An Upgraded Take

While my family was in town, we went to one of our restaurant mainstays - The Keg. Although I am an adventurous eater and come from a family that has roots in the restaurant industry, my parents are fairly conservative when it comes to food. My brother is game to try new things, but doesn't cook. When I go out to eat with my parents we go to one of four or five restaurants that have been tried, tested, and true. They know what to order and what to expect and don't really stray from the list. The Keg is the default "fancy" place of the list where they can get a good steak. Ironically a few years ago my dad wasn't eating beef, I was a vegetarian and my mom was on a big seafood kick - yet we still went to The Keg!

Anyway, they had a set menu special that my mom had which included the Billy Miner Pie. It's basically a 4" high mocha ice cream pie on a chocolate crumb crust, topped with caramel sauce and almonds. It's generally a crowd pleaser, and yes, it's good! A couple of friends of mine love this dessert and as I was going to see them, I decided to do my own take on the Billy Miner Pie.

Let's break it down by component:

• Mocha ice cream
• Chocolate crumb crust
• Caramel sauce
• Almonds

The ice cream
Their ice cream was veeeeery fluffy (almost whipped) with a mild taste. I did a normal churned ice cream amped with chocolate and espresso powder which yielded a rich, smooth, and dense product. As you can see from the picture, I didn't get quite the height as the original but I'd sacrifice a bit of size for quality.

The crust
As for the crust, it seemed that the original had chocolate crumb packed onto the bottom and side of the slice. It was powdery and didn't have any solid support structure at all. I stuck with a chocolate crust, mixing boxed crumb with ground up toasted hazelnuts with melted butter and sugar. I pressed it into a tart pan and baked it for about 15 minutes. It was definitely more like a tart crust, but the nuts in the crumb added a great dimension to the flavour.

The sauce
Their was a basic caramel sauce. Probably from a bottle. I made a fudge sauce of which the base was a salted caramel sauce to which I added a generous handful of dark chocolate. Yeah. It was awesome. Thick. Gloppy. Not too sweet.

The almonds
Same for both. I could've toasted mine I suppose....

All in all - I think my version was pretty darn good. But let's all admit, we have weaknesses for things that are not quite as fussed over (mine is McCain's Deep & Delicious Cake).

The Sandwich of Dreams!

I hosted a dinner for a date recently. I slow cooked a beef shank and served it on polenta with sauteed mushrooms. One of the parts of the meal I was looking forward to was the juicy (and giant) marrow of the beef bone. Like a bulleye, it stared me down whenever I opened up the lid of the slow cooker. I couldn't wait to plunge a knife into the centre and scoop out that velvety marrow and spread it on a piece of toasted baguette. Hell, I would have passed on the rest of the dinner for 10 minutes alone with that marrow bone. Alas, I had to share, but I did get two generously slathered baguette slices along with the rest of my dinner.

A couple of days later, I got to revisit the dinner...in the Sandwich of Dreams!

I took the leftover baguette and cut it in half and lightly toasted it. I heated up some of the beef, shredded it and put it on the bread. The cherry on top? Slices of brie. Oh yeah. And yes, I had a bowl of au jus for dipping as well. (oh, and a baked yam with a dollop of yogurt)

One Cake - Three Ways

Ok, so a little late to the party, but I'm back!
I have some big news to break - but that's another post for another day.

The first birthday cake of the year snuck up on me and I only had a few days to pull it together. I have always wanted to make a confetti cake, which is basically a plain white cake flecked with sprinkles! How delightful! I've seen them in boxed cake form and I thought I would take a stab at it. Why not ring in the first 2012 birthday cake with a festive confetti cake?

I cobbled together a cake (no recipe, ma!) and dumped in a jar of sprinkles.

Here's the thing. I think there is a trick to confetti cake because the sprinkles essentially melted and instead of flecks of colour in the cake...I got blobs. It was pretty... "festive" looking. Delicious, but certainly not what I had expected. I poured the batter into a tube pan (ring-shaped pan) and after it was done I carved out a tunnel from the underside. I then filled the 'cake trench' with whipped cream that had been flavoured with some homemade strawberry jam. I took a thin layer of cake that I had carved out and patched up the trench, so essentially there was a tunnel of strawberry cream inside the cake. I then made a ganache and poured it on top and let it dribble down the sides.

That was the 'first' permutation of the cake.

Using the scraps of the cake, I built a small cup-sized trifle. I had a date coming over a few days later and wanted to serve this as a dessert. I layered the cream, cake, toasted hazelnuts, and ganache in a whiskey tumbler and added some slivered almonds as a garnish.

That was the 'second' permutation of the cake.

And for the third?

The rest of the scraps (plus some ganache added later) that I devoured after cleaning up!

Goes to show that one cake, can certainly go a long way.

Hello 2012!

