Category: Baking

Here’s to @baconandbaileys Happy Blogiversary


One of the things that I enjoy about blogging is the sense of community that exists among bloggers and twitter friends.  The honest exchange of ideas, passions and talents has a great appeal.  I have really enjoyed the flood of ideas, creative inspiration and humor that comes across my twitter timelines and is amplified in the blogs of my online friends.

Kelly Neil,@baconandbaileys on twitter, and creator of http://www.kellyneil.com has contributed amazing photography and shared her passion for food and enjoyment of life with us for a year now.  In celebration of that I created a dessert in honor of her contributions.

Renee Lavallee, @FeistyChef on twitter, and author of a Tuesday column in the Arts & Life section of the Chronicle Herald shared her pizza dough recipe with us last Tuesday.    After reading the article honouring pizza and discovering a simple recipe that promised to deliver and amazing crust I just had to it it out.  Renee invited me to try using this dough with some local meats and cheese.  I did just that and the crust, as promised, was fantastic, I will blog the results in a day or so.  First I want to share the results of my @baconandbaileys and @FeistyChef inspired dessert.  The pizza dough recipe I used for the base is provided in the following Chronicle Herald column. http://thechronicleherald.ca/ArtsLife/1235545.html .  If you like this pizza dough recipe check out Renne’s blog http://feistychef.ca/ .

This Bacon and Baileys pizza has 3 components, the crust, the cheesecake inspired ‘sauce’ and the toppings.

Toppings:

3 Strips of thin sliced Smoked Bacon

2 Tbsp Maple Sugar

1 Cup of Water

1 Cup of Sugar

3/4 Cup of Whole Pecans

2 tbsp Milk Chocolate chips or wafers, very cold

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Place the bacon on a cooling rack over a foil lined cookie sheet Place in the oven for 5 minutes.  Remove from the oven and sprinkle half the sugar on the bacon.  Return to the oven until the sugar has melted.  Remove for the oven and flip the bacon.  Sprinkle the rest of the sugar on the bacon.  Cook until the sugar is melted and the bacon is cooked.  Watch it carefully bacon burns fast.

While the bacon is cooking combine the sugar and water in a sauce pot, attach a candy thermometer.  Bring the water to a boil over medium high heat, and heat until the temperature reaches 310 degrees and the color turns golden.  This will take a while but watch it carefully, once it gets to around 300 degrees the temperature will spike fast.  While the water is boiling spread a layer of nuts on a silicon mat on a cookie sheet.  When the syrup has reached temperature and color pour it evenly over the nuts.  Allow them to cool completely.  They will look cool before they are, be very careful, nothing you cook with can burn you like hot sugar.

Put half the brittle into a food processor and chop till it is the size of fine gravel.  Rough chop the candied bacon.

In a spice grinder or coffee grinder grind the cold chocolate chips into course sand

Baileys Pizza “Sauce”

Ingredients

1/4 cup of Ricotta Cheese (Prior Recipe)

2 Tbsp Quark or Creamed Cheese

1 Tbsp Baileys

2 tsp Vanilla

1 tsp Maple Sugar

1 Egg Yolk

Combine all of the ingredients except the yolk. Taste and adjust to your personal taste, the alcohol flavor will cook off.

Crust

I made the crust according to Renee’s directions, but halved the salt.  I preheated my oven to 525 degrees with the stone in the oven.  I rolled out the dough to 12 inches and very thin.  Then I put fork holes all over the skin to help reduce it puffing up.  I baked the skin for 4 minutes then removed it.

A couple tips for baking pizza.

  • Make sure your pizza stone is hot when you put the skin on it.  It helps crisp the skin.
  • Use a pizza peal to transfer the pizza to the stone and pick it up.  Put a bit of corn meal on the peal to allow the pizza to side easily

Assembly

Ingredients

1 tbsp melted butter

2 tsp maple sugar

Take the pizza skin and spread a thick layer of the Baileys pizza sauce on it.  Then sprinkle on the crushed candied brittle, chocolate, and chopped candied bacon.  Break the remaining candied pecans and lay them on the pizza.  Brush the edges of the pizza with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar.  Slide the skin back on the hot pizza stone and bake until the crust starts to brown and the topping is bubbly, about 5 minutes.  Allow the pizza to cool and serve with a shot of Baileys.

