Happy Mother's Day!

It's my first Mother's Day as a mom and I spent it with family including my little girl. I spent the weekend baking and cooking - by choice - as a treat away from my usual hurried schedule. I'm still indulging in these cupcakes which are just decadent enough. The frosting, which I discovered about here, worked out great. Best frosting ever...wasn't too sweet or sickly. I added sprinkles to some, chocolate crumbles to others and toasted coconut for me and my dad. For my gluten free mom & sis, I tried out three other new recipes which I'll post about later. Hope you all had a great mom's day and celebrated moms in some way!

Fall into this cake

I've had a lack of posting lately...mostly due to a squirmy baby inside my tummy which has taken over my natural appetite and desire to stand in a hot kitchen. Expect posts to be sparse in the coming weeks and months. When I do have time (and energy), though, I promise to post what I've been up to with cooking and/or baking. This time, I have something just sinful to share: pumpkin rum raisin cake. It's a dense dessert that's full of flavour and spirit. Here's how it goes:

1 cup raisins

1/4 cup amber or dark rum, or apple juice (I used dark rum)

1/4 cup warm water

4 eggs

1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

1/2 cup canola oil

2 cups pumpkin purée

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tbsp baking powder

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Glaze
Raisin-soaking liquid

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups icing sugar

First, soak the raisins in the rum and warm water and set aside. Preheat the oven to 350C and grease a bunt pan. 

Beat the eggs, sugar and oil until frothy and then add the pumpkin purée and blend until smooth. Set aside.

 

 In another bowel, sift together flour, baking powder, spices and salt (ie. all the dry ingredients).

 Then mix the dry into the wet ingredients until just combined. Drain the raisins (save the liquid) and add those and the nuts. Mix to coat. This would also be delicious with chocolate chips!!

Spread the batter into the prepared pan and bake in the center of the oven for about 55 mins (until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out with a few crumbs). 

When baked, allow to cook for about 10 mins before inverting the pan and turning the cake out onto a cooking rack. Cool the cake completely. 

For the icing glaze, mix together 3 tbs (or slightly more, who's counting?) of the raisin/rum liquid with the icing sugar and vanilla. Drizzle a small amount over the cake and let cool and harden. Then drizzle some more and let that cool and harden. Repeat this a few more times until the glaze builds up on the cake. 

 

Serve and enjoy. It's a great fall treat and a little boozy so it feels special and very grown-up. The original recipe is from an unexpected place: Our Compliments. Happy fall everyone!

More food on the run

With offerings like this how can anyone say no? If anyone needs me, I'll be over here dieting hardcore until next week when I travel again!

 Jiggs dinner with salt beef, pease pudding, potato, carrot, cabbage, turnip and mustard pickles on the side.On the plate is also some raisin pudding as  pre-dessert dessert.

This is a partridge berry cake with a traditional caramel sauce smothering it. I also had amazing seafood chowder and a homemade roll...but literally ate it too quickly to even think of taking a photo. An I've had that chowder two days in a row!

Monkey bread

Halloween is upon us and usually I go all out testing my creativity and dishing out all sorts of spooky-themed food. This year though, things are a little different and I won't be having my usual table of horror. But I will need a great dish for a pot luck so I'm making monkey bread. This one has been a favorite of my group of friends for a while and a couple of us make it regularly. It's so gooey and sinfully good it's also known as orgasm cake! Here's how to do it (the recipe that is):

2 cans (340 g each) refrigerated cinnamon roll biscuits

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 Tbsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 cup butter, melted

125 g (1/2 of 250-g pkg.) brick cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup icing sugar

1 Tbsp. milk

Preheat the oven to 350F and grease a fluted or tube cake pan.

Unroll the biscuits and cut them into small pieces. Place the pieces into a bowl and toss with the sugar and cinnamon. You can do this recipe with plain biscuits but you might as well go whole hog on this one!

Start layering the biscuit pieces into the cake pan and sprinkle with the leftover sugar mixture from the bottom of the bowl. Drizzle the whole thing with the butter (hello yumminess). Bake 30-45 mins until puffed up and golden brown. Let cool in pan 5 mins and then invert onto cake plate (one with sides is good to catch any oozy sugary goodness).

To make the dipping icing, mix the cream cheese, sugar and milt together. Put in a small bowl or glass and you can insert the dip right in to the hole in the middle of the cake. This dessert works well for parties because it's interactive and decadent. Caramel-y goodness!

And if you don't have a sweet tooth I just found this idea for a savory monkey bread from Serious Eats.

Happy Halloween!

photo: bakingbites.com

Toblerone cheesecake

Yes, you read that right. Toblerone cheesecake. There's Toblerone bar in the cake and also on top of it. Sweet indulgences! As if Thanksgiving turkey dinner wasn't enough, this is what I made for dessert. It was good but almost too rich if there's such a thing. Here's the recipe and some suggestions I'm going to take for the next time I make this.

• 1 1/4 cups Oreo cookie crumbs
• 1/4 cup butter, melted

• 2 (250 g) packages cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup smooth peanut butter
• 1 cup sugar

• 2 (100 g) Toblerone chocolate bars, divided
• 1 1/2 cups thawed Cool Whip, divided (or other whipped topping)
• 
  

Mix the butter and cookie crumbs together and pat into a 9" springform pan. Put in the refrigerator to chill while you make the cake.

Mush together the cream cheese, sugar and peanut butter until smooth. As I mentioned, this was a very rich cake and I think next time I'm going to use less cream cheese and more peanut butter. I also used less sugar than the recipe called for (about 3/4 cup) and I think I could have gotten away with using even less. I also used the "low fat" versions of cream cheese and whipped topping. You could go with whatever version you want and some may say why not go whole hog full fat, but hey why not save where you can?

Then chop up one Toblerone bar and fold that into the cake mixture. Also fold in 1 cup of the whipped topping until it's just combined. Spoon the mixture onto the prepared cookie base and smooth until even. Place the cake into the fridge to cool about 3 hours.

For the topping/glaze, melt the other Toblerone bar (it helps if you chop it up first) in the microwave. Stir in 1/2 cup whipped topping and smear over the top of the chilled cake. There you have it!

Light cheesecake

For a recent get-together I decided to make cheesecake. There were two problems with that idea though: most recipes for cheesecake require multiple blocks of cream cheese and I'm trying to eat and cook lighter. So I found this recipe for a lighter cheesecake and spiked it with some vanilla extract and orange zest for extra flavour. It was a tangy cake that wasn't rich but tasty all the same.

First you make the base with graham cracker crumbs and/or shortcake biscuit crumbs and butter. This isn't terribly light but you can pick and choose the kinds of biscuit you use and the butter or margarine you mix it with. Use as much as you like because everyone has their own preference on consistency or thickness of cake bases. Whiz it in the food processor until it becomes a little crumbly and then pat and press it into the bottom of a 10" springform pan.

Alternatively you could not use a crumb base. Just grease the springform pan and pour the cheesecake batter directly into the pan to bake.

The cheesecake part is done like this:

4 cups Ricotta cheese
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon grated orange rind (zest)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs
Cooking spray (for non-crust option)

Preheat oven to 350°.
Place first 5 ingredients in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed 2 minutes or until smooth. Add eggs, 1 at a time, and beat well after each addition. Pour the batter into the pan on top of the cooled crust or on its own. Bake at 350° for 1 hour or until cheesecake center barely moves when pan is touched. Remove cheesecake from oven; run a knife around the outside edge of cheesecake. Cool slightly; remove outer ring from pan. I decorated this cheesecake with orange and starfruit slices to make it pretty.