Wednesday 24 October 2012

cinnamon pull apart bread

While blogging for the past few months, I realized certain patterns in my baking behaviour. First, I seem to love muffins. They are so quick and easy to make so no wonder. Second, I love cookies. And lastly, cinnamon always finds it way into whatever I bake. I decided to make something different today. It sort of feels like a baking slump where I need to try something more challenging or different, away from my cookies and muffins. This cinnamon pull apart bread has been on my "to bake" list for a while actually, even before I start blogging. I never had the time to actually make it and so here it is!

cinnamon pull apart bread

Saturday 20 October 2012

chocolate chip marshmallow cookies

Aside from all the scary Halloween stuff, this period of time reminds of me candies and chocolate (and everything sweet!). Post midterm deserves some more baking time! :) Especially with work coming up!! This time, I decided to make a different type of chocolate chip cookie.

the cookie that wished it could be s'more

Thursday 18 October 2012

pumpkin spiced applesauce muffins

After a zillion of hours watching this drama, I've fully gotten my dose of kdrama that I needed. Midterms were quite something this semester! It's especially hard to get back on track after summer vacations. I'm not yet in my "work" mode, but that's over with work coming up in less than a week! Anyhow, enough rambling and onto the baking! After receiving amazing pumpkin spice mix from Cars, I decided that I needed to make something with it, especially with all those pumpkin recipes out there. The only problem was that I didn't have canned pumpkin puree. So the closest thing I can get to pumpkin spice muffins was pumpkin spiced applesauce muffins.

spiced applesauce muffins

Monday 8 October 2012

zombified blueberry muffins

October only means one thing to our kid mind: HALLOWEEN. I'm not a big fan of horror movies, but I have to admit that I love The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror. I caught yesterday's episode thanks to my game "Tapped Out" that kept me posted on when the next episode was coming up! Haha, advertisement at its best! Anyhow, I did not intend for my muffins to turn out this way... They looked terrible out of the oven... You can judge for yourself with the picture below!

muffin invasion!!

Tuesday 2 October 2012

apple fritter muffins

I really love autumn. Although the trees are getting ready to go to sleep for winter, everything else is amazing! The weather is getting chilly enough to wear boots and scarves. Coffee shops are serving their seasonal pumpkin spiced lattes. And best of all, APPLE PICKING time. Seriously, what is there not to love about this awesome season?
apple fritter muffins

Thursday 27 September 2012

pb oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

Now that's a killer long name for a cookie. It's really random how I bake these cookies. A good friend of mine brought us these amaziiiiing store bought peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. After one, I just wanted another. Knowing all the bad stuff in the store bought ones, I decided it would be better to make my own healthy version of it. There's something about pairing peanut butter and chocolate that just mind-blowing! I love pb & jelly, but with chocolate.. It's a whole new level of yumminess if that would exist.

when chocolate goodness meets PB awesomeness

Tuesday 25 September 2012

banana muffin comeback

I am still alive! And doing just fine. It's the flu season and I might have caught something. Let's just hope its allergies. On the bright side, I did buy a lot of bananas over the week. Like, when I mean a lot, see for yourself here. Ever since my parents came back from their trip from Cuba, our house has not been out of bananas. They are such a great fruit! (awesome for eating, baking or cooking) I think it's the perfect food.

On that lovely picture, you can see that there were some on the far right that were super ripe, almost black. I think those are truly the best for baking. And no worries, no bananas were harmed in the making of these muffins. (well the fulfilled their banana destiny ;)

simple banana muffins

Sunday 16 September 2012

lemon crumb squares

When life gives you lemons, make lemon crumb squares. Following up my lemon blueberry loaf, I still had some leftover lemon that I had to used. At first, I was contemplating between lemon sugar cookies or lemon bar. Since I'm always making cookies, I decided to give this recipe a try. I saw a can of sweetened condensed milk in my pantry and what better way to use it than to make these lemon crumb squares!

