• Pear and Cardamom Caramel Cake
    Baking,  Recipes

    Pear and Cardamom Caramel Cake

    I love cardamom, and a couple of years ago my sister Cassie gave me a beautiful cookbook, The Cardamom Trail, by Chetna Makan.  Aside from having beautiful pictures and lots of great writing, the recipes are fantastic.  And tis weekend, I decided to try making the Pear and Cardamom Caramel Cake. I’ve never done an upside-down cake before, and it’s even been a while since I made anything in a springform pan! I had to buy a new one to make this recipe, as I made my delicious cheesecake for a friends’ birthday about a year ago, and left the springform at their place. I don’t know if it’s just me,…

  • Pickled Onions
    Canning and Preserving,  Recipes

    Pickled Onions

    Last Summer I had tacos that came with pickled onions as a topping, and something about the flavours made me slightly obsessed.  I thought about making pickled onions on and off for ages, but couldn’t find a recipe I really liked the look of, so I sort-of forgot about it.  Then a few weeks ago I was in Montreal for the Folk Alliance International conference, and I was served a dish with the most delicious pickled onions ever, and it reminded me that they are easy to make and that I ought to just give them a shot and see if I could come up with something I liked. I…

  • Lemon Cake Vegan
    Baking,  Recipes

    Lemon Cake (Vegan!)

    I’m generally pretty suspicious of vegan baking – I’ve tried a few nearly-inedible vegan sweets in the past that really turned me off. But there are a lot of great bakers out there who’ve found ways to make really wonderful vegan treats, and in looking through their recipes I found that there’s a pretty consistent formula – somehow the vinegar does the trick. This lemon cake is tasty and moist, and honestly you wouldn’t know it was vegan by taste or texture. I baked this cake last week for my sister Sammi’s birthday – she and my other sister, Cassie, were doing Vegan February, so my usual go-to birthday treats,…

  • Apple Cider Doughnuts
    Baking,  Recipes

    Apple Cider Doughnuts

    There’s a crispness in the air, the smell of woodsmoke and leaf mould fills my nose, and the trees are blazing in beautiful colours.  All I want to do is bake and make comfort food, but I have a broken wrist, so most of my favourite recipes which involve rolling out dough or chopping vegetables are out of reach for the next few weeks while my bone knits back together. So here’s a recipe that I can do one-handed, and I’m sure you can too, though if you don’t have to I wouldn’t recommend it. These doughnuts are baked, so really they’re kind-of a circular muffin, but they’re very cute…

  • Baking,  Blue-Ribbon Pies,  Recipes

    Honey Ginger Pumpkin Pie

    I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to my traditional recipes, so generally speaking, I stick to the absolute most iconic version of a pie and do it very, very well. Last year, however, we had a bit of an impromptu Thanksgiving dinner, and I couldn’t track down my own pumpkin pie recipe (which is here, on my website – how hard is that, Candace?), and I found one I’d printed from somewhere ages ago and decided to give it a whirl. How did we end up putting together a full turkey dinner on the fly? Well, you see, my friends David and Meghan got married on Thanksgiving…

  • Lentil Cottage Pie
    Recipes

    Lentil Cottage Pie

    Hearty, comforting, and vegetarian, this Lentil Cottage Pie is my sister Cassie’s recipe, and it’s a perfect vegetarian main dish for Autumn dinners like Thanksgiving.  A few years ago, we were on a family trip in the Scottish Highlands, and we stopped at a small cafe in Helmsdale.  Their vegetarian Cottage Pie was delicious and filling on a cold, windy Scottish day, and it inspired Cassie to create her own. This recipe could be made vegan with a few small alterations – mostly by omitting the butter and using oil or coconut oil instead. Lentil Cottage Pie Ingredients 3 lbs potatoes, cubed + salt 3 tbsp butter and olive oil…

  • Salted Golden Caramel Bars
    Baking,  Recipes

    Salted Golden Caramel Bars

    Salted Golden Caramel Bars are a fabulous recipe – simple, quick, and completely irresistible once it’s done.  A pan of these rarely lasts more than a day at our house; that salty, gooey, buttery deliciousness is too hard to resist. I know salted caramel is a fad from a few years ago, but it’s also a classic – one of those things that will never go out of style. The other great thing about these bars is that they’re essentially glammed-up, slightly more adult, vegetarian Rice Krispie Squares. A lot of people don’t realize that marshmallows aren’t vegetarian (they’re made with gelatin, which is made from bones), and strict vegetarians…

  • Mom's Bread
    Baking,  Recipes

    Mom’s Bread

    One of the best things about visiting home is my mom’s bread – fresh, homemade, and delicious.  She makes this recipe at least once a week, freezing two of the loaves to preserve their freshness until they’re ready to be eaten. They keep pretty well for a week or so in the freezer, probably longer. If my sisters and I are around, she has to bake a little more often – the moment that these loaves come out of the oven, we’ve often devoured half of a loaf, piping hot with loads of butter.   Great as toast or for sandwiches, this is a nice flexible recipe. Thought baking bread…

