whole wheat banana date muffins with honey

 

This week has been crazy with cooking and baking projects! I've got my final project coming up for my photography class and, big surprise, I chose to photograph food. Coming up, I have some pretty exciting things in the Unhip Squirrel arsenal - a chickpea curry, some cupcakes, a ridiculous chocolate cake (it's baking as we speak - exciting does not even begin to describe this), some fun cookies... I can't wait to share it all with you. 

Whole wheat banana date muffins are not part of my project. I made them because for my curry, I needed to buy dates and the only size available was HUGE (Thank you, Metro! ugh). So I had plenty of dates that needed using, and the result were these muffins. Stand by for more datey things. I've got plenty left.

rice cooker breakfast for one (or, sweet almond rice)

Have I ever complained to you about my incompetence when it comes to making rice? Seriously. I burn it. I turn it into mush. Sometimes crunchy mush - yes, that is possible. If you lined up all the people in the world who suck at making rice, I'd be at the bottom of the pile. The least skilled person in the entire world. When do I receive my medal?

Up until recently, I got Adam to make the rice, unless he wasn't home. He is less incompetent at rice-making than I am, but he's also pretty bad.

But guess what I got for Christmas everybody... a rice cooker!! The kitchen appliance of my dreams! If you think I'm dreaming small, you don't understand how much of our very own brand of horrid rice we eat. We're big rice consumers here. We eat lots of curries and stir-fries. Practice does not make perfect. Lots and lots of crunchy, soupy, mushy, sloppy rice that we attempt to hide with delectable fragrant curries.

plum & walnut sticky buns

Staying up until 2 AM baking sticky buns is not generally advisable, unless you a) can sleep in the next morning and b) you're watching the season 6 finale of Dexter. As I was putting together these sticky buns, the season wound up in my living room and I alternated between being on the edge of my seat and on the edge of barfing. Such hideous, horrible grossness in the last few episodes. And that final scene, when your gut drops... if you watch, you know the one. Please don't spoil in comments.

It's good that I had the promise of these sticky buns to balance out all the bad things playing out on screen. Just like the buns balanced with Dexter, the sweetness of the buns were balanced with tart little bursts of flavour from the plums I added. Plums are one of my favourite fruits to add to baking - they're much like cranberries but a bit sweeter and less bitter.

So when you're settling down to watch a particularly difficult bit of TV - such as the final few episodes of Dexter season six, the end of Six Feet Under, or perhaps a Curb Your Enthusiasm marathon - bake some plum and walnut sticky buns at the same time. You'll be glad you did.

roasted strawberry ricotta scones

 

In the past few days I've learned something - the magnificence of a roasted strawberry. Sure, I've done the roasted strawberry thing before, but I don't think I had it quite right. Don't get me wrong, they were really tasty, but after this experience, I don't think I had roasted them long enough. When you roast strawberries to the point where they begin to dry and disintegrate, all the water (the hallmark of California GMO strawberries) leaches out and you're left with little shrunken miracles that explode with the flavour of summer. Even in January. Seriously.

I was originally inspired to make these in muffin form by the tub of ricotta in the fridge and the 3 for $5 watery California strawberry sale at Metro. I immediately googled to see if anyone had done it. Lo and behold they had (at about.com). I balked at the idea of going to the trouble of roasting strawberries - who has the time to roast strawberries for 45 minutes in the morning?! - and followed this recipe without taking that step. And that's the story of how I welcomed the morning with dense little muffins, studded with squishy, slimy, watery cooked strawberries. Yumyumyum. Sarcasm.

healthy harvest muffins

 

 So, it's already been established that I suffer from stupid-huge cookie syndrome. I also have chronic stupid-huge muffin disorder. Whenever I bake muffins, I fill the muffin cups improperly and end up with maximum 11 instead of 12 muffins. I think I just remember things (food items, specifically?) as being bigger than they actually are. Case in point, when I was circling the grocery store scouting for muffin ingredients, I saw regular muffin liners and balked at their small size. Instead, I bought those labeled géant, convinced that they were the correct size for my muffin tin, even though the medium size was coloured in pink, yellow and blue, which I remembered from the last time I bought muffin liners. Of course, the géant liners were in fact géant and rose above the cups of my muffin tin.