Okay, okay, I know. Very bad blogger, Spoon!

The end of 2011 was a lot hairier than I expected. I wrapped up some big projects at work, had a typically busy  end-of-year social life, did a whack of home renos and...to top it all of - a raging sinus infection that had me at my couch's mercy for the last two weeks of the year. So you'll have to excuse me for being extremely negligent in blogging.

I did manage to push out another cookbook - not the same concept I had started with, but I'm proud to show off some of the great work I did last year.

So what about 2012?

I set five resolutions for the year and two of them are food related. The first one was to blog at least every two weeks and discuss whatever it is that has caught my food interest. So this could be to document something I have made, but I'm hoping I will write more about food observations and memories. The second is to eat vegetarian for an entire month. I think I may make small allowances for seafood, especially if I am eating out but it will be pretty limited. My target is for April or May, as I do like to reserve my meat eating for BBQ season!

I'm thinking both of these goals can be accomplished. For the writing, it's about making time and really committing to it. For the vegetarian month, I was a veggie for a few years so I'm thinking it won't be that difficult. My goal there is to be as creative as I can with vegetarian eating, and I'll definitely be documenting it all here!

Occupy Kitchen!

So yes, I haven't blogged in a while. It doesn't mean that I'm not busy! I'm still cranking things out of the kitchen, but a lot of what I was making was for my Christmas project. Ironically, today, I decided to scrap the original idea and go with a more generic focus. My idea was to do a Chinese-food themed cookbook, but I realized that trying to make presentable dishes every weekend, whether or not I wanted to eat them or not, was turning into a very ambitious project. And I was losing my passion for it very quickly. I think it will be something I will put together later, but I think I need to spend more time perfecting my recipes and figuring out better lighting schemes in the darker months.

But aside from Chinese food, I am still baking away! Two big birthdays came and went - which meant two cakes were made along with some other treats cranked out from my oven.

Have you ever heard of Domo-Kun? He's this Japanese...err..."character" who is actually a mascot for a TV station. It's all a bit weird, but he's very cute and adorable and can be seen adorning many people's cell phones, key chains and other typical swag areas. A friend LOVES Domo - so why not make her a Domo cake for her big day? I've seen it done many times before (online) and as I was not going to do extremities (gah, I don't think I can find a box big enough for arms and legs) - it was a simple square chocolate cake.

I present to you... Domo-cake!

Cake: Dark Chocolate Cake (classic standby recipe, it never fails to shock me how much sugar it contains)
Filling: White Chocolate Mousse (next time will use gelatin or a proper egg-white stabilizer)
Frosting: Chocolate Buttercream
Details: Eyes - Girl Guide Chocolate Mint Thins, Mouth - White Candy Melts, red colouring

Yes, it does look like a Deep 'n Delicious cake! :P I used a fat star tip to pipe the buttercream. The cake was received very well, and was as delicious as it was cute!

10 Minute Dinner

I don't usually post about my day-to-day eating. It's usually fast, tasty and not so pretty looking. I'm all about the end product, heck, I've been known to eat things straight out of the pan! That's why I generally post about my baked goods. You eat one or two (or a dozen) and then get to work photographing the rest. I can take my time angling my cookies or slices of cake 'just so'. But with dinner? No, no, no, no - I gotta eat. Now.

But I was struck by the beauty and simplicity of my dinner tonight and was inspired to capture it for all to see.
I present to you my 10 minute dinner (which proves the point that good, healthy and fast food can be had):

Creamy polenta topped with sauteed kale and a couple of fried eggs!

I started the polenta first: 1/2 cup cornmeal + 1 cup water + 1 cup milk. Bring to a boil over medium and keep stirring until thickened - this takes about 5-8 minutes or so. Add in salt, pepper and grated cheese to taste. At around the halfway point, throw your eggs on one side of a frying pan and a couple of handfuls of kale on the other side. Throw the lid on for a couple of minutes. All of it should come together around the same time.

And for economy's sake, let's do a price breakdown for tonight's dinner:
Polenta: 40 cents
Eggs: 92 cents
Kale: 50 cents

Total for dinner: $1.82 (let's round up to $2 incl extra ingredients)

Seriously! A $2 dinner!

Mmmm...warm apple pie.

Nothing like it. Even Koi seems to think so.

I spent a weekend in the Okanagan cheering on some friends as they completed their first half-marathon! Woot! One of the things I really wanted to do while in the area was get some local fruit. We stopped by a local market and picked up a few pounds of apples and some other regional specialties (which also included three bottles of fruit liqueur!). I couldn't wait to use the fruit when I got home and prepared some small pies (top crust only) with pate brisee and a mix of McIntosh and Ambrosia apples. It's super easy - add sugar, spices and some starch (cornstarch, tapioca) and ta da! You've got pie!