Birthday Cupcakes

For my son Max's birthday this year, I decided to make brownie cupcakes instead of the usual birthday cake. I used a recipe I found a few years ago in Woman's Day magazine. After the first attempt 5 years ago, I wrote on the recipe, "very good. Dean gave me a hug they were so good!"

I like this recipe because it uses semi-sweet chocolate. Many brownie recipes use unsweetened baking chocolate. So you can always use semi-sweet chocolate chips if you don't have baking chocolate squares on hand. As you can see in the photo, we indulged in chocolate whipped cream on top...it was a special occasion after all.

Brownie Cupcakes (from Woman's Day, September 1, 2003)

1/2 cup butter

4 squares semi-sweet baking chocolate

3/4 cup sugar (the original recipe calls for 1 cup)

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 eggs

2/3 cup flour

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

* In a saucepan on medium heat, melt the butter and chocolate. Remove from the heat and stir in the sugar, vanilla and eggs. Add the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder and stir until just blended. Divide batter among 12 muffin cups lined with muffin papers. Bake at 325F for 25-30 minutes.

Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving is a great excuse to bake more than one pie. After all we are celebrating the harvest and being grateful for our families and food...

This year we went to my parents' house for dinner. My mother, as usual, did a fantastic job and brought together all the favourites - roast turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing (our tradition is to use bagels in the stuffing so it doesn't get soggy), mashed potatoes, green and yellow beans, and mashed turnip (a nod to my mother's Nova Scotian heritage). A truly Herculean effort on her part. Only when I started to be responsible for the large family dinners did I realize just how much work it was. Mom always made it seem so easy. I provided the pumpkin and apple pies for dessert. Oh yes and there was some whipped cream too (do calories count on Thanksgiving?)

When I was young teenager, we lived in a house around Bayview and York Mills in North Toronto. We had the distinction of having a working wood stove fitted into our basement. My Dad installed it in the seventies as a reaction to the "energy crisis" of that time. He attached it to our heating duct system so it provided not only heat but also a place to cook. During that time I recall on Sundays (and of course Thanksgiving) my mom cooking roasts and baking in the oven. She was able to teach me how to use the wood stove to cook and bake since she grew up with a wood stove in her house in rural Nova Scotia. I helped when I could since most of my weekend time in those days was spent doing homework and studying. Then, as now, I loved to bake and it's interesting for me to reflect on my honing my baking skills in those days with my mom's help and the wood stove in the city.

My dad (who loves jokes that manipulate language) enjoyed my comment that my making two homemade pies today, I was like a pioneer ("pie"-oneer).

My mom generously gave me the remains of the turkey to make soup. That is my project for today - homemade turkey, vegetable and rice soup. Some people throw the bones etc. away but I was taught to use up their goodness by making delicious soup - I guess I do have a bit of pioneer inside me.

Homemade Bread and Butter

Today was one of my favourite teaching days. The time when we celebrate Thanksgiving together is a wonderful time to talk about what we are thankful for, to create bread, butter and vegetable soup from scratch and to share our good fortune with teachers and staff.

The students always love the taste of this homemade bread. Of course it tastes even better with homemade butter.

I have managed to find a way to bake bread without an oven. This is a necessity in a classroom where you do not have easy access to a stove. One year when I baked bread in a school, I set off the fire alarm and the whole school was evacuated! You see I didn't realize at that time that the ovens in staff rooms may not have been cleaned regularly...

This is a Welsh bread recipe that is designed to be baked in a frying pan on an open fire. I use an electric frying pan in school and a regular frying pan on an electric stove when baking this at home. I have adapted the recipe to use the "quick-rise" style of yeast, which reduces the usual two rising times to just one and replaced lard with vegetable oil.

Welsh "Planc" Bread (from The Book of Bread by Judith and Evan Jones - 1982)

3/4 cup recently boiled water
3/4 cup milk (not skim)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 packages "quick-rise" style yeast
2 teaspoons salt
3 1/2 to 4 cups all purpose flour

* In a large bowl put the water, milk, oil and salt and mix together. Add one cup of flour and stir. Add both packages of yeast and mix in. Stir in 2 1/2 cups of flour - at this point you will have to start mixing with your hands. Keep adding in flour and kneading with your hands until the dough pulls together into a ball and is dry to the touch - about 5-8 minutes. Put a clean tea towel over the top of the bowl and let rise, in a warm place, for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Punch down the dough and put on a lightly greased frying pan (no heat) and let rise for about 20 minutes. Put the heat on med-low and make a "tent" of foil. Leave the bread to bake for 15-20 minutes and check the bottom of the bread. If there is a nice brown crust, turn it over, replace the foil "tent" and bake an additional 20 minutes. Remove the bread to a cooling rack. Cut into slices and serve with butter. This bread also makes excellent toast.

Homemade Butter in a Jar

500 ml whipping cream (regular is good but organic is really good)
1 tsp salt
1 glass jar (I use a clean empty jar of "Classico" spaghetti sauce)

*Pour the salt and cream into the jar. Shake the jar vigorously for 15-20 minutes. The cream will get thicker and thicker and all of a sudden - KERPLONK- the butterfat separates from the whey and you have a large lump of butter in the jar. Pour off the whey and spoon out the butter into a dish. You may have to "squeeze" the fresh butter with the back of a spoon to release the remaining liquid.

Broccoli and Cheese Soup

One of my favourite cookbook authors is Nigella Lawson. Her recent book is a collection of recipes that are very fast and inexpensive to create. I also manage to get a good result even though I don't always have the exact ingredients on hand.

