Caramelized Upside-Down Pear Gingerbread is one of my husband’s favourites. While we were in the Okanagan, we bought a lot of apples and pears to bring home. Most of them survived quite nicely, but the Bartlett Pears were a little too ripe and got a bit bruised in transport. Seeing this, he immediately started hinting for pear gingerbread.
My husband and I are going on vacation in a few days, so I am baking a few treats to have on the road. Last night, I made this delicious, moist chocolate zucchini cake. It was so rich, it was like eating brownies. I couldn’t taste the zucchini at all. I like caramel icing, so I frosted it with it, though the cake would have been fine as is.
I love high tea or afternoon tea.  My aunt usually takes my cousin and I for tea at The Empress every Christmas. I had some high tea ideas of my own, so when my cousin’s sister came out to visit this week, I invited them both, plus my aunt to high tea, hosted by myself and my mother in law. This is very much NOT a meal in a hurry…I prepared this well in advance, except for the crab and shrimp boats and the pork pasties…which were made by myself and my mother in law and cooked off just before serving. All the baking was spaced out over several evenings, and I made the sandwiches the night before.
Posted in baking and desserts, chicken, egg and/or cheese, ideas, vegetarian
Tagged High Tea Ideas
Blackberry and apple crumble (with ice cream, of course) Â seems so appropriate at this time of year. The blackberries are hanging over the fence and the apples are ripe on the tree. I went into the backyard and picked a couple cups of blackberries and 2 Bramley apples to make this dessert.
Last night, supper consisted of ham, corn on the cob, sweetened beets, roast broccoli and mashed potatoes.
I like to mash my potatoes with sour cream to cut calories, but when I opened the container, that was no longer an option. For some reason, my container of sour cream was completely frozen. Obviously I have some serious cold spots in the fridge, and I need to check it out, but for the moment all I could think was…what shall I do with this sour cream? There were about 2 cups that needed to be used up (once it was defrosted naturally). The first thing that came to mind was sour cream fudge, which I promptly made. The second thing came to me as an inspiration. I keep seeing “poke cakes” all over the internet, so I decided to make one using the sour cream and an equivalent amount of crushed pineapple I had in the fridge.
Peanut butter cornflake squares…the kind of thing you come up with when you have a lot of crushed cornflakes and you keep buying peanut butter. I have a problem…sometimes I will run out of something, and every time I go to the grocery store I remember that I “need” that item (and manage to forget that I have already fulfilled that need) and buy it again…and again…and again. Such is the case with peanut butter in my household at the moment. This little treat took about 5 minutes to make and is chewy and yummy.
This is a variation of my favourite go-to recipe when I need a dessert/treat in a hurry. I have made butterscotch brownies (I think some people call them blondies, but I have known them as brownies all my life) so many times that I no longer need to look at the recipe.
After talking to my daughter last night, I decided to try making them with apples. She had just made an apple cake, and since she is 500 miles away, I can’t pop over for a bite.
Posted in baking, baking and desserts, vegetarian
Tagged Apple Butterscotch Brownies
You might recall me mentioning the many peaches I had to deal with when the peach tree decided to go crazy last year. I STILL have peaches in the freezer, so today I decided to make peach ice cream. It’s a flavour I can rarely find in the grocery store,and I love it. Â I was also feeling a bit lazy, so I decided to make ice cream without an ice cream maker. I DO have one (somewhere), but I didn’t feel like rooting about in the cupboards looking for it.
I started by making a custard base:
These banana bran muffins are my very own creation. When my daughter was a teenager, it was sometimes hard to come up with things that were relatively healthy that she would eat. The combination of banana and chocolate chips is one of those flavours I could usually rely upon, so I added some oat bran and flax seeds to make it it a tad healthier, and it was a hit:)
Posted in baking, baking and desserts, vegetarian, Weight Watchers points
Tagged Banana Bran Muffins
I first encountered a raspberry and white chocolate scone at the local coffee shop. It was delicious and my mouth was in ecstasy. After I had eaten it a couple of days in a row, and found my desire for it unabated, I decided to try to replicate it. I think I have been successful.
Posted in baking, baking and desserts, vegetarian