olive oil & fennel seed cupcakes with citrus buttercream frosting

Why such infrequent posting these days, especially since I admittedly had a backlog of recipes to share? Two reasons, but the short answer is school. Final projects. Brain is mush. Can't look at computer anymore without having a psychedelic experience. This is the point where I would probably say something along the lines of how cupcakes are a pretty good consolation prize when you're up to your eyeballs in schoolwork. They can keep you motivated ... just one more hour of moving pixels around and then I get to have a cupcake! ... but the reality is that I baked these like 2 weeks ago for my other final project. So no cupcakes in the squirrel household for me to truthfully segue into my topic from.

The cake part of these cupcakes really blew me away. The olive oil played a dual role in both flavour and fat. It's one of those think-outside-the-box scenarios; at first you may think that olive oil isn't meant to have a starring role a cupcake of all things, but you will come around once the shock wears off. I really, really think I could eat olive oil cake all day. Add in fennel seed, top with orange buttercream frosting and BAM, you're in weird-but-awesome cupcake heaven.

deep dish straight-up rhubarb pie

Do you have a grandma? If you do, go hug her. Now. I don't care if she's busy, or you're busy... just go hug your gran. Because grandmas are SO AWESOME. Seriously. Who else hides candy in the sofa for you?* Who else lets you eat popsicles for lunch, to the frustration of your parents? Who else makes perogies from scratch that are so margariney (yes), crispy and saltilicious? Your grandma does. Okay, well... my grandma did.

Of course, I had two AMAZING grandmas - Grandma Woods and Grandma Martens. Today I am talking about Grandma Martens because rhubarb pie was a Grandma Martens thing. 

She introduced me to straight-up rhubarb pie. In fact, all I ever knew was straight-up rhubarb pie, until I was old enough that I became aware of what things were being sold where. Most rhubarb pies that you buy are tempered with apples or strawberries. People fear rhubarb on its own. Guys... be brave. Do something different. Trust in my grandma and let the rhubarb be the star. She won't let you down. I promise.

*Yes, she actually did this. It wasn't old sofa candy.

coconut vanilla bean cupcakes

I made these cupcakes days ago but I'm still eating them. I'm not gonna lie, they're kind of stale now. But they're still so good! I'm all alone, my other half has left me to go to a conference in Banff and I have nobody to help me out. Seriously. I've eaten lots of cupcakes. The thing that's saving my waistline is that, without Adam here, and facing an impending due date for a final project, I've been eating nothing but tofu stirfries and apples. And cupcakes. Ugh.

Can I tell you what I love so much about these cupcakes? They're flavoured with reduced coconut milk. That's right. You boil up some coconut milk in a pot for about 45 minutes until it's nice and thick. It's a coconut punch in the face. That's a good thing. If you even think about putting any other coconut flavouring in here, I will rain judgement down upon you so hard. Just trust in good quality coconut milk. Trust in its goodness. It will not fail you. It will provide you with moist, coconutty cupcakes. Substantial in their cakeyness (cakiness?), but also described by one guinea pig as "light." Good - all those sticks of butter fooled you!

hot chili brownies

Ahhh, chili and chocolate. A celebrated combination of flavours - one of which I love, the other I don't. It's the chili that has my heart. The chocolate? It can take a hike. But as I've mentioned before, sometimes I get so inspired by an idea that I must bake, even though I have little to no desire to eat anything (a rare occurrence, to be sure - but it does happen. Usually when my jeans feel tight). Given my lack of willpower around desirable and delectable baked goods - the usual suspects being pastries with cream, fruit desserts, meringues, cakes, et cetera - the usual solution is to bake something made of chocolate. I do an objective taste test, and give away the rest. It's a perfect solution (much like the salt-shaker trick. If you've ever eaten out at a restaurant with me, you know what that's all about).

