Dessert By Candy

As much as I enjoy making sweet treats, I’ve never been a fan of confections in the kitchen. Baking is all about precision but candy-making is obsessively more so because of the high importance placed on temperature. Whether you’re turning sugar to caramel or tempering chocolate to a shiny sheen, a few degrees off the target can be the difference between success and a gooey mess.

I always welcome the addition of simple recipes to my collection and my recent purchase of The Best Of America’s Test Kitchen: Best Recipes And Reviews 2008 contains one perfect example. This fudge recipes does not require any confectionary-specific skills…the ability to scale out the ingredients is already half way to success! To cut down on preparation time, I keep boxes of finely chopped chocolate in my pantry. When I need them for any recipes, it’s only a simple matter of scoop and scale.

Ingredients

• 454g bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
• 60g unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 (14oz) can of sweetened condensed milk
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 115g walnut, coasely chopped

Method

1. Bring half a pot of water to simmer using a medium size pot. It will be used to set up a bain marie. Line a 8×8 square cake pan with parchment.
2. In a medium mixing bowl (completely dry), mix together chocolates, baking soda, and salt. Pour in condensed milk and vanilla. Set the bowl over the pot of simmering water to melt the ingredients by the steam, stirring occasionally for even melting.
3. Remove bowl from heat when the content is melted. Stir in chopped walnuts. Pour into prepared pan and smooth with an offset spatula.
4. Chill in the refrigerator for at least two hours. Unmold the fudge to a cutting board and cut into bite-size pieces. Store in a cool place between sheets of parchment paper.

Glutinous fried rice is known as 生炒糯米飯 in Chinese, a typical comfort food in winter time. Although my specialty in the kitchen lies in dessert, I do enjoy cooking up a traditional Chinese meal every now and then, especially dishes that my brother enjoys very much. The inspiration for this dish was actually a little silly. I was watching a Hong Kong television show featuring one-on-one cooking lessons for celebrities. The episode starred Ella Koon, a pop singer who infamously earned the reputation of Master Chef From Hell because of her horrible cooking (watch the video starting at the 5:28 mark, she’s the tall one in a grey shirt). One of the dishes which she learned to make was glutinous fried rice. There were plenty of tips discussed at the show so that got me interested. What I thought was a difficult dish to make is in fact quite simple. The following is my version.

Ingredients

• 320g glutinous rice (糯米)
• 5 large dried shitake mushroom (冬菇)
• 20g dried shrimp (蝦米)
• 2 large eggs
• 2 dry cured Chinese sausages (臘腸), sliced
• 1 dry cured Chinese liver sausage (潤腸), sliced
• 50g dry cured Chinese pork belly (臘肉), diced
• 200mL low sodium chicken broth
• 2 stalks of green onion, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp dark soy sauce (老抽)
• 2 tbsp soy sauce (生抽)

Method

1. 5 hours before cooking, rinse the glutinous rice and soak with enough water in a bowl to cover all the rice. In separate containers, soak the shitake mushroom and dried shrimps with just enough water to cover.
2. Bring a large pot of water to rolling boil. Drain the rice and briefly blanch in the boiling water for about 5 seconds. Drain with a fine sieve and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking. Set aside.
3. Whisk the eggs and cook over high heat in a frying pan to make a thin omelette. Julienne finely and set side.
4. Reserve the soaking liquid for the mushroom and dried shrimp. Dice the mushrooms.
5. Using a frying pan at high heat, saute the cured meats with mushroom and dried shrimps until fragrant. Remove from pan and set aside.
6. Lightly coat a wok with cooking oil at medium-high heat. Put all the rice into the wok, stirring constantly. Similar to cooking risotto, add the reserved soaking liquid to the rice and keep stirring until the liquid is absorbed. Repeat this process with chicken stock as many times as necessary until the rice is cooked. It will be sticky because this is glutinous rice! It only took me less than 5 minutes, much quicker than risotto. That’s because the rice was soaked and blanched earlier.
7. Mix in the cured meat, mushroom, and dried shrimps. Season with dark soy sauce and soy sauce to taste. Mix in green onion and egg. Serve immediately.

Happy Easter and Happy Birthday to Dessert By Candy! Today I’m celebrating the third anniversary of my blog except that it is a little dorky excuse for a celebration…so I’m celebrating Easter instead.

