Category Archives: Food

Tasty Fruit and Butter Scones

Food, Recipes

This is a recipe from a friends mother – it’s pretty flexible and easy to make. So far I’ve used it to make Saskatoon Berry Scones as well as Blueberry Scones.

A couple blueberry scones
Print

Blueberry Scones

Course Breakfast
Keyword baking, blueberry, scones
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Servings 8 scones

Ingredients

  • 4 cups flour
  • 6 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 1/2 cup butter cold, cut into small cubes
  • 1 1/2 cups berries
  • 1 cup milk add extra if necessary
  • 2 each eggs beaten, can reserve one yolk to wash tops if you like

Instructions

  1. Mix all dry ingredients, and then cut in butter with pastry cutter

  2. Wash and dry berries, then toss gently to get evenly distribute throughout mixture

  3. Add eggs and milk, and mix to combine and wet all of the flour/butter/berry mixture. Don't over mix or knead.

  4. Roll into a cylinder, approx. 3-4" in diameter. Can either cut discs approx 1.5 – 2" thick, or gently flatten cylinder and then cut triangles.

  5. Place pieces onto parchment lined baking sheet, keep pieces at least 1" apart.

  6. If desired, brush tops with egg wash and lightly sprinkle with sugar.

  7. Bake for 15-20 minutes @ 425 degrees Farenheit, or until golden brown on top.

    Saskatoon scones

Recipe Notes

First time making this recipe I made the scones with Saskatoon berries.  I over mixed these a little – making them a bit dense.  The Blueberry scones I worked much less, and the result was much nicer 🙂

Sourdough Waffles

Recipes, ,

Since almost the beginning of the COVID lockdowns last year, I had started maintaining a sourdough starter as yeast was not to be found in the grocery stores. Needed a way to use the starter discard as it was starting to take up too much space in our refrigerator, and waffles were the answer!

I use a Cuisinart Griddler – to which I added a set of Cuisinart Griddler Waffle Plates.

Print

Overnight Sourdough Discard Waffles

Course Breakfast
Servings 3 large waffles

Ingredients

  • 240 g sourdough starter discard
  • 136 g flour
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Next morning

  • 1/4 cup butter melted and cooled
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder

Instructions

Night before

  1. In a large bowl, mix sourdough starter, flour, sugar, milk and vinegar together.

  2. Set aside, covered loosely with plastic wrap

Next morning

  1. Preheat waffle iron

  2. In a small bowl, mix beat egg, butter and vanilla together

  3. Pour mixture into large bowl of starter batter, and mix well

  4. Sprinkle baking soda and baking powder over batter and mix well

  5. Add batter to waffle iron – I use a ladle that holds approx. 1/3 cup.  One ladle scoop for ½ the waffle ironplate.  Close lid and set a timer for 5minutes and 30 seconds. (That’s what I use, and find it’s perfect for my waffle iron – adjust time or waffle iron temp to suit your own preferences)

Braised Cauliflower in the Instant Pot

Food, Recipes,

I came across a recipe in the “Mediterranean Instant Pot” cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen. The recipe looked pretty good, and used a spice blend I hadn’t heard of before called ras el hanout. I changed the recipe a little due to my own preferences and the unavailability of one ingredient.

The result was delicious, and I’ll definitely be making this again!

Print

Braised Cauliflower with North African Spices

Course Side Dish
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Servings 4

Ingredients

  • 1 head Cauliflower trim leaves and stem, keep whole
  • 1 can Whole San Marzano tomatoes drain (keep liquid), and coarsely chop
  • 2 tsp Ras el hanout
  • 2 tbsp olive oil extra virgin
  • 4 cloves garlic minced
  • 1/4 cup golden raisins
  • 1/4 cup kalmata olives pitted and coarsely chopped
  • 1/4 cup fresh cilantro coarsely chopped

Instructions

  1. Turn on Instant Pot to Saute, high setting, and add olive oil, garlic, and ras el hanout

  2. Saute for about 2-3 minutes, until spices become really fragrant, then turn Instant Pot off

  3. Add the reserved tomato juice and chopped tomatoes to Instant Pot, stir well, and then reserve 3-4 tablespoons of the mixture

  4. Insert trivet then steaming basket into Instant Pot

  5. Complete preparation of the head of cauliflower by making a deep criss-cross slice into stem, then place head into steaming basket, stem side down.

  6. Pour reserved tomato/spice mixture over top of cauliflower.

  7. Cook in Instant Pot using high pressure, for 3 minutes, doing a quick release when cook time has completed.

  8. Set cauliflower head aside in serving dish, and cover with foil

  9. Set Instant Pot to Saute, add olives and golden raisins to tomato mixture. Cook this down to thicken a bit. You can salt & pepper this if you like (I didn't)

  10. Cut the head of cauliflower into quarters, then eights. Spoon more of the tomato mixture over top, and then sprinkle cilantro over when serving. Provide the rest of the tomato/spice mixture alongside so people can add more as they wish.

Recipe Notes

The original recipe called for green olives, anchovies, and pine nuts (which I couldn’t find at our grocery store).  Omitted the anchovies to make the dish vegan, and I prefer black olives over green 🙂

Making the Best Pumpkin Spice Latte

Coffee, Food, Recipes

Well, I had to try it. James Hoffman’s recent video was interesting. I ended up making 2 batches after a visit to the Silk Road Spice Merchant on Whyte Avenue.

The first one I followed his direction and recipe as closely and exact as possible. After measuring everything out, I ground it all up into a Krups Coffee & Spice grinder. One step I added was to heat the spice blend up on the stove prior to adding the water and pumpkin juice. I also used a light brown sugar instead of Demarra.

This initial batch ended up much thicker than what his seemed, so I made a second batch, which I combined with the first one. I made the second batch without pumpkin, and added green cardamom.

The syrup is definitely very flavorful, and makes a delicious latte! The biggest challenge I found was in trying to strain the syrup. I used a couple different sieves and also a muslin filter bag, and it took a long time – must have taken almost an hour! I’ll have to find a better strainer.

Here’s are the ingredients I used for my second batch of pumpkin spice:

Vietnamese Cassia Bark: 14g
Indonesian Cinnamon Quills: 14g
Powdered Ginger: 8g
Whole Cloves: 2g
Allspice: 2g
Whole Nutmeg: 7g
Green Cardamom: 3g

For the syrup, I used a light brown sugar – 350g, and 175g of water, and 25g of the pumpkin spice.

I also made the coffee infused whipping cream to top the latte – it was fantastic, and much easier to make! Will definitely make the whipping cream again, as well as the pumpkin spice. I think that I’ll like skip the syrup.

Dialing in the Espresso

Coffee

My espresso machine has been working well, but I think I was getting lazy in spending time to properly dial in my beans – but after spending a little time this weekend doing just that – I realized what a difference it really makes!

I was motivated after taking apart the grouphead trying to resolve some excessive water dripping from it – I was going to take the parts into a local shop and basically rebuild and re-gasket the entire grouphead. Once I had all the parts out, and cleaned everything up, I realized it would be a couple days before I could get to the shop – and I didn’t want to be without my morning espresso’s, leaky machine or not!

So back together it went – and shockingly, the leaking went away, and I also found that the shot lever actually moved with little resistance – much like it did when I first got the machine over a decade ago!

Dialing in my shots didn’t take long at all I found – don’t know why I thought it was such a chore. I have the machine dispensing about 2 oz. of espresso in 29 seconds, with the portafilter dosed with 19-20 grams of beans.