The inspiration for these brownies came from the chili oil I made this weekend, from Fuchsia Dunlop's Land of Plenty (here's an online version of the recipe at Better Me, Better World). I love the way dried chilis, unlike cayenne powder, have a slow heat that takes a few seconds to hit you. With cayenne, it's an instantaneous fiery blast. Dried chilis seduce you slowly and have a cumulative effect - one that can leave your mouth on fire by the end of a meal. For this reason I love the idea of cutting these brownies really small - an inch by an inch squared, say - and serving them as a novelty food item. That's not to say the depth added by the chili is only good for the fun of it, the chili chocolate combination is celebrated for a reason... because it works.

deep dish cardamom wild blueberry pie

Blueberries and cardamom are a match made in heaven. Really. I first started on this when I tossed some blueberries with cardamom and sugar as a topping for homemade frozen yogurt. Slam dunk. My next experiment? Blueberry cheesecake squares with cardamom. I fed these to our neighbours and by all accounts, the squares were a home run. I tried unsuccessfully to recreate them for the blog once, but somehow it failed.  I was a little blueberry-cardamomed out at this point, but lo and behold, nine months have passed and I find myself in Nova Scotia with the in-laws and the promise of jars upon jars of frozen wild blueberries, the desire to bake a pie and the need for a new idea. New vehicle for blueberry cardamom combination? PIE. Done.

deep dish apple blackberry pie with fresh thyme

I've never thought of myself as a very artistic person. I find it difficult to be creative - even in the kitchen sometimes. I've always had art in my blood. I was accused of tracing in my grade 8 art class. I used to spend hours with my various VHS tapes on pause so I could sketch portraits of whatever character was on the screen - Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Duncan MacLeod, Yakko, Wakko and Dot... you name it, I drew it. I got my degree in art history. I wrote horrible embarrassing fanfiction. My point is, I have always been in some way connected to creativity, but I've never believed it lived inside me.

Why do I bring this up now? I've started taking great pride in baking lattice crust pies and lovingly crimping their crusts. Those aren't creative per se, but they do require a certain amount of artistic deftitude. My first one tasted great, but was a little lacking in the looks department. I think I've finally become confident and have gained the graceful steadiness of hand required to bake a pie that looks as good as it tastes. Evidence above. My pie was pretty!

I really enjoyed this pie, and I loved the depth of flavour that the thyme added. Not everyone will enjoy it - in particular, those who don't like their food to mix or have rigid ideas of what food goes with what ... I'm looking at you, buddy! You might come across those who say that it reminds them of "eating meat" or describe it as "that meat flavour pie." Don't be disheartened, adventuresome palates! Apple and thyme is a well-established flavour combination. It's good. Trust.

the great food blogger cookie swap: brown butter cookies

You know what's a great idea? Getting over 600 food bloggers to bake cookies for each other. When I read about this crazy scheme on A Bitchin' Kitchen, I knew instantly I had to get involved. The deal is this: you bake a dozen cookies each for three bloggers, and you receive a dozen cookies from three entirely different bloggers. However, my matches were unusual, there were four of us in a group and we all baked cookies for each other. I think this must be because we were the only people on the planet who requested no chocolate.

I received black sesame shortbread from Kyleen at sixteenbeans, brown butter chai shortbread from Heather at Tea with Me and cranberry apricot biscotti from Melissa at West Coast Nest. Thanks to you all for these lovely gifts which were all exceptional and imaginative. I erased morning workouts with all of them and I'm not sorry!

eggnog buckwheat crumble cake

If your first thought was that this looks like a gooey mess, you're right. It is a gooey mess. It's still a gooey mess in my kitchen. Cake is another one of those things that I struggle to photograph well. When it looks like "an undercooked hamburger," that makes it more difficult. Lesson One: to minimize hamburgerness, don't make this cake in a round pan. Use the suggested 9x13 pan. In any case, I have a lot to learn about photographing things that don't look as appealing as they taste. Some people can make anything look good. I'm not one of those people. YET.

I was inspired to make this a week ago or so when I read Jessica's post at How Sweet It Is. That cake entered my brain and never left. So today, on the heels of the beet cake failure, I did something about it.

My intent was to make the recipe as written (with my usual sugar alterations - for someone with a penchant for desserts, I have a low tolerance for sugar). When I went to get my whole wheat flour from the cupboard, I saw my bag of buckwheat flour and, I swear to you, it looked up at me saying, 'pick me! pick me!'. So I did, with absolutely no knowledge as to whether using buckwheat flour requires any other special alterations. Luckily, it worked just as well (if not better!) and gave the cake this wonderful earthy, nutty flavour which complimented the eggnog and spices. It also rocked the texture of the crumble topping.