lemon bar squares

Saturday 15 September 2012

lemon blueberry loaf

I always have a stash of frozen blueberries whenever I feel like making blueberry muffins (my favorite!). These berries are so versatile since you can eat them fresh, bake them and even make smoothies out of them. Thank goodness that I'm not yet allergic! I decided to get creative and change up my blueberry craving so I decided to make a lemon blueberry loaf.

when lemon meets blueberries

Monday 10 September 2012

eggplant lasagna

Last week, I bought some Chinese eggplants with my aunt. We split them together since we bought quite a few. My aunt was going to make a lasagna and I wanted to make ratatouille. But, when I found out that I needed much more ingredients than what I had at home, I switched and decided to try out a pasta-free lasagna. The turn out? I wished I cut my eggplant slices more evenly, haha.
Cheeeese!

Sunday 9 September 2012

banana applesauce muffins

Bananas would be a staple in my diet if we had any at home at all times. It just goes well for anything, especially with oatmeal since it acts as a sweetener. It starts my mornings on the right foot, but is a hot commodity in my house. Whenever we have any laying around, they don't stay that way. They can disappear in a day or two. That's just how much we love them. I was lucky to have three overripe bananas laying around so I decided to make banana muffins!

Breakfast!

Wednesday 5 September 2012

snickerdoodles revisited

What better way to start CA school by baking a fresh batch of what I made to celebrate the end of my summer session! I decided to try a new recipe this time for change. It's a very simple cookie, but yet so delicious as it melts in your mouth with every bite :)

Giant Snickerdoodle?!

Saturday 1 September 2012

oatmeal carrot cake cookies

There's still some grated carrot leftover from my carrot muffins, but I think it'll be easy to use that up. So with most of the remaining carrot, I decided to make cookies. They turned out to be super moist and also surprisingly healthy! This makes an amazing guilt-free afternoon snack.

Nom nom nom


Wednesday 29 August 2012

carrot muffins

There are so many recipes out there for carrot cake/muffins. It was really hard to find one that had all the ingredients I wanted to use. I stumbled upon a recipe for something called morning glory muffins. The name itself sounds delightful! I don't know where that name come from, but it contained grated carrots and unsweetened shredded coconut, two ingredients that I was keen on using (the coconut was left over from the time I made macaroons). If anyone does know why those muffins are called so, please let me know!
baby carrot muffin with his parents

Sunday 26 August 2012

zucchini bread

Here is the final installment of my zucchini posts. I finally finished all the grated zucchini today. Oddly enough, it feels like such a great accomplishment. I realized that I should have weighed it rather than taking a picture in comparison to the iPod classic. Ah well!

twin zucchini bread loaves

zucchini fritters

The zucchini madness continues.

zucchini fritters

Saturday 25 August 2012

courgette pancakes

Among the first words I learned in kindergarden, courgette has been a memorable one. Even today, my parents remind me how I'd try to correct them whenever they said zucchini. I was pretty excited when we received this lovely courgette from someone's garden.
Courgette vs iPod Classic
It is huge. Like maybe 10 cups of shredded courgette.. and I thought I'd only most 5 cups. So it's officially time to get creative with this amazing veggie. Since I wasn't expecting so much zucchini, I ended up shredding the whole thing. So much shredding! I started to use my grater, but ended up using my food processor. Boy did that make my life easier! Haha, I can't believe I did not think of that earlier.

Friday 24 August 2012

classic chocolate chip cookies

It's amazing that I still don't have a chocolate chip cookie post. This is a staple to my baking and I have been making these cookies for ages. Last night was the perfect opportunity to bake them since there was a surprise gathering for a friend that's leaving for AB. He will be missed! I did not have that many pictures since my dad's camera decided to die on me while I was taking pictures. So the quality of the following pictures isn't as nice as the others. A Canon PowerShot SD600 doesn't take as great pictures as a Nikon D5000! 
Plain advertisement, but no fluffy decorations
I took the liberty of attempting to package it nicely. Unfortunately, yesterday was pretty hectic and I did not have much time to decorate it more neatly (but I did treat myself to the SPA with L. :) The next thing that I'll need to work on is making uniform cookies. Haha, the shape is pretty.. unique! Maybe because I was rushed and did not take as much time to make each of them round. But a good ice cream scooper is at the top of my to-buy list! I love these cookies because their soft and chewy, also my family's favorite. A lot of the chocolate chip cookies end up being hard and brittle, but my favorite ones have to be tender.