Thanks to my local providers:

Bacon : Sweet Williams Country Sausage

Maple Sugar: Neil R Ripply Maple

Milk and Quark : Fox Hill Cheese House

Caramelized Apple Cake with Quark Frosting


Every now and again I ask my readers via Twitter to challenge me with a recipe that they would like to see done.  I find it interesting to see what my fellow foodies desire to eat and then challenge myself to cook it using primarily local ingredients in a creative manner.

Amy works at Fox Hill Cheese house and she said she wanted to create a birthday cake for her to bake this weekend using Fox Hill’s Quark and Yogurt.  I had to make it seasonal and add some flare so I decided to use the Quark (a less rich cream cheese/ricotta like product very popular in Europe) to make a filling for between the layers and flavor it will an apple caramel sauce.  The yogurt will add richness and moisture to the cake and I have used cinnamon to tie all of the flavors together.

I was going for a balance of flavour, a cake that has a nice balance of sweet, spice and sour.  I love the sour flavor from creamed cheese and quark has the same taste.  I also like the crunch and sour provided by the apple.  The cinnamon in each element provided a nice bridge.  I hope you enjoy as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 1 – Almond Brittle

I like a little crunch in a cake to break up the soft texture of the frosting, filling and cake.  For this recipe I made an almond brittle then ground it up in a food processor and then used the crushed brittle in the caramel, filling and to dust the sides of the cake.

Ingredients:

1 cup almonds

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

Lay the almonds on silicon mat or piece of parchment paper in a baking sheet in a single layer close together.  Combine the sugar and water in a pan and bring to a boil over high heat.  Then turn it down and boil until it reached 295 degrees on a candy thermometer.  Be very careful with this mixture it is very hot and can burn severely.  Pour the hot syrup over the almonds to cover them and let them sit until they harden and are cool.  Be very careful it will look cool before it is.  When it is cooled break it up and crush it in a food processor.  Set aside to use later.

Step 2 – Sheet Cake with Fox Hill Yogurt

Ingredients:

3 cups of flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp Cinnamon

1 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)

2 cups of sugar

1 tbsp vanilla

3 large eggs (room temperature)

2 cups of plain yogurt (room temperature)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees

Prepare a 17 x 11 x 1 inch sheet cake by greasing and flouring the bottom and all sides.  After you grease it just dust it with flour and shake off the excess.

Sift together your dry ingredients into a large bowl and set aside.

In a separate large bowl (I use a KitchenAid Mixer) add in the sugar, butter and vanilla.  Beat this on high for 3 to 5 minutes until light and fluffy.  This is a critical step to getting a light cake.  The sugar builds little tunnels of air to the butter adding fluffiness.  You will want to scrape down the sides of the bowl two or three times during this process.  You want to do the serious beating before you add your dry ingredients.  If you beat it after you add the flour you will build gluten and end up with a tough dry cake that has those tunnels through it.  You don’t want any part of that.

Now that you have fluffy butter and sugar you want to add the eggs.  Break the eggs into a small bowl.  You always do this, if you add them directly into the butter and sugar and you lose a piece of shell it is a bugger to get it out of the batter.  Add the eggs in one at a time until each egg is incorporated.

Now we will add the flour and yogurt.  This is the point where we want to keep the mixing to a minimum.  With the mixer on low add in 1/3 of the dry ingredients stir until incorporate.  Then add half the yogurt and scrape the bowl and mix in.  Add the next third of the dry and then the rest of the yogurt and ending with the dry stirring and scraping after each step.

Pour the batter into the prepared sheet pan and bake at 350 for 20 to 30 minutes.  It should start to brown a little and a toothpick inserted should come out clean.

Allow the cake to cool for 15 minutes then invert it onto the bottom of another sheet try and cool for at least an hour more.  It needs to be totally cool before your assemble the cake.

While the cake bakes and cools you can complete the rest of the parts.  Note: I used half of this cake for the birthday cake.  The other half will be cut up and frozen for trifle at another time.  I got 10 slices an inch thick and as large as my hand.  If you want more cake use the whole sheet cake and double the following steps. (you will have enough brittle)

Step 3 – Apple Cider Caramel Sauce.