Buckwheat flour in your cake. Do it now. You know you want to.

sugar and spice cookies

I've noticed that whenever I follow cookie recipes, I end up with far fewer cookies than the recipe predicts. It never fails. Sure, you could blame the fact that I'm a spoon-licking dough-eater when I bake... but I didn't eat 35 cookies worth of dough. Yeah, you read that right. This recipe was supposed to make 55 cookies, but it made 20.

Like I said, it's not exclusive to this recipe. It's every recipe. Am I living on another planet? Could I have eaten 35 cookies raw? The logical explanation is that I just made my cookies too big. In fact, a quick glance at this particular recipe indicates that I did and I'm probably a repeat offender in this respect.

silk dragon jasmine tea shortbread

I woke up this morning to a wonderful present - the first snowfall of the season! What an excellent excuse to bake shortbread - you know, Christmas and all. I've lately been toying with the idea of different scented shortbreads (this may or may not have something to do with The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap 2011...) and suddenly it hit me: jasmine shortbread. Though jasmine tea and shortbread come from totally different parts of the world, it's a perfect marriage of flavours and textures - the floral notes are subtle, but there. The tea adds a little bit of texture to the otherwise melt-in-your-mouth characteristics of shortbread.

I used the organic silk dragon jasmine tea from DavidsTea - why? Because, as they say, its scent is magical. It's lovely, delicate and smooth. It's instant relaxation in a mug, especially on a snow day. Feel free to use whatever jasmine tea you have on hand, but if you live near a DavidsTea, I recommend you pick some up... and not just for the cookies!

pear and fennel seed upside-down cake

 

This has been the week of cooking and baking failures. I swear, I have tried the pear and fennel seed combination in four (yes, FOUR) different recipes this week because I had so much faith in it. The first three were colossal flops. 

The original was a pear and fennel seed tarte tatin, which I adapted from Joy the Baker's apple tarte tatin. It came out WAY too saucy because, well, pears have more juice than apples. So... disaster. Recipe two was a modified version of said tarte with less butter and sugar in the topping. When I overturned my pan, the puff pastry fell out, but the pears didn't.

deep dish green apple pie

 

This pie was the result of multiple failures. I have been planning this pie for at least a week and a half. It was supposed to be much more than just a deep dish green apple pie, but if I tell you what the surprise ingredient was, I'll steal my own thunder next time I make an attempt.

That being said, even though this pie failed to live up to what it was supposed to be, as a straight up apple pie it was wicked. It had a simple, uncomplicated flavour. It was beautifully tart and apple-heavy - for me, there's nothing worse than an apple pie with a high goop to fruit ratio, like the kind you get at the supermarket. Gross. 

nutmeg pot de crème

I made pot de crème twice yesterday. The joy of working from 1 PM to 9 PM two days in a row is that you can make a pot de crème in the morning, screw it up, get home in time to purchase more ingredients from the grocery store and try it out all over again.

Let me tell you something about how my brain works. Sometimes it just completely glosses over stuff. For example, the first time I made these yesterday, I followed the recipe as written and completely forgot to cut the brown sugar, even though my standard custard recipe uses half of that in regular sugar. The finished product was inedibly sweet and the nutmeg was totally overpowered by caramel flavour. I threw it down the toilet with a sad face, but vowed to try again in the evening.

orange-scented apple blackberry crisp

You might think it's difficult to find a use for 20 lbs of apples. Don't worry, I'll find one - even if I end up munching through the whole bag myself. See, I'm an apple-a-day kind of girl. I bring one to work every day with my lunch (unless I fail it up at the food court). Unfortunately, I seem to enjoy a crisp apple a little too much. I've recently become aware that when I eat apples, it's not pleasant. It's noisy and unladylike. This new development is the subject of much hilarity in our household.

One way to keep yourself from French-Bulldogging-it with an apple is to cook it. Everyone will appreciate your efforts, especially if you bake your apples in this orange scented apple blackberry crisp. I really love the blackberry orange combination. Apples and blackberries are also a match made in heaven. I know they say that apples and oranges are, well, apples and oranges... but I dare say that this delectable dessert blows that expression out of the water.

chai-spiced apple galette

 

This weekend we went on a spontaneous apple picking excursion. I've never been apple picking before - it was so much fun! I ate so many apples off the trees I almost made myself sick. These apples were the best apples I've ever tasted in my life. Completely different from what you get at the grocery store. Sweet, tart and not a hint of mealiness.

