridiculously short post, but I’m watching this show Hawaii Five-O with my roommate Amanda, and am too distracted by Daniel Dae Kim’s cheekbones to write anymore.  That’s right, Jin from LOST is in a new show.  It gets an A+ already.

Okay, one more Daniel Dae Kim girl crush moment.  Remember when he was in Seinfeld?  So precious!

PS: this dish was adapted from Canadian Living’s Grilled Rosemary Garlic Flank Steak recipe.

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Filling and a Brown Sugar Icing (whew!)

~ Hilary ~ 7 Comments

Congratulations to you all if you managed to get through the name of my cupcakes in one breath.  It’s a mouthful, I know (just like my cupcakes), but I unfortunately had no other way to describe my entry into the 2010 Capital Cupcake Camp.

via

As you have all seen from my previous blog post, the cupcakes at the competition were absolutely amazing.  At the end of this post I’ll do a blog round-up of all the posts I’ve seen from the event, so you can get a better idea of the cupcake calibre!

Anyways, my cupcakes:

Rather than going out downtown like all normal university students would on a Saturday night, I stayed in with my roommate Britt and made brown sugar icing from sunset until deep into the night.  The icing was the most difficult thing I have ever encountered, due to the fact that university students are rarely in possession of stand-up mixers.

But lets go back to the beginning of this icing tale, shall we?

As soon as she found out I was entering a cupcake competition, Brittany exclaimed eagerly that I had to include this brown sugar icing that she had made in the summer.  While describing it, I’m quite sure she said the words “orgasm” and “heaven” all in one sentence.  I knew it must be good.

The icing recipe turned out to be an adaptation from the one used on the blogAnnie’s Eats.  Everything was going well up until we had to actually beat the liquid-like syrup into some sort of frosting.  There was cream of tartar AND eggs in said liquid, so you it would beat, right?  Wrong.  Britt and I stood in our kitchen for one whole hour, taking turns holding our $15 hand mixer.  I think we can blame the lack of standup mixer for the almost-failure.

To fix this little disaster, we ended up adding about 1 1/2 cups (approx) of icing sugar to Annie’s original recipe, finally creating that state-of-heaven which Britt had described earlier.  Once I tasted it, there were no regrets.  It was like a butterscotch dream!

After this ordeal was complete, we spent the rest of the night “piping” frosting onto the cupcakes with a squirt bottle I bought for $5.  Britt can 100 per cent attest to the fact that I am the most miserably messy icing attempter that has ever walked this earth.  It worked though, and into the fridge the cupcakes went (they somehow fit after rearrangement of food for six girls) in preparation for the morning’s events.

The rest of the cupcake was easy peasy.  I used my mom’s pumpkin muffin recipe and just beat some cream cheese with sugar and eggs until I had a smooth consistency.  Cutting the middle out of the cupcakes, I added a dollop of cream cheese to them, re-hatted them with the cut out cupcake and, as you already have read, iced my heart out!

The result: delicious.  I am proud to say that my cupcakes were some of the first to disappear out of more than 100 bakers.  I got to try some amazing cupcakes as well, including a spicy “Chili Chocolate” cupcake by Kelly and an amazingly decorated and equally tasty “Death by Chocolate” cupcake by Jenny at Geek Sweets.

Overall the afternoon was an amazing success.  More than $6,000 was raised for Women Alive and the Youth Services Bureau in Ottawa.  EVERYONE should go to this event next year.  No excuse!

Other blog posts about Capital Cupcake Camp (I know there must be more, sorry if you’re not here!):
Heartful Mouthful: A sweet success: cupcake camp 2.0
Vanilla Bean Baker: Back from camp
The Twisted Chef: No more cupcakes
Apt 613: No crumb left behind, Cupcake Camp 2.0 wrap-up
Blurasis: Capital Cupcake Camp 2010
The Village Cake Lady: Capital Cupcake Camp
The WildWorks Station: The return of the ever yummy cupcakes in the capital

Gorgeous Flickr photos (again, sorry!  I know I missed so many of you!):
Shawn

Recipe: Pumpkin cupcakes with a cream cheese filling and a brown sugar icing

Pumpkin Cupcakes
Mix together:
-2 1/2 cups sugar
– 1 cup vegetable oil
– 4 eggs
– 2 cups pumpkin, or 14 oz. canned pumpkin

Add dry ingredients:
–  3 1/2 cups flour
– 2 tsp. baking soda
-1 tsp. cinnamon
– 1 tsp. nutmeg

Carefully stir in 2/3 cups of milk.  Blend until just mixed.  You can make cupcakes, muffins or loaves.  Recipe will make about 3-4 doz. muffins or about 2-3 loaves.

Cream cheese filling
– 8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
– 1 cup icing sugar
– 1 teaspoon vanilla

On medium speed, beat cream cheese with icing sugar until smooth.  Add in vanilla and mix until combined.  To fill cupcakes, use a small knife to cut out the centre of the cupcake (my cupcake holes were about an inch in diametre).  Fill hole with a blob of cream cheese filling and put the cut piece of the cupcake back on top.