Ingredients:

2 cups apple cider

1/2 cinnamon stick

1/2 vanilla bean (2 tsp vanilla)

1/4 cup of brown sugar

2 Tbsp Butter

Put the cider in a small pot, add in the cinnamon stick and vanilla

and boil till it is reduced by half.  Add in the sugar and butter and return to the boil and cook until starts to thicken so that it coats the back of a spoon.  About 5 min.  Allow to cool to room temperature.

Step 4 – Fox Hill Quark Filling and Frosting

2 Cups of Fox Hill Quark (you could use half and half ricotta and creamed cheese)

5 Tbsp of The cooled caramel sauce

Whip the quark until it is light and fluffy, add in the caramel and beat until incorporated.  Oh yum!!!  (I have used quark on bagels before but it is the most amazing ingredient for frostings and fillings.)  I will be playing with this food!!!

Step 5 – Caramelized Apples

5 small macintosh apples pealed and sliced into wedges

2 tbsp butter

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

Melt the butter in a frying pan and add in the brown sugar, stir.  Add the apples and sprinkle the cinnamon.  Cook until the apples soften (there should be a little crunch left).  Allow them to cool.

Assembly:

Cut the cake into 3 equal pieces widthwise and then in half lengthwise.  If you are using the whole cake do not do the lengthwise cut.  Take one of the pieces on the bottom of your cake plate and top with quark filling, dust with the almond brittle and then a single layer of apples.  Put the next cake section on top and repeat.  Top with the last section of cake.  Apply a layer of frosting on the top.  Layer the apples on top overlapping them leaving a 3/4 of an inch around the edges.  Frost the sides of the cake.  Then apply a layer of the crushed brittle around the empty edges on the top of the cake and then press on the sides. Drizzle the top with caramel sauce.

If you have any left over brittle it would be a great ice cream topping, and left over quark could be used on toast or a bagel.

 

As always thanks to my local suppliers:

Yogurt and Quark: Fox Hill Cheese House

Apples: Noggins Corner Farm Market

Apple Cider: Suprima Farm

Cinnamon: JamesLea

Eggs: Elmridge Farm

Apple Cinnamon Hot Oatmeal


Have I mentioned I love oatmeal.  Yeah I thought so.  I am working to change my eating habits in a sustainable way.  I believe when it comes to food we have 2 needs, the need for nutrition and the need to gain pleasure from the food we eat.  Many will argue that the pleasure is not important, but the fact is if we are not satisfied with the food we are eating we will eat food we should not.  Diets do not work, if they did the diet industry would not have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to convince us that their diet is different.  If a diet worked those of us that need to lose weight would flock to it.  The results would speak for themselves.  Diet foods??  Sorry, again those are produced for the most part produced by companies playing on our need to lose weight, filled with a lot of processed food that just gives us false hope.  

I did a blog on oatmeal showing why it is a good answer to food confusion.  Getting back to the food that we are meant to eat in as natural a form as possible will show us results.  Making sure this food needs not only our nutritional needs but our need for flavor will give us a complete, sustainable food lifestyle that no diet or processed diet food ever can.
Here is one of many oatmeals that I enjoy in the morning.  Yes it is a carbohydrate, yes I put sugar in it and yes I use whole milk.  None of this is bad in proper proportion.  Carbohydrates are the fuel we need to give us energy, morning is the time for this, I would not recommend this meal for a bed time snack.  Having a good breakfast kickstarts our metabolism and the oatmeal provides a nice slow burn that will carry us to lunch.  Oatmeal is a blank canvas, play with it, add flavours you like and enjoy.  This recipe makes about 3 servings for me.
 
Ingredients:
1 cup apple cider
1 cup water
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1.5 tsp vanilia
1/3 cut chopped pecans
1/4 cup dried currents
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp maple sugar
2 cups oatmeal
1 apple diced.
To start the oatmeal make a flavorful broth with all of the items but the oatmeal and diced apples. Heat it until is start to steam and then add in the oatmeal.  Bring to a boil and stir until it reaches the consistency that you want.  This is a matter of choice but it takes about 5 minutes to get to where I want it to be. 
Add in the diced apples and serve.  I like to add a little milk or yogurt to mine.  This breakfast gets me through my morning.  I hope you enjoy.
 
