Recipes

Peach-Raspberry Crumble

This crisp is officially the strawberry-rhubarb pie of 2012. If you don’t remember, and don’t want to go back and read, let me summarize. With both these desserts, the wonderful, seasonal, local ingredients called out to me in the grocery store, and I placed them in my cart without hesitation. With both, I was inspired by their natural beauty – both that of the ingredients and the final product. I adore how the strawberries and rhubarb looked together, tumbling out of a basket. And I adore how the peaches and raspberries look, coated in a little crumble.

Oh – and both were absolutely delicious. Like, DELISH-ious.  There’s really something (everything) to be said for eating foods that are local and in season. It just makes sense, doesn’t it? And given how much better they taste, it’s not a hard sell for me. Just look at those colours!

Even though I was inspired by the fruit itself, I got a recipe for a bang-on crumble from none other than my go-to-gal for all things dessert, Joy the Baker. Her peach and raspberry crumble recipe is so awesome. I love that instead of coating the fruit with sugar  as some recipes do, she suggests coating it in a handful of the crumble topping. It was a terrific idea, there were delicious crunchy sweet bits running all through the crisp.

It couldn’t really be simpler to make. Rinse and slice peaches. Defrost raspberries (or use fresh ones!). Add butter to sugar and oats with a little salt.

Bake until your mouth waters. Eat until you’ve had your fill. Take it to brunch the next morning and wow people. Simple, but impressive.

Make it! Make it now! Before summer’s over, and the delicious peaches are gone, only to be replaced by GMO’s.

xo.

Piña Colada Popsicles!

Let’s just go on vacay, okay?

You totally deserve it. You work way too hard. You need a nice relaxing back massage on a beach with waves crashing in. And you need a strong piña colada in hand.

Quick, go book the plane tickets! In the meantime, though, I’ll bring you a taste of the tropics with these totally exceptional boozy piña colada popsicles. They. Are. Faaaabulous.

Shutterbean is a woman after my own heart. She gives us wonderful recipes (like this one!) that always look so beautiful. Also she’s not afraid of capital letters! HOLLA!

These popsicles are quite simple to make, but they do dirty up quite a few dishes, so prepare yourself! Or just go to work and leave the sink full of dishes, as I am wont to do.

You will need a fresh pineapple! There will be a whole bowlful of chopped pineapple left over after you make the popsicles, for you to nom on at your leisure. You will also need white rum, water, coconut milk, and sugar.

You blend, strain, and pour into popsicle molds (I got mine for $7 at my local Loblaws). Freeze overnight. Trick: before pulling out the popsicles, let them warm up a little inside the molds, between your hands. I had two that broke apart because the bottom stuck when I tried to pull them out while they were still too frozen. Then I learned patience, and waited for them to melt slightly – they came out like a dream!

And then enjoy! Is it possible to get drunk on boozy popsicles? I’m assuming yes, but we can’t take any chances when it comes to scientific experiments! Better get my BFF over here to test the theory.

Aloha!

Carrot Cake

I was thoroughly psyched to see that my bookstore finally had a copy of the Joy the Baker Cookbook. Perhaps my incessant questions about when it would be in stock (due to my horrible laziness and reluctance when it comes to online shopping) paid off! Perhaps not. Either way, there were two copies, and one was automatically mine. My father, in town for a week, offered to subsidize the purchase, and we were in business! (Thanks, Dad.)

The book is beautiful. It’s full of all-new recipes that haven’t yet been on her blog. The photos are gorgeous, and just about every single recipe now has a post-it note on it, because I want to bake absolutely everything inside. When a friend of mine, Isabelle, decided to come visit me two weeks before her birthday, I knew I had my in! An excuse to bake (and eat!) cake for a great friend? Sold.

This is a beautifully *cringe* moist cake, thanks to the pineapple chunks and fresh carrot. So moist, in fact, that despite our aversion to that word, my friend who helped me bake this cake and I used it several times over to describe it. Yikes. Someone help us!

The frosting is a huge selling point – Joy goes into great detail about how to make a successful cream cheese icing. Mine turned out as well as can be expected considering I was finishing it up in the half-hour I had before having to meet Isabelle at the train! I was late! I had a mighty good excuse though.

We enjoyed huge slices of the cake on pretty colored plates, then went about our days. Only problem? I have over half of this cake going stale in my fridge. Who wants to help me find it a good home!?

This is the first in many Joy the Baker Cookbook creations that will be marching out of my kitchen in the coming months. I love her recipes, her voice, and her slang language. Did I mention that she and Shutterbean have a hilarious podcast? Put that in your ears! I’m a huge Joy fan, and I hope after this cake, you will be too.

You can find the recipe in her cookbook, or right here!

Delish! Enjoy.

BBQ Shrimp Flatbread Pizza

I am a blog person. Not just because I have a blog, but because I am *obsessed* with blogs. I love them. I talk about the people who write certain blogs almost as though I know them (thankfully, I have very understanding friends), and I never cease to be inspired in different ways by the online content I consume. I would venture so far as to say that blogs (and the internet, by extension) have taught me many of the life lessons of my adult life, and helped improve my quality of life tenfold.

Case in point: this pizza. Holy. Moly. Guacamole. Well, let’s put it this way: in all the years of knowing my BFF, and all the food I’ve ever fed her (cookies, cakes, savouries), this is the very first recipe that she loved so much she bought all the ingredients for herself and made it at her own house. So far, I’ve made and eaten this pizza/flatbread/pile of awesome on 4 separate occasions. Hmm.

I blame (and also thoroughly thank) Jessica from How Sweet Eats. That woman is the very best kind of crazy. She comes up with recipes I never ever would have imagined…ever. Today, for example, there is a new recipe for hot blueberry cheddar dip. (What?) But I have pinned a huge number of her recipes, because she’s just amazing. Go to her blog, scroll those archives, have happy food dreams.

And make this pizza. It’s so easy. It’s so good. It’s a crowd-pleaser. And, happily, it’s based around the vegetables and cheeses that I tend to have hanging out in my fridge! Win/win/win.

Disclaimer: there is a “flatbread” dough to make, but do not let those words intimidate you. I promise you will be in awe of how easy it is. Each time I make it, the aforementioned BFF goes “wait, that’s it?”. And I nod sagely. With flour on my face, undoubtedly.

Here is the recipe! Sally forth and tally ho and make this, hop to! You will not regret your decision. 

Ps. Don’t forget handfuls of cilantro and big squeezes of lime. That stuff is make-or-break, savvy? xo.

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