  • Recipes,  Shaw Christmas Favourites

    Christmas Morning Berry Strata

    Another of our Christmas traditions is this Christmas Morning Berry Strata, which we make in part in homage to my sisters’ favourite Christmas movie, The Family Stone. Spending time in the kitchen with my sisters, with my mom coming through occasionally and grumbling about why we bother making all of this food, is one of my favourite things about Christmas at home; all of the different things we make give a rhythm to the days that feels good. The watercolour above was painted by my sister Cassandra as a part of her 2022 watercolour journal; once she has prints for sale, I’ll link to them here. It’s easy to prepare…

  • Balela Salad
    Recipes,  Salads

    Balela Salad

    I’m always up for a nice bean salad – they remind me of Summer picnics, and this Balela Salad – loosely based on the Middle Eastern dish –  would be a great addition to any picnic or potluck.  Vegan, gluten-free, and delicious, this salad is perfect if you’re hoping to feed a crowd of people with diverse dietary restrictions. It’s also great for lunches, as the fibre will keep you feeling full until the day is over.   It’s also a bit addictive, especially after it’s had a day to marinate in the fridge. You can serve it with pita or some fresh bread, but it’s perfectly fine on its…

  • Jalapeno-Cheese Dip
    Recipes

    Jalapeno-Cheese Dip

    A delicious, spicy, cheesy indulgence! My sisters and I made this Jalapeno-Cheese Dip for the first time last February, when I’d just moved to Toronto for a new job and was feeling quite lonely in the big city. They came up to visit, and we made and ate this while mostly-ignoring the Super Bowl in my big, weird empty condo sublet. It’s definitely comfort food, definitely not an everyday dish, but a good warming appetizer for special occasions (like sister nights!). 2 8-oz packages of cream cheese 1 cup of mayonnaise 4-6 jalapenos, chopped and deseeded 1 cup of cheddar cheese, shredded 1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese, shredded 1/4 cup diced green…

  • Mini Doughnuts
    Recipes

    Mini Doughnuts

     A co-worker ((Shout-out to Georgia! Thanks for the recipe!)) brought these baked mini doughnuts to a potluck back in the Spring, and I ate about a dozen of them because they were so good, and I pestered her for the recipe until she surrendered it.  But it’s been a busy year, and my dreams of mini doughnuts were put on hold.   Last week I finally got myself over to good ol’ Tap Phong to buy some mini doughnut tins, and yesterday I found an unexpected gap in my schedule (I’m part of the team running the Toronto Christmas Market this year, and it’s been a fun, busy time), so I whipped up a…

  • Recipes

    Quinoa and Corn Salad Recipe

    We’ve been interested in picnicking for a few years now; something about packing up a lunch and going somewhere green and lovely to eat it on a blanket on the grass feels so special and nice. We’ve got one of those picnic knapsacks, with all of the cutlery and everything, which we’ve been using as our camp kitchen for years, and we’re building a list of excellent and easily-portable recipes. In the midst of an unexpectedly sweltering May day, we decided to make a few salads and bicycle down to the Trent-Severn Canal, on the bank of Little Lake, to have our first picnic of the year.  This recipe, one…

  • Nana-Approved Turkey Pot Pie
    Baking,  Blue-Ribbon Pies,  Recipes,  Shaw Christmas Favourites

    Nana-Approved Turkey Pot Pie

    2017 Update: I posted this Turkey Pot Pie recipe in 2010, and two years later my lovely Nana died.  This recipe still reminds me of her; her approval meant a lot to me.   2010 Original post: This is essentially a basic turkey pot pie recipe, but I like to think that I’ve particularly made it mine by emphasizing the thyme, salt, and pepper.  This savoury pie could probably handle a little sage, too, but have a light hand – the thyme really makes it irresistible. And don’t be stingy with the salt and pepper. I find too that no matter how badly I think I’ve screwed up the homemade pastry,…

  • Baking,  Blue-Ribbon Pies,  Recipes

    Pie Pastry (Basic)

    This recipe is from a copy of The Canadian Cookbook which my Uncle Johnny gave to my Mom for Christmas in 1975. ((In a strange coincidence, I won a copy of the exact same book at a pie-making competition where the pie I’d entered used this pastry recipe!))  I’ve copied it directly with a couple of side notes where I differ from the ladies who wrote the recipe. Trust me when I say you should not go check with Martha or any of the other gods of the food world; just trust me and the 1970s, and follow this recipe to the letter, and you will have a pretty good…

  • Blue-Ribbon Pies,  Recipes

    Apple Pie

    Easy-peasy, lovely and delicious, Apple Pie is the perfect thing for just about every day, if you feel like it. I know oldsters and orchard-owners will tell you all kinds of things about which apples make the best pie, but I’d say that MacIntoshes and Granny Smiths are the absolute best apples for pie making that are regularly available in most grocery stores (in Canada, anyway).  I know other apples hold together better in the pie, but taste is my issue, not texture, and you can’t beat Macs and Grannies for perfect sweet-tartness. If you want a pie that tastes less like a straight-ahead old-fashioned version and more like candied…