Thanks to my local suppliers:
 
Oats :                     Speerville Mills
Milk :                      Fox Hill Cheese House
Apples:                 Noggins Corner Farm Market
Maple Sugar:       Coulis Divin
Cinnamon:           JamesLea Bio foods International
 

>Fresh Ricotta Cheese Cakes – With Fox Hill Milk


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One of the things I love about classic Italian food is how simple it is and how it really highlights ingredients.  Therefore I decided to honor the high quality milk from Fox Hill by making little ricotta cheese cakes.  These are lighter that cheese cake made from sour cream and cream cheese but are just as tasty.  This is very simple to make and it has nice clean flavors that you are sure to enjoy.  
Ingredients:
1/2 pound fresh ricotta cheese (recipe)
2.5 Tbsp White Sugar
2 T Flour
2 Eggs
1/4 Tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Orange zest
1 tsp Vanilla
1/8 tsp sea salt
20 dark chocolate disks
Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.
Prepare 4 ramekins by greasing the insides with butter then flour.  Tap out the excess flour. Ensure the entire surface is covered with butter and flour or the cakes will stick.
In a mixing bowl add sugar to ricotta, and stir with a whisk until somewhat smooth, then whisk in flour and eggs (one at a time).  When you have a smooth batter add in cinnamon, orange zest, vanilla and salt and beat again.  
Fill each ramekin about half way, then put 5 chocolate disks in each one then top each with the remaining batter.  ramekins should be about 3/4 full.  Do not fill to the top.
Bake in the middle of the oven for 40 minutes to an hour.  They will get golden on the top.  They are going to puff up but will fall when cooling, that is expected dont be alarmed.
When the are done remove to a wire cooling rack and refrigerate.   Top them with a cool strawberry sauce and a little powdered sugar.  
As always thanks to my local suppliers:
Milk for Ricotta : Fox Hill Cheese House
These suppliers are located at the Halifax Seaport Farmers Market
A note about the Cinnamon I used:
While at the international day which is held every Friday at the Halifax Market I ran into a vendor who was selling spices and teas from Ceylon.  As with most of the vendors at the market he was passionate about his product.  His company imports spices directly from Ceylon from a fair trade cooperative of farmers.  He stressed the freshness of the product as well as the quality.  He was proud that the farmers could make a good living providing a high quality product, this is what we want for all of our farmers .  I ground up 2 cinnamon sticks to test and it was amazing.  The scent had an amazing citrus note to it and the cinnamon taste was great.   I will be doing a blog of them soon after I have sampled a few more products but had to give them props for the cinnamon.  They can be found at the market on international day and their website.


>Ricotta Cheese with Fox Hill Milk


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I love italian food.  Can’t get enough of it.  I have already given you a recipe for a great tomato sauce, and now I will show you how to make ricotta cheese.  Ricotta is used as a filling for ravioli or other stuffed pasta, it is used in lasagna and is also fantastic for making all kinds of desserts.  You can get ricotta in the stores but trust me this is much better.  It is so soft, smooth, and creamy.  It has a clean rich flavor that can’t be matched by the cheese you get at your local factory food outlet.
This recipe uses 2 L of Fox Hill milk and will yield about half a pound of ricotta.  It is very simple to do and it will be worth the effort.  If you do not use Fox Hill Milk then you will need to as about 3/4 cup of cream into the mixture to get a nice rich ricotta.  I have made this a number of times and I can tell you honestly tell you using Fox Hill’s milk results in the best ricotta that I have had.  It only makes sense as the more natural the product the better the results will be.
I will be using this cheese in several recipes I will blog later but this will go great in any recipe you have that uses ricotta cheese.  
Ingredients
2 L Unhomogenized Milk or 2 L Whole Milk and 3/4 cup cream
1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 tsp salt
Cheese Cloth (this will be required to drain the cheese)
Add the milk and salt to a heavy bottom pot or dutch oven and heat the milk to 180 degrees.  Be careful to not let the milk boil.  Make sure you put the thermometer into the milk deep enough to get an accurate reading.  When the milk is to temperature add in the lemon juice and gently stir it in one or two stirs, do not aggressively stir because you do not want the curds to be broken up.  
Turn the heat to low and allow to cook for 15 minutes longer.  Again do not let it come to a boil.  After 15 minutes turn off the pot and cover.  Allow to sit for about 30 minutes to an hour or until you see the curds formed and the liquid separating.  You will see the milk curdle when you add the lemon juice this is not what you are looking for.  You want the milk solids to really form up or the liquid will not strain off.