Monday 20 August 2012

failed oatmeal muffins

Next time I see the words "healthy" and "oatmeal" in a recipe, I'll skip it. I did make some minor changes to the recipe that might have affected the taste. The muffins are interesting as one of my friends would say. They are quite bland. This recipe called for 1/3 cup of brown sugar for 1 cup of rolled oats and 1 cup of flour. Go figure! But they did have 1 cup of semi sweet chocolate.. which I substituted for 1/2 cup of raisins and 1/2 cup of the chips... that was a big mistake. It also had surprisingly not a lot of fatty ingredients (only 1 egg and 1/4 cup of butter).  No wonder the recipe I used said to put a nice pat of butter on these muffins when eating them.
stuck with a dozen of these bad boys
I'm very happy that today I decided not the double the recipe. I'll need to find a better oatmeal muffin recipe in the future. Though that might not be in the near future. Most of my posts are actually related to oatmeal now that I look at it.. but there is a logical explanation behind this!

Sunday 19 August 2012

sandwich bread

So what happens when you have an odd craving for white sandwich bread and have none at home?

Answer: You try and make it. At least that was my solution.

The Loaf
My picture doesn't do it justice.. It just doesn't look as good as the website where I got the recipe. I'll definitely need to work on this though since it wasn't exactly what I wanted. The bread turned out to be nice and sort of fluffy, but not as airy as I wished it would be. In my case, I think the second 4 1/2 cups of flour was a little too much. I think maybe just 4 cups would be better. My bread turned out a little dense, but the taste was still good.

Saturday 18 August 2012

home sweet home granola

It feels great to be back! After two weeks traveling across Europe, it feels great to be finally home. I started to miss my good old home cooked meals and also breakfasts that did not involve weird tasting milk.. and most probably croissants and chocolatines. It was a great trip! Here's a little sneak peak of some of the many pictures I took. I might have went a little overboard with the pictures.. but the more the merrier! And I can't wait to see the girls' videos and pictures too!

At the top of Mt Rigi
Honestly, all of my pictures don't capture the beauty of the scenery... It's one of those things that you need to be there to really appreciate it. Anyhow, here's a picture of my favorite destination. Out of all the cities I've been to, Lucerne would have to be my favorite.. well that'd also include Mt Rigi where we were staying at. It is in the middle of nowhere and it did require us to take that train up the mountain, but it was nice and peaceful with the constant ringing of cow bells.. and the only downside being the smell of cow dung.

Wednesday 25 July 2012

early morning oatmeal

An early start today with freshly baked cookies :) The girls are coming over to finalizing our trip planning, so why not take this opportunity to bake? I cheated though.. I prepared the dough last night and just rolls them into balls and popped them in the oven. It made it so much easier (and a lot less dish washing in the morning). While making the dough last night, I realized how thankful I am having a stand mixer at home. Although I don't use it to make muffins, I don't think I'd bake as much if I didn't have one. It just makes the whole baking process sooooo much easier (and they also come in awesome colours too..).

Fresh out of the oven by 8 AM
I've always had a soft spot for oatmeal. I went into an odd oatmeal phase during CA school, especially for overnight oatmeal. I was pretty hyped about using chia seeds (the same one for the chia pets!), but I thought it was a little weird to eat porridge cold. Anyways, because of that, I bought a lot of oatmeal, a bag of around 1.5 kg. Actually, it was an oatmeal mix with flax seeds and wheat germs in it. I thought it'd have a more noticeable impact on the cookie's taste and texture, but I couldn't really tell... maybe Mike would. It does have quite a bit of sugar in it though, so that might mask its taste!

