The Yum Yum Factor

Good golly, this is a crazy cake. The Food Network Canada cooking club challenge this month was Laura Calder's Craggy Chocolate Cake  and I was so looking forward to making it. We are not big on cake cake but a good flourless chocolate cake is a different animal all together - it's more like a fudgy, gooey brownie than a chocolate cake. This is my first time making this sexy beast and I assure you, it will NOT be my last. I followed the video directions to a T and it turned out beautifully. I was planning to get all fancy pants but once I tasted the finished cake, I decided it needed nothing more than some maple whipped cream and a couple of berries. Now, I just have to find a bunch of people to come and eat this thing before I go off the rails and eat the whole thing myself! Craggy Chocolate Cake 200g 70% dark chocolate 200g butter, cut into chunks 200g ( 1 cup) sugar 4 eggs, separated whipped cream berries Heat the oven to 375F Prep an 8" spring form ...

It's almost the last month of school so I won't have to do this many more times until it starts up again in September. Maybe I will just arbitrarily designate one or two days a month snack day during the summer to keep me in the groove. I was too tired to make muffins last night and so I had planned to go pick up something and take it into school this morning but the dog woke me up at 6:45. Clearly she thought I was a being a lazy no good lay about mother and wanted to help me be better. What a nice dog. I will be honest. I typed in blueberry oatmeal muffin and this was the first one to pop up, it looked okay so this is the muffin I made. At 6:45 am of snack day I don't have time to dilly dally. Little Shack said they are bit a dry and I think he is right so if I make them again, I won't cut back so much on the oil and still add the apple sauce. It could also be a matter of over mixing as well because I wasn't expecting the batter to be as dry as it was. Thi...

Last weekend, we had a major kitchen disaster when we managed to turn a nice looking tri tip beef roast into a grey mass of flavourless shredded meat. It was a mustard rubbed roast that I thought would be okay if we threw it in the slow cooker all day and then I planned to make a sauce and eat it on mashed potatoes. NOT! I drained all the liquid off and put the offending roast in the fridge and gave myself a day or two to think of a clever way of making this thing edible. It was either going to be some sort of taco or make BBQ and because it was already covered in a grainy mustard rub, I decided that BBQ made more sense. If we are going to have BBQ fake brisket sandwiches out of my beef rescue , I was going to need to make some coleslaw.

I woke up yesterday morning craving for potstickers so you know what I did? I made them. Just like that. That Honey Badger has got nothing on me. Pork, Shrimp and Enoki Mushroom Potstickers 500g  ground pork 250g  shrimp 2 green onions, minced 200g enoki mushrooms, chopped 2 tsp minced or grated ginger 2 tsp soy sauce 1 tsp sesame oil 1 tbls cornstarch 1/2 tsp kosher salt round wonton wrappers (i got about 50-60 dumplings out of this filling) for cooking: 1 tbls vegetable oil, 1/4 cup water dipping sauce: 6 tbls soy sauce 3 tbls rice vinegar 1 tsp chili oil 1 tsp sesame oil pinch sugar 1 clove garlic, minced 1 tsp minced or grated ginger mix all together and let sit for at least an hour I can't do a better job than La Fuji Mama when it comes to showing you the steps involved in making these dumplings so you should just go look at her gyoza pictorial on her blog  and while you are there, poke around and read because it's a fabulous blog....

I like any excuse to make a mexican meal so every fifth of May, we have mexican food. Just like every St Patrick's Day, we have colcannan and Irish beer, although we are all at least half Irish. None of us are Mexican but we really, really like the food. I only celebrate holidays that involve tasty things to eat to be honest. This year, I tried a new method for making pork carnitas but that recipe is going on no reEATS on Monday so I won't share that here but I will show you the other stuff we ate. To go with our carnitas, I made a simple chipotle crema but I used greek yogurt and mayo, a smooth, blended salsa, guacamole and pickled red onions  (which I have shared on this blog before), and some baked corn tortilla chips.

Yes people, it's snack day again but I am tired of muffins. I really wanted to make scones and send in a jar of vanilla strawberry jam that I bought at the Toronto Bakes for Japan sale but Little Shack doesn't really like scones. It's ME who really likes scones so since it's his snack day, not mine, I switched gears and began searching for some sort of loaf to bake. With absolutely no intention of going out of my way to make something low fat,  stumbled across this recipe and it looked perfect. I have been craving oatmeal something or other, it was not overly sweet and I was intrigued by the whole whipping the egg whites thing. I sliced the heel off of the still warm loaf before sending it off with the kid to take to school just to make sure it was going to taste as good as it looks and it certainly does. I would think this would be delicious with whole wheat flour and with the addition of nuts, some chocolate chips or even a bit of orange juice and zest. I will d...