And I ended up with 10 muffins. 10 moist, beautiful muffins, warm with spices and bursting with nutritiousness. When you pull these muffins apart, they're flecked with the bright orange and green of the carrot and zucchini - it adds a bit of visual interest and texture to your standard brown muffin. The bittersweet cranberries top off these muffins perfectly.

soft persian-inspired scrambled eggs with fresh herbs

I've told you about Byblos before. It's a Persian restaurant that Adam and I go to from time to time - they are well known for their spectacular breakfast, a soft and custardy feta omelet, sprinkled with freshly chopped dill and served with an assortment of sweet breads and aromatic jams. If you go there for breakfast and order anything other than this, the owner will try to talk you out of it. For good reason. It really is the best.

At the moment, I have an outrageous amount of fresh herbs on hand (thank you to my new favourite product, a Thinkkitchen herb container thing - photo nonexistent on the internet) and I decided to attempt the Byblos-style eggs. I don't know how they do it their kitchen and I didn't even attempt to recreate them authentically. And as a lover of fresh herbs, I added a few more just for kicks.

sour cream blueberry scones

 

You know what's counterproductive to exercising? Sour cream blueberry scones, served piping hot from the oven. Hot enough to burn your hands when pulling them apart. Even further negating all the hard work I did in the morning is that homemade lemon curd I served it with, too. Not good at all. How about the clotted cream, you ask? I hoped you hadn't noticed. Well, I ate that too and I'm not sorry about it.

buckwheat pancakes with spiced apple plum compote

 

There are those who like to buck the status quo and do things like eat breakfast for dinner. There's nothing new or special about that - especially if you're young enough to remember your days as a 20-something in university. Or your 2 AM runs to the grosser-than-gross Fresgo Inn on Davie street in Vancouver for a breakfast so huge you can split it in half and call it a decent meal. Breakfast for dinner is a concept that is solidly entrenched in Gen X culture.

The Fresgo Inn on Davie is long gone (though apparently still operating in Whalley - who knew?) and I don't think I've had breakfast for dinner in years. However, today I double-bucked the status quo: I ate breakfast for lunch. 

Now, don't you go thinking that I slept in. No no. I got up reasonably early, ate a bagel for breakfast, went out in the cold, blustery weather to shoot an assignment, then came home and made pancakes at 2 in the afternoon. Buckwheat pancakes. With a spiced apple and plum compote.

buttermilk scones with crispy pancetta and cheddar

These scones have so many things going for them. Fancy bacon. Extra old cheddar. Butter. Flakiness and gooeyness. Need I go on? In all seriousness, I can't imagine anyone (vegetarians and vegans aside) resisting such a luxurious once-in-a-while treat.

I was inspired to make these by a recipe I found in the Alice's Tea Cup cookbook. Sadly, that recipe turned out to be disastrous; I remember feeling skeptical at the idea of using melted butter in scones. Doesn't that traditional flaky scone texture come from cold butter? The second time around, I ended up using an old standby scone recipe in Joy of Cooking and just adding in the pancetta and cheddar. The result was spectacular. Rich buttery texture, gooey cheese cavities, and a little bit of salty bacon crunch.

lemon cranberry muffins

This has been a good weekend. It was full of haircuts, pitchers of sangria, barbeques, movie theatres and friends.  It did have its low points - I did a pretty sick load of dirty dishes, but I quickly rewarded myself with fruit salad and homemade muffins. Yum!

This batter is so versatile. I've used it as a loaf, in muffins... even as the cake base for a trifle. It's light, wonderful and not overly sweet. The muffins aren't too filling, but that's okay... you can eat three of them. I won't look.

overnight french toast

I love French toast. I think it's amazing. I've always done it the standard way - one or two slices at a time in a sizzling, buttered pan. Once I saw Maggie's post on A Bitchin' Kitchen for this amazing deconstructed French toast bake, I immediately began waiting for the weekend in anticipation of making what, in my opinion, looked like a freaking masterpiece. The original idea for this (to my knowledge, anyways) comes from Ree, otherwise known as The Pioneer Woman.

Imagine my horror when, after bracing myself to endure the hideous weather conditions in Montreal yesterday, I found that my local grocery store was shut for the holiday (because only I deserve a long weekend, obviously!) In any case, refusing to be defeated, I found a market open on Mont Royal and was able to gather the supplies needed. And thank god I did too, because a masterpiece it was!

fruit salad with fresh mint

 

I used to make fruit salad by cutting up any fruit that I liked. You will get tasty fruit salads that way for sure - I don't think anyone's ever had a bad fruit salad except, perhaps, those fruit salads you get at cafeterias that taste like the plastic container they came in. You know the ones. They're generally made up of a few wedges of orange, some grapefruit and a couple of red grapes soaking in a rancid pool of ammonia. Delicious!