On this special day, I visited Brick Street Bakery in the Distrillery District for some much-sought-after hot cross buns. If you only know hot cross buns by its supermarket counterpart, you must try one from a good bakery. These hot cross buns are deeply flavourful from both the sweet spices and dried fruit, as well as the bread itself. The top is glazed with a sticky glaze which gives the bun a little caramel flavour. The best part of all was the crunchy cross. Too bad I’ll have to wait another year until I can tastes these delicious bread again.

Chocolate boutiques are tremendously fun to visit around Easter time because every chocolatier would fill his shop to the brim with all kinds of whimsical chocolate eggs, bunnies, and chicks. Soma is no exception. I marvelled at the metre tall chocolate egg on the display. For $225, you can call it your own! However, I went for something a little less dramatic. I enjoyed a piece of their limited edition bunny truffle filled with pistachio paste. It was a joy to bite into a truffle with properly tempered snappy dark chocolate shell. The pistachio paste was smooth and rich…like a marzipan but only better. Highly recommended for all you pistachio fans out there!

Inspired by Rob’s search for doughnut last year, I was determined to seek out zeppole before they disappear after Easter. Coincidentally, I came across a write-up from Toronto Life which heaped praises on this Italian pastry so there was no escape from a visit to an Italian bakery before Easter.

Italian pastry is something which I am rather unfamiliar other than the fact that I adore eating panettone and biscotti but hate making tiramisu. I was dazzled by the selection of specialty Easter bread available at Aida’s Pinevalley Bakery in Woodbridge. Aside from zeppole, there were all kinds of enriched sweet bread including Columba Pasquale in dove shape and glazed with chocolate. The ones that really tickle my fancy are the bread embedded with Easter eggs. I know that it is very symbolic yet a tinted hardboiled egg (with shell!) inside fluffy bread makes no sense to my baker’s mind. All the more reason why I had to try it myself!

The zeppole tasted great with the luscious pastry cream inside a deep-fried pate-a-choux shell. My favourite part was the subtle sweetness from the amarena cherries. I am very tempted to go back for more before they disappear until next year…though I am looking forward to enjoying hot cross buns from Brick Street Bakery…oh, decisions…

Aida’s Pinevalley Bakery
830 Rowntree Dairy Road
Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada

I love oatmeal for as long as I can remember. For the longest time, the only way we cook oatmeal at my house is over stovetop and enriched with milk, condensed milk, and eggs. Instant oatmeal is frowned upon in my family so it’s really only an option for camping. However, I am really not too fond of scrubbing pots early in the morning so oatmeal is definitely a weekend treat.

Recently I found out that fresh muesli is another way of enjoying oatmeal. I used to buy fresh muesli all the time from Mövenpick Restaurant. However, since they closed the doors in Ontario, I have not had any fresh muesli since. The best part about fresh muesli (other than the fact that it tastes great) is that it does not require any cooking! Most of the preparation can be done the night before so it will be ready for breakfast the next morning with only minimal work. Trust me, it’s so simple that you don’t even need your morning coffee in order to make it successfully.

Ingredients

• 1 cup old-fashion oatmeal
• 1 cup skim milk
• 1/2 cup strawberries, diced
• 1/2 cup almonds, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce
• 1/2 cup low-fat natural yogurt
• maple syrup to taste

Method

1. The night before, soak oatmeal in skim milk and leave in refrigerator overnight. Chop fruit and nuts, set aside.
2. Before serving, stir everything into the softened oatmeal. Enjoy! Makes about 4 servings.

After getting my haircut on Saturday, I went for a bit of shopping in downtown Toronto. The West Queen West neighbourhood is one of my usual haunts but obviously I haven’t gone into every single shop yet. Babies and pregnancies have been made "fashionable" in the last few years so by the rules of supply and demand, of course there are some pretty cool stores catering to hip moms with money to spend. Not being in that target demographic myself, I rarely ever set foot inside these too-precocious-for-words stores.

I was walking along Queen Street West, comtemplating on getting some fish ‘n chips from Chippy’s, when my attention was drawn to a window display full of bunny rabbits and cookie cutters. Window shopping is about taking in the beauty of pretty things so I went inside to take a closer look. I quickly found myself surrounded by many cutesy pastel things that can only mean I was inside a [gasp!] kids’ store.