Brown sugar icing (via Annie’s Eats)

NOTE: This is the original recipe from Annie’s blog.  In her recipe, she calls for you to use a stand mixer.  Since we don’t have a stand mixer (just a crummy $15 one from Zellers) in my student kitchen, I had to add an extra 1 1/2 cups of icing sugar to give my icing the right consistency.  You might have to play around a bit with this one!

– 2 cups tightly packed brown sugar
– 1 cup heavy cream
– 2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 8 – 1 oz. pieces
– ¼ tsp. cream of tartar

To make the icing, heat the brown sugar, heavy cream, 2 – 1 oz. pieces of butter, and cream of tartar in a 2-3 quart saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, while bringing the mixture to a boil.  Allow the mixture to continue boiling while stirring constantly, for 2 minutes.  Transfer the bubbling hot mixture to a stainless steel bowl and allow to stand at room temperature for 1 hour before proceeding.  Place the cooled mixture in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.  Beat on low speed for 30 seconds. Increase the speed to medium and beat for 2 minutes, adding the 6 remaining pieces of butter one at a time, until incorporated.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Increase the speed to high and beat for an additional 2 minutes.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat on high for an additional 1 minute until light and fluffy.


Corn and Bacon Quiche (featuring the utilization of our new and wonderful deep freeze)

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

To end off the month, I knew I had to get around making this one last recipefrom the September issue of Canadian Living.  I’ve really been meaning to make this one for awhile, but the fact that I had to make my own quiche crust kind of deterred me up until now.  Yesterday evening I finally decided that I could wait no longer and, since I had been having a kitchen marathon in preparation for CAPITAL CUPCAKE CAMP (pictures of my top secret cupcake will be posted soon!), I decided to extend my kitchen stay for awhile longer.

Making this cornmeal-based dough was pretty basic, but I found I had to add a little more water than requested, to make the blob of stuff surrounding my fingers stick together.  The result was this delicious doughy ball, off which I snatched at least a handful of dough to eat before the pie assembling even began.  Must I always eat raw dough?  Yes.  At least there weren’t any raw eggs in this one…

The rest of this dinner was sheer chaos.  This supper saw THREE of us in our cramped, student home kitchen attempting to make three different dishes.  Needless the say, there were bowls, cutlery and crumbs everywhere.  After miraculously managing to fit my quiche into the oven beside Britt’s biscuits, the rest went fairly smoothly.  I only mildly freaked out with how early the sun is setting.  MUST figure out new photographing method, or I may cry.

In the end, the quiche was yummy… bacon can always be counted on to make things better!  The homemade crust was delicious and has made me never want to buy those pre-made Pillsbury crusts ever again!  Grocery store, I am defeating you.  Oh right, and the deep freeze: well our smart Costco purchase allowed me to freeze my meal away for a night when I have nothing to make and am drawn to soup noodles.  Lazy but balanced dinners?  Win!

A Pre-Night Class Feast! (Maple-glazed pork chops and spinach pilaf)

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

This may have been the best meal I’ve ever eaten.  No joke, I was so happy with the way this entire thing turned out, that I came home from my night class and started to snack on the cold, refrigerated leftovers.  I have absolutely no shame.

My concerned parents have recently been questioning my protein intake, and I was interrogated by both my mom and dad a few days ago on the phone, about whether I was eating eggs, peanut butter, cheese, ANYTHING.  My answer: a hesitant “sort of.”  To convince my dearest parents that I was, in fact, not going to shrivel away from a protein deficiency, I decided to splurge on some meat.  Kind of craving pork chops, I bought a package of four from the grocery store, for about $8.  Eight dollars may not seem like much to the average spender, but considering I bought the cheap, almost expired $2 meat last year, this is a definite step up.

I also wanted to get rid of the extra spinach I had from my salad a few days ago, and was desperate to find a recipe that was not some sort of pasta dish.  I struck gold when I found this Spinach Pilaf recipe on the Canadian Living website.  Having never made a pilaf with rice before, I was kind of nervous as to how this one would turn out.  I halved the recipe (to make 2 servings) and the only alteration I had to make was to add an extra 1/4 cup of vegetable stock.  My roommates will vouch for me in saying it was delicious!!  Mmm, just typing this post I am tempted to sneak upstairs and grab a spoonful (I wrote this at night, at which time I had already brushed my teeth, major logistics fail).

For the pork I used CL’s Maple-Glazed Pork Chops recipe, since I needed a fast garnish so I wouldn’t be late for my night class.  Finally, I attempted to make some sort of vegetable packet with farmer’s market carrots and zucchini.  Due to poor planning and my impatience, the carrots were still a little crunchy, but the rest was amazing!

I definitely suggest the two recipes listed above for students!  Such an easy meal, yet super impressive once plated and served (yes, the “bed of spinach” is for decoration, don’t roll your eyes at me).