In order to take your fruit salad from tasty to exceptional, all you need to do is put a little thought into it. Don't go nuts adding whatever fruit you want. Think simple and understated. Restrain yourself and think about what flavours compliment each other. That's what I've started doing lately and the other day I came up with the idea for this (though Adam was good enough to prepare it while I was busy making something else for our esteemed guests of the day). It was the best fruit salad in the history of fruit salad. If I do say so myself.

brown butter strawberry banana bread

What do baking brown butter strawberry banana bread and eastern Canada summer thunderstorms have in common? Only one thing: they both make my apartment very, very hot. It's even worse when you decide to bake brown butter strawberry banana bread during an eastern Canada summer thunderstorm. You might be questioning my sanity at the moment and I wouldn't blame you one bit. By the end of it all, my apartment was a sauna and my hair was sticking to my face, but I had some luxurious golden buttery banana bread to enjoy and a front row seat to some epic fork lightning - something we Vancouverites don't really get to experience.

reduced-fat blueberry banana bread

I am ageist when it comes to bananas. I have a deep rooted prejudice against the smelly, overripe portion of the banana population. I like them when they are a little under-ripe and have a greenish hue. At that point in their life cycle, they make a perfect snack or cereal topping. Then they start turning a deeper, warmer shade of yellow. Still edible, but beginning to take on a slightly more mature flavour - I can handle it, but it's noticeable and I am not pleased.  All bets are off when the first brown age spots arrive. That's it. Spotted bananas have one possible destiny, my freezer (a veritable banana graveyard), and ultimately, my banana bread.

marmalade bran muffins

Do you remember the first cookbook you ever bought? I do. It was Company's Coming: Muffins & More by Jean Paré. I bought it at the grocery store. Realistically speaking, I think it was actually my mom who bought it for me, given that I was still in high school and bad at saving my allowance. Safeway must have had some kind of deal with the Company's Coming series, because there was always a rack with about a dozen of their cheesy titles. Perhaps that rack is still there.

From the frighteningly dated picture of the author on the back (sorry, Jean - there are awful photos of me out there, too) to the "witticisms" scattered throughout the book (such as, "don't let your dog eat garlic or his bark really will be worse than his bite"), this cookbook is a laugh and a half. That being said, it has some great muffin and loaf recipes, just keep your eyes peeled for ingredients like glazed mixed fruit that nobody has liked since 1985.

baked oatmeal

 

The first thing people say when you move from Vancouver to Montreal is "enjoy the weather!" (often followed by a snicker). My response was always, "I will!" Nothing makes me cranky and lazy quicker than a dreary, drizzly morning. Enduring a Vancouver winter entails months upon months of solid, unrelenting rain and a sky so dark and grey that you just want to crawl back into bed. Not so here. The winters may be long and very cold, but at least they are bright and sunny.

Today, however, we are having Vancouver winter weather. Behold the healing powers of oatmeal!

buttermilk mixed berry muffins

I am a morning person. After spending my teenage years (and my early 20s) sleeping until the afternoon (yes, after noon), I am finally one of those people that non-morning-people hate. I am peppy, cheerful and excited to take on the day. My boundless morning energy has me washing dishes, sweeping floors and doing other such housework. With my lack of grace - or, as Adam says, my lack of proprioceptive sense - it is a nice gesture to placate the late sleeper in the house with baked goods to make up for all the crashing around. These muffins make a wonderful peace offering.  Not only are they fruity and delicious, but they contain three out of four food groups. What more could you want?

lemon ricotta pancakes

When your brother comes to visit, and has been kind enough to bring you flowers, lemon ricotta pancakes are a great way to show your gratitude.  I have always been a fan of the lemon/pancake combination. At our house, we always dressed our crepes with a sprinkling of sugar and a squish of fresh lemon juice. This delicious pancake, however, is not a crepe although it has a similar texture to one. There are a whopping three eggs in this recipe. That, coupled with the ricotta cheese, gives these pancakes their crepe-like characteristics. The recipe is perfect for two, though it would feed three with something else on the side. Serve drizzled with honey.