However, Polka Dot Kids is not just about being precocious. This store carries a large selection of cookie cutters made by german company Städter (check out their online catalogue). These are not run-of-the-mill cookie cutters. There are polar bears, penguin, squirel, castle, princess, ballet slippers, fork, spoon, knife, sheep, specialty Linzer cookie cutters, etc in sizes big and small. These cookie cutters are well-made in intricate shapes.

The best find of all was a set of customizable cookie stamp also made by the same company. This stamp set comes with a set of alphabets and numbers which I can mix and match to form different words on the mounting sleeve. The stamp can be used on rolled out cookie dough before baking. Can you imagine the possibilities of all the personalized cookies that I can made? I can include cookies with my own "Dessert By Candy" branding in my annual holiday cookie assortment. I can make cookies with my contact information ("Can I have your number?" "Sure! Here, have a cookie."). Oh oh, how about a box of cookies full of insults? I am so amused by all the ideas!

Polka Dot Kids

917 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario

Around this time last year, I had a drastic change of hairstyle by getting a perm. The soft wavy curls were gorgeous and so easy to maintain. The picture on the left was taken three days after that visit to the salon. I was traveling in Sweden under a tight schedule and that wash-and-go hairstyle was absolutely perfect. The curls held for a long time and it was November before I got another perm. However, the results were less than ideal. My hair straightened itself out to a messy wave very quickly and I ended up wearing my hair in a ponytail most of the time.

I talked to my hairstylist friend HL about this and he confirmed what I thought was true. Perms work best on untreated hair. On hair which has already gone through a perm before, it really doesn’t work as nice. I am ready for a change anyway so it was good news to my ears. However, just going back to straight hair seems a little boring to me. After all, I had a similar long straight layered look for about a decade (seriously). Recently my guilty pleasure is watching Pussy Cat Dolls Present The Search For The Next Doll and I love the hairstyle of my favourite contestant, Chelsea. The heavy thick bangs are quite fashionable right now so I want to jump on the bandwagon too! As you can see in the "after" shot above, the bangs is a nice counterbalance for my face (which is a little long proportionally). The cut is not the complete transformation though. I still have some light brown colour on the ends of my hair. For this new hairstyle to truly rock, I will have all my hair dye to jet black with lots of shine. It will be so awesome.

As usual, I got some great beauty tips from HL. This time, he taught me what to look for in a straightening iron.

• ceramic heating surface
• 1" in width is the most versatile. Any wider and it becomes unwieldy.
• adjustable temperature setting. For asian hair, you need to look for an iron with at least 200F setting because the texture of the hair needs a higher temperature to set. Cauasian hair are generally okay with a lower temperature setting.
• stiffness of the iron is important. When you squeeze the two plates together, the iron should give a little so that the two heating surfaces completely touches each other without creating any angles. Otherwise you will end up with "fold marks" on your length of hair.

I have finally come to the end of my week long March Muffin Madness. This is a great opportunity for me to try another unusual muffin recipe that I’ve been eyeing a long time. Regan Daley’s In The Sweet Kitchen is one of the first "serious" baking cookbooks I purchased and I have very good results with every recipe I attempted from this book.

If you take a closer look at this recipe, you will notice that the only fat element is butter. Most muffin recipe supplements the fat element with a dairy ingredient such as buttermilk, milk, yogurt, or sour cream. This recipe uses a large amount of freshly squeezed orange juice instead. I find that really intriguing. While the muffins are baking in the oven, the fragrance of orange is irresistable. I used some leftover streusel topping from the blueberry muffin on a few of the muffins. It’s a good way to use up some of that huge bag of streusel. This muffin is very moist and it’s great for people who claim not to like sweets.

Ingredients

• 345g all-purpose flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 100g granulated sugar
• 120g cornmeal
• 50g millet
• 2 large eggs
• finely grated zest from one large orange
• 375mL freshly squeezed orange juice
• 150g unsalted butter, melted
• 100g dried cranberries
• streusel topping (optional)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line muffin pans.
2. In a large mixing bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, cornmeal, and millet. In a small mixing bowl, mix together eggs, orange zest, orange juice, and butter.
3. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and gently combine. Fold in the dried cranberries.
4. Divide batter to muffin pans. Press streusel toppings on muffin if using. Bake for 25-30min until golden. Makes 18 muffins.

