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Cinnamon Rolls
This recipe for cinnamon rolls was originally written to be made with a standing mixer and a dough hook, but I’ve altered it. since I don’t have one. The only real difference is that it may take a but of muscle to get the dough ingredients combined (and of course, I got impatient, as I do, and got my hands into it to mix it thoroughly). I know that standing mixers have been The Thing for Serious Home Cooks for a long time now, but they’re expensive, and while I’m sure I’d get some use out of one, I mostly view them as a dust-catching status symbol that takes up…
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Cassie’s Banana Bread
This is my sister Cassie’s banana bread recipe; I made it for the first time this week. Cassie’s critique was that I mashed the bananas too fine – she likes more chunks of banana in the baked loaf. So keep that in mind! This is a nice, straightforward recipe that turns out delicious every time – or at, least every time I’ve eaten it! Cassie’s Banana Bread Ingredients 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1/3 cup melted butter 2/3 cup honey (less with more banana) 1 egg, beaten 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 teaspoon baking soda a pinch of salt Directions Preheat the oven to 350…
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Cranberry Muffins
Update 2019: Ten years later, this is still my favourite muffin recipe! I usually load it full of cranberries, but you can substitute other fruit – I think raspberries work really well, and blueberries would probably be great. But I love the tart-sweetness of the cranberries, and i usually add more than this recipe calls for. I also really like the way maple syrup sweetens the batter – it seems to blend better (in my opinion) than honey does, but either is great. 2009 Post: This is my favourite muffin recipe ever; not particularly sweet, packed full of tart cranberries, pretty much perfect. If you’re one for the coffee-shop sugar-bomb…
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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,…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Dutch Oven Campfire Bread
I like camping, and being out in the woods; it’s energizing to be surrounded by trees and water and far away from city life (which I also love, but need a break from sometimes). When I was a kid, we used to go to Silent Lake Provincial Park to camp as a family, and we all love it there – particularly because the lake is closed to motorized vehicles, and it’s really peaceful with just canoes and kayaks exploring the lake. This year, my mom finally organized us into renting one of Silent Lake’s yurts for a few nights, and we headed up in early July. There are lots of…
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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…
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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…
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Chocolate Pavlova with Fresh Fruit
Over the holidays this year, the temperatures were frigid – sometimes as cold as -31 C, but often -20 C, so we spent a lot of time indoors. As a result, my sister Cassie and my mom and I watched a lot of the Great Canadian Baking Show and the Great British Baking Show while quilting and knitting, and it inspired us to try some new things, including this Chocolate Pavlova. Though Cassie swears we’ve made a Pavlova before, I can’t remember ever trying it, so as far as I’m concerned, this was my first one. I was initially going to go with a plain vanilla Pavlova, but Cassie was…
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Turkey Stuffing
In my hands, Turkey Stuffing isn’t a very precise thing – I think it’s one of those subjective foods that every family – or every person – likes done differently. It’s a recipe that I’ve been helping out with since I was a kid, as small hands are good for tearing loaves of bread into small chunks, and it’s sometimes a whole family effort, as you consult everyone to make sure it looks/smells right before going in to the oven. As a kid, I was a huge fan of my Grandma Shaw’s extremely peppery stuffings, though I think I was the only one who liked it like that. Because my sisters…
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Bûche de Noël
Bûche de Noël is a recent Christmas dessert for us, so not really a tradition yet, and only time will tell if it becomes one. I definitely intend on making it this year for our family dinner; we tried it last year for the first time, and my sister Cassie and I were surprised at how relatively easy and quick it was. And of course, everyone liked it, which is the most important part! The year before, I’d tried making a Black Forest Cake (I’ll probably post the recipe eventually, but I’m not like, enthusiastic about it), which was a lot of faff and not that great, in the end,…
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Croissants
2019 Update: I’ve cleaned up the recipe to make it easier to understand, and added new photos. 2017 Update: I first published this recipe in 2009, at which time we’d been making croissants for three years, so it looks like it’s been a family tradition for more than a decade now. It’s nice to see things you’ve come to know and love have longevity; I remember when we began creating the traditions that we wouldn’t do without, after years of sad, stressed, miserable Christmases. Now it’s a time of year we all look forward to, which is the best thing. Original post 2009: Croissants have started to become a Christmas…
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Ginger Cookies
2017 Update: This is probably one of the most popular recipes I’ve ever posted; they’re easy to make, and people love them. I’m not generally home in Peterborough in the months before Christmas any more, because I work on the Toronto Christmas Market, so I don’t get a chance to bake them with the fam, but we all love these Ginger Cookies. I know I say that each of my recipes is fabulous, but this one is really the jewel in my baking collection. Based on (or perhaps ripped off of) the famous ginger cookies at The Planet Bakery here in my hometown of Peterborough, this cookie is moist and…
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Snickerdoodles
2017 Update: I associate Snickerdoodles with Christmas, not because my family necessarily loves them but because I do, and anything sugary and cinnamony is bound to seem Christmassy to me. I’ve rarely seen this recipe posted anywhere, which surprises me because these cookies are delicious. I got the recipe when I worked at Lang Pioneer Village as a costumed interpreter, baking on the old wood-fired cast iron stoves in the Keene Hotel or the Milburn House, learning to gauge temperature based on how quickly your arm-hair felt singed when you stuck your arm in the oven. Unfortunately, an electric or gas oven can’t replicate the particularly delicious flavour that a…
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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…
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Nana’s Tea Biscuits
When I was little, we spent a lot of time at my Nana Cynthia’s house, and she involved us in making many delicious things. Several of my favourite recipes have come from her. Whether eating or hanging out, the kitchen was the centre of the home and definitely her domain – most of my memories of her are in her kitchen, a lit cigarette ((Always Player’s Plain!)) in one hand, and a glass of Papa’s home-made, sweet red wine in the other, telling me stories about her life as a teenager in and near London during WWII. She died a couple of years ago, and my mom has been…
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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…