Monday 23 July 2012

macaroni and cheese gratin

Counting down the days to my trip! 6 days already and I'm off to Europe! Time just flies by! It feels like ages ago that I was still in school, talking about this trip with my friends as though it was going to be in forever. I'm slowly starting to pack up my stuff seeing what I'll need (as well as what I need to buy in Europe ;)). It's hard to believe that July is ending soon already.. On another note, tonight was game night at our home! We haven't played in ages just the family.

are you the "saboteur"?
Instead of baking today, I decided to make a mac & cheese gratin with Mum. It's not your ordinary KD and it took a looong time to make, much longer than any of my other baking projects... It did require using the stove, her specialty. I've never realized how much preparation was required to make this. Especially that our macaroni had a surprise layer in it: Swiss Chard, straight from the garden. My parents love to garden, but unfortunately I dislike this hobby of theirs. Whenever they leave on vacation and leave me to water their plants, it's always a nightmare.... but fresh veggies is always so awesome :) it's always ready in the backyard and fresh!

Thursday 19 July 2012

pancake madness

I've always had a sweet tooth when it comes to meals, including breakfast. One of my favorites to eat in the morning would have to be pancakes. They are so fluffy and light! And when they are soaked in maple syrup.. ahh so yummy! Who can say no to pancakes?! Definitely not Jan Di from Boys Over Flowers (go to 1:19 to see what I'm talking about)!
Can you spot them?
Anyhow, even though I love pancakes very much, I have always had a problem when coming to making them. It has always been a challenge. I'm not sure if it's the amount of batter I'm putting on the skillet or my actual recipe. I really can't tell! You can see a few burnt pancakes in my pile of pancakes. Actually, I think some of them burnt because I was drinking a glass of OJ while they were on the stove... I guess I was slightly distracted. However, most of them turned out pretty nice! And on top of that we have blueberries at home.. <3

Tuesday 17 July 2012

when pancake and crepe meet.

With two extra ripe bananas in the fridge, I didn't seem to have the time to make my morning oatmeal, at least I was not in the mood. It'd be a lie if I said I didn't have the time. Being on vacation, it seems that I lost track of it! It's hard to even remember what day it is. Everyday sort of feels like a Saturday.

Banana Crepes
Anyhow, I decided to make my mom's signature banana crepes or pancakes. It's not thin enough to be a crepe, but not thick and fluffy like a pancake. I guess that means this is a hybrid. It tastes very banana-y. I wish I had more bananas.. I only got a dozen out of two bananas. I find it funny how it doesn't look very appealing on one side as the picture below. The other side looks much nicer though!

Monday 16 July 2012

macarooner.

Sesame streets seems to be a very good inspiration for baking. I saw Cookie Monster's audition for SNL (if you don't want to watch all of it, you can fast forward to 1:37 to see what I'm referring to) and I thought it was good opportunity to bake some macaroons.

Coconut Macaroons
Don't be fooled by the names! These are not "macarons", but "macaroons". The additional "o" makes a big difference. I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of coconut, but my dad has also been talking about making some for a while now. So what better than to do it during your vacations!

Thursday 12 July 2012

a fresh beginning.

If you are reading this, that means I have officially decided to start my food blog. It feels like just last year that I was telling Cars how much I wanted one. So why did it take so long? I didn't have a blog name. I know whatever name I pick, it doesn't matter, right? The whole point would be to keep track of my lovely adventures in my kitchen. So, yes, it took me an entire year to get this thing figured out.

How did I come up with the name? In fact, I didn't. It's actually my brother's idea. He was joking around saying how I should call it Delices de l'Ile Maurice (a Mauritian restaurant in Verdun) as well as other silly names related to my childhood. He then came up with "aux caprices des délices". I love the French touch in a name. I think it's something about the language that gives it that hint of sophistication (or maybe it's just me). Anyhow, it turns out that Aux Caprices des Délices was some B&B somewhere in Quebec. So, I decided it was best to stick with Délices et Caprices. I love things that rhyme anyways.

Today marks a very important day: the first of my summer vacatioooons! And for the first time in 5 years, I'm not working this summer and I'm free as a bird. So what better than to celebrate by baking! :)

Snickerdoodles