When this is completed line a colander with several layers of cheese cloth.  Slowly pour the mixture into the cheese cloth and allow to drain until all of the liquid has passed through.  (About 30 min to an hour).  You can then take the cheese and put it in a storage container and refrigerate or use it right away.  It will stay fresh 2 to 3 days.
Special thanks to Fox Hill Cheese House for making such a wonderful product.

>Oatmeal Cookies with Drunken Dried Fruit


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Who want to make cookies this weekend!!!  I have heard people say they don’t like a lot of things, but cookies are not one of them.  We can all think back to the smell of homemade cookies fresh out of the oven.  The taste of a warm cookie with a tall glass of cold milk, and of course sneaking cookies from the freezer for a midnight snack. (Ok maybe that was just me — blush) 
One of my favorite cookies is an oatmeal cookie with raisins or assorted dried fruits.  It just so happens that oatmeal is incredibly good for you.  I am not promoting this as a health cookie, you wont see me on an infomercial promoting this a a cookie that will cure your every ailment.  However increasing your intake of oatmeal does help reduce weight, lower cholesterol and reduce blood pressure.  Oatmeal also is loaded with fiber which makes you feel full so you will eat less.  So if you can replace a factory food cookie with something that contains oatmeal then you have done a good thing.
This cookie is also very flavorful.  I think that we can eat our way to better health and weight (in my case a major concern) by eating better food.  However for me this only works if it tastes good.  Here is a cookie that I have come up with that is a good choice for a sweet snack.  
Ingredients:
1 Cup Butter (organic and local is best) – At room temperature
3/4 Cup of Brown Sugar
2 Eggs (beaten)
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 Tbsp Honey
1 1/2 cups Whole White Flour (if you cant get this go half & half white and whole wheat)
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 tablespoon Cinnamon
1 teaspoon of Ground Ginger
1/2 teaspoon of Ground Cloves
2 Cups of Rolled Oats
1/3 cup dark raisins
1/3 cup golden raisins
1/3 cup dried cranberries
3/4 cup dark rum or orange juice
Directions
This recipe takes a little bit of wait time at the beginning.  Take your butter out of the refrigerator and allow it to come to room temperature.  Put the dried fruit in a small pot and cover with dark rum or orange juice.  Put over very low heat, the warmer element of your stove if you have one is ideal.  Allow the dried fruit to sit until the butter is soft.  
Preheat your oven to 375
When the butter is softened, place it along with the brown sugar in the bowl of a Kitchen Aid Mixer with the whisk attachment (or a large metal bowl and use a hand mixer).  I don’t shill for Kitchen Aid by the way but their mixer is one of my favorite kitchen helpers and I use it extensively.  Beat the sugar into the butter until it is smooth.  It is important not to use melted butter the sugar grains when beat in with the butter form little pockets of air which will make the cookies lighter in texture.  
Next add in the eggs, honey and vanilla.  Stir until smooth.  In another bowl combine the  flour, baking soda and spices.  Change the mixing attachment on your mixer to the paddle.  Mix these well then sift into your wet ingredients adding about a third at a time stirring each time to incorporate.  Don’t skip the sifting step.  It will ensure the flavors are well mixed and will weed out any lumps of baking soda which can be a very unpleasant bite.
Drain the fruit in a strainer and then add the fruit and oatmeal to the mixer and stir until incorporated.  
Now for cookie sheets I highly recommend a nice heavy cookie sheet with a silicon mat to help stop sticking.  These produce nice evenly browned cookies that do not stick and make cleanup a non issue.  To scoop out the cookies I recommend getting a disher.  It is like a small ice cream scoop, you can get them in various sizes and they will make a nice uniform cookie.
Scoop the cookies out onto your cookies sheet in about tablespoon full sizes.  I like to press them down a bit to make a cookie about half an inch thick.  Bake in the 375 oven for twelve to fifteen minutes.  Check the first batch often, you want a nice golden brown, they will still be soft.  Remove from the cookie sheet on to a wire rack.  This recipe will make about 2 dozen cookies.
Play around with the recipe, try different dried fruits (though I recommend soaking them to add additional flavor and to stop them from turning into little bullets).  Also you may want to add more spices or maybe play with adding a little nutmeg.  Taste and try, that is the secret to good home cooking.
Thanks again to my local suppliers:
Oatmeal and Whole White Flour – Speerville Mills