I tried this soup recipe last weekend when my parents came over for dinner and lo and behold both my children actually ate it...and one even said (without prompting) "this is good". Now, there was a liberal scattering of grated mozzerella and cheddar cheese (children) or Stilton cheese (adults) to enhance the taste.

I used my food processor to grate a block of mozzerella cheese and a block of "old" cheddar cheese. Then I used it to blend the soup.

Broccoli and Cheese Soup (inspired by Broccoli and Stilton Soup from Nigella Express - 2007)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

I clove garlic, chopped

1 tsp dried thyme

1 kg bag frozen broccoli

4 cups vegetable stock (I used a stock cube)

salt and pepper to taste

250 g cheese (Stilton - crumbled; Mozz/Cheddar - grated)

* In a large pot saute the garlic and onion in the oil. Cook about 5-7 minutes. Add the frozen broccoli and vegetable stock, cover and cook for 10 minutes or until the broccoli is tender. Use an immersion blender or a food processor to blend the soup. Return to the pot, season to taste with salt and pepper and reheat slightly. Serve soup with a generous sprinkle of cheese on top.

coleslaw for a party

The joke in my house growing up was that the best coleslaw was made by Colonel Saunders. We had a pool in our backyard and every so often as a treat my parents would buy a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a tub of coleslaw to eat on the patio beside the pool. KFC's coleslaw with it's sweet, creamy texture and alarming flourescent green colour was the perfect foil to the fried chicken.


This weekend we went to my brother-in-law's to celebrate the September birthdays of my niece Chiara and nephew Jake. In honour of Chiara's 18th birthday I managed to make her a book that contained 18 pieces of homemade jewellery. It took all day Saturday, but I managed to make 8 necklaces, 2 bracelets, 7 pairs of earrings and one cellphone charm.

For the party, my sister-in-law Ant asked me to make my 'famous' coleslaw. She is a vegetarian and this coleslaw is one of her favourite dishes. If you have a food processor, this salad goes together very quickly and leftovers keep well in the fridge. If you want to get fancy, save a leaf from the carrots to garnish the bowl.

Nancy's Easy Coleslaw

1 small cabbage, outer leaves and core removed (I used a nappa cabbage)
3 large carrots, peeled
2 apples , leave the skin on (I used MacIntosh apples)
For the dressing:
1 X 175g container plain (unflavoured) yogurt
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
3 tablespoons dijon mustard
1/2 cup mayonaise

* In a food processor, with the grater blade, shred the cabbage, carrots and apples (you may need to do it in two batches). Tip the grated vegetables into a large bowl. In a small bowl dissolve the sugar in the vinegar. In a one-cup glass measuring cup mix together the yogurt, vinegar-sugar mixture, mustard and mayo. Pour over the vegetables and mix well. If the coleslaw seems a bit dry add more mayo, a tablespoon at a time.

baked peppers and tomatoes

...this photo was from before they were baked...I forgot to take a picture afterward!

This is one of my favourite recipes to make in the fall when Ontario tomatoes are at their best and red peppers aren't so expensive.

I stumbled on this dish over 15 years ago. At that time, TVO aired many different British cooking shows and would offer the companion book on mail-order at the end of the show (another favourite at that time was an Indian cooking show by Madhur Jaffrey). This comes from the doyenne of British cookery, Delia Smith, on her Christmas special. Her recipe includes fennel inside the baked peppers but since I am alone in my home in my affection for the flavour of licorice, I have adapted it without (although it would probably be delicious).

Roasted Red Peppers (adapted from Delia Smith's Christmas - 1990)

4 large red/yellow peppers, cut in half, seeds removed

1 carton of fresh "heirloom" cherry tomatoes, quartered

3 cloves garlic, sliced very thinly

8 tablespoons olive oil

juice of 1/2 lemon

salt and pepper

* In a 9X13 pan, arrange the peppers, cut-side up. Distribute the tomatoes and tuck in the slices of garlic (so they don't burn). Drizzle one tablespoon of oil into each pepper. Add a generous grinding of pepper and salt on top. Bake at 350F for about one hour. After taking the pan out of the oven, squeeze the lemon juice over top. Serve with good sourdough bread, rice or egg noodles.

blueberry pancakes

Back in August, Lucy Waverman's article in the Globe and Mail had this recipe. They don't look so beautiful but they tasted really good. Even my boys, who prefer the wafer-thiness of crepes, liked these thin crepe-like pancakes (or as they were dubbed at our house "crancakes").

Blueberries have had an uneven history with me. One of my favourite food memories are eating "blueberry toasties" for breakfast at Howard Johnson restaurants. These were square sweet cornbread-style pastries that had an amazing ability to soak up butter. On the other hand, I once was stung by a wasp picking blueberries when I was working north of Sault Ste. Marie for the Ministry of Natural Resources. My arm swelled up like a balloon. I guess that's what I got for taking time off work to fill my hardhat with wild blueberries!

Dave Seidler's Best Pancakes Ever (from Lucy Waverman's Globe Article on August 23, 2008)

1 cup flour

3 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup buttermilk (I didn't have any so I soured 1 cup regular milk with 1 tsp. of lemon juice)

1/2 cup water

1 egg

1/3 cup vegetable oil (I used sunflower oil)

1 cup washed blueberries

* Do not overmix, as it makes the pancakes tough. This recipe made about 10 large pancakes. Serve with maple syrup.