And I came home with a 20 lb bag of them.

lavender shortbread

You know what I realised today?  I've been spelling lavender wrong for my entire life. No joke. In my head, it's always been lavendar. Where this comes from... who knows?

I've always been a pretty good speller. I've avoided the confusion between there, they're and their and I've never typed 'congradulations' on anybody's Facebook wall. I wrote a lot in my rapidly disappearing youth - I spent a lot of my childhood typing awkward nerd stories into the DOS version of WordPerfect. In my early twenties I wrote even more awkward nerd stories which still exist on the internet under a pen name that I will never admit to. Now I write facts in emergency mode for a living.

But 'lavendar' isn't the first spelling mistake revelation I've had - it was only about five years ago that I stopped writing 'rediculous' and about one year ago (the shame!) that I abandoned 'alot'. My dad, at one point a professional editor, is facepalming as he reads this, I'm sure. None of this, of course, has anything to do with lavender cookies (or mythical lavendar cookies), which are buttery, delicious, melt in your mouth and absolutely pop with lavender flavour.

lemon vanilla trifle with blueberries and blackberries

You know what Thanksgiving means? It means that it's epic dessert time! Okay okay.. I know that Thanksgiving means more than that.  But one of the most fun things about any holiday is that, since you're cooking for a large group of people, you get to bake something amazingly huge and ridiculous. One of my favourite things to bring out for birthdays, Christmases, Thanksgivings, Easters, et cetera, et cetera is this lemony cakey custardy fruity masterpiece. I've been slowly developing this insane dietbuster over the past ten years. I'm not even joking. It's taken several forms over that time, but three things have remained constant: some form of white cake, a butterfat laden custard and the tartest and tangiest most lip-smacking lemon curd in the land.

lime cheesecake

 

Oh man. It's lime cheesecake day. What's the special occasion? Well... look up. Look waaaaaaay up. That's right - we have our own little corner of the interwebs! You can now find us at http://www.unhipsquirrel.com. Truly, this had nothing to do with me making such an extravagant dessert today. I guess you could say that I just really, really wanted to make a lime cheesecake. Sometimes having a little food blog is an excuse in itself to make something sweet. I mean really... it was getting a little savoury around here.

There is no real story behind this cheesecake except for the fact that I made it for Adam's birthday a couple of years ago. Of course, we were only two people (Adam is not a party kind of guy) and I ended up eating half a cheesecake for the rest of the week. Believe me, it was my pleasure. Except the last day. I could have done without that.

plum tart

Guys, I'm going to help you out here. I'm going to tell you how not to pick up a woman. First of all, the metro on a weekday morning is probably a poor choice. When a woman is getting off the train, don't cut diagonally in front of her when you approach. That makes it difficult and awkward for her to escape, especially if she's walking along a wall. When she tells you that she doesn't speak French and runs away, she is, in all likelihood, giving you the message that she's not interested.  The next course of action is absolutely not to follow her down the stairs to the other metro line, follow her all the way down the platform, and to surprise her by getting on the same car as her again. This is bad. Really. It's bad. Don't do it.

Of course, you might think it's okay to stand very close to her on the train and continue to talk to her in an environment where she literally cannot escape you. This goes for elevators too. In actuality, it is not okay. These are terrible places to approach women. In any case, when she is avoiding your questions and not asking you anything in return, she is not interested.  Please, please do not ask where she is going. She won't tell you. Also... when she gets off the train at her destination, please stay on it.

A much nicer way to woo a lady is with dessert. Of course, this does not work with total strangers, but I don't like strangers, so that's A-okay with me. I was lucky enough to be wooed with homemade creme brulée. Perhaps you could try using this lovely plum tart to impress your lady friend?

biscuit blackberry shortcakes with vanilla bean custard

 

I can't hardly believe that we're approaching the end of summer. It's gone by so fast. Very soon, the temperature will drop drastically, and after approximately one month of autumn, we'll be back in a winter wonderland. Casual summer at work will end. Reading in the park will end. Cicadas will end. Iced coffees will end. Summer dresses will end. flip flops will end. Fruit will end. Barbeques will end. All of these things give me the sad face.

Speaking of barbeques, there is no better reason to concoct a delicious dessert than a barbeque. Sadly, as we do not have a barbeque, we have to rely on others for our deliciously charred meats and veggies, so we bribe our potential hosts with the promise of a lovingly prepared homemade dessert.