No muffin repertoire is complete without a classic blueberry streusel muffin. I’ve tried many different recipes before, most claiming that they are the best. It’s a personal preference I suppose, but I am not particularly fond of recipes that depend on heavy use of butter to tenderize. When I see a pool of melted butter underneath the baked muffins, I get a little queasy. So far, my favourite recipe comes from Regan Daley’s In The Sweet Kitchen except for the fact that it is more labour intensive than most muffin recipes (therefore not a good recipe to attempt before my morning coffee!). One interesting thing I notice, however, is that blueberry muffin is most likely to veer from the classic quick bread method and incorporate a butter cake mixing method instead (depending on mechanical rise from butter and sugar in addition to chemical rise). Perhaps people generally expect a more tender, cake-like texture when they eat blueberry muffins?

A few days ago, I purchased a copy of The Best Of America’s Test Kitchen: Best Recipes And Reviews 2008. I was attracted by Cook’s Illustrated’s version of "the best" blueberry muffin. In the past, I’ve had pretty good experience with the recipes from this source so I am curious to try. It uses the classic quick bread mixing method so if I make the stresel ahead of time, it is convenient enough to be a good alternative for early morning muffin baking. The following recipe is my adaptation.

Ingredients

Streusel:

• 175g all-purpose flour
• 65g dark brown sugar
• 65g granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• pinch of salt
• 100g unsalted butter, melted

Muffin

• 285g all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 200g granulated sugar
• grated zest from half a lemon
• 55g unsalted butter, melted
• 125mL buttermilk
• 1 1/2 cup frozen wild blueberries (don’t take them out of the freezer until just before adding them to the batter)

Method

1. To make the streusel: In a medium mixing bowl, stir together flour, brown sugar, sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Pour in the melted butter and toss with a fork until the mixture forms into pea-size crumb. This recipe makes enough streusel for many batches of muffin. You can store the extra streusel in the freezer for later use.
2. To make the muffin: Preheat oven to 375F. Line a dozen-size muffin pan.
3. In a large mixing bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, and salt. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together egg, sugar, vanilla extract, and lemon zest until thick and pale. Whisk in buttermilk and then melted butter.
4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Mix gently until just combined. Fold in the blueberries using as few strokes as possible. Since the berries are very cold, the batter will turn very stiff.
5. Divide batter among the muffin pan. Sprinkle each muffin with a tablespoon of streusel. Lightly pressing the crumbs to the batter.
6. Bake for 25 minutes until golden and cake tester comes out clean. Makes one dozen muffins.

Enough with this trying-to-be-healthy attitude! It is now past the half-way mark of my March Muffin Madness and I say let’s bring on the decadence. What’s more decadent than a rich espresso chocolate muffin studded with chocolate chips?

This recipe is adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Chocolate-Chocolate Chunk Muffin from her cookbook Baking: From My Home To Yours. Ms. Greenspan is one of my favourite cookbook authors and her recipes frequently make repeat appearances in my kitchen. I was looking for a chocolate muffin recipe today and was I ever glad to find hers available on the Epicurious recipe database! This muffin is rich with deep chocolate flavour and it’s only mildly sweet. I especially like the crunch that the sanding sugar topping adds.

Ingredients

• 85g unsalted butter
• 60g bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 260g all-purpose flour
• 35g Dutched cocoa powder
• 130g granulated sugar
• 2 tbsp ground espresso
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 312mL buttermilk
• 1 large egg
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 120g bittersweet chocolate chips
• coarse sanding sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Line a dozen-size muffin pan.
2. In a small mixing bowl, microwave butter and chopped bittersweet chocolate until melted and smooth.
3. In a large mixing bowl, stir together flour, cocoa powder, sugar, espresso, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a small mixing bowl, stir together buttermilk, egg, vanilla, and melted chocolate mixture.
4. Pour wet ingredients into the dry ingredients in the large mixing bowl. Stir gently until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips.
5. Divide batter in muffin pan. Sprinkle with coarse sanding sugar. Bake for 20min or until cake tester comes out clean. Makes 15 muffins.