Cook the Cover: Canadian Living July 2014

You don't even know how excited I was to see this cover recipe!

Grilled peach? It's one of our favourite summertime desserts, made popular last year when we repeatedly had grilled pound cake with grilled peaches and vanilla ice cream. There's something wonderful in seeing grilled marks on fruits and vegetables, something different from the usual meat selection.

This sundae is pretty easy to make and the raspberry sauce can be made ahead of time so that when you're ready to eat, all you have to do is grill the peaches and scoop the ice cream. Almond slivers can be optional, but they provide a nice crunchy texture if you have the time to give them a quick toss in the oven.

Grilled Peach Melba Sundae
Shopping List: unsalted butter, brown sugar, peaches, vanilla ice cream, raspberries, sliced almonds, granulated sugar, lemons, and cornstarch.

I love summer for the abundance of fruits!

Here's me showing you that a scale is the best thing you can invest in when you're following recipes. It works so much better. For the sauce, I have a cup of raspberries there and showing you what 250 ml of raspberries look like. There's a huge difference!

The raspberry sundae sauce is super easy, just throw in the raspberries, sugar, lemon juice, and 1 tbsp water in a blender. Strain the sauce through a sieve into a saucepan (discard seeds). Cook the sauce over medium heat, stirring, for about 2 minutes until it is warmed through.

Whisk the cornstarch with 1 tbsp water and then stir it into raspberry mixture. Bring the sauce to a boil, keep stirring until it thickens, about 1 minute. Transfer to bowl (or jar in my case) and cover and refrigerate to cool completely, about 40 minutes. You can even make this sauce a week in advance and leave it in the fridge until you need it.

Remove the skin from the peaches and cut them into wedges. Mix softened butter with brown sugar.

Heat the grill pan over medium heat (or if you have a barbecue, use that) and place wedges on to get the charred markings. Turn over to do the same. Near the end, brush the butter and brown sugar mixture on and flip once. You have to watch carefully as it caramelizes very quickly. Remove from the grill and let it cool.

Serve with ice cream, raspberry sauce, raspberries, and toasted almond slivers.

Yes?

Yes to grilled peaches.

Yes to raspberries.

If you've never grilled fruits before.
Do it.

If you've never grilled peaches before.
I highly recommend that you do it.

There's just a wonderful mix of flavour and aroma when a peach is getting its grill marks on. Come on, there's no excuse, this is an easy sundae to make and a sure crowd-pleaser. I don't know how else I should convince you!

See what other bloggers thought about the recipe here.

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post by Canadian Living and I received compensation for it. There was no requirement to produce a positive review of this recipe. All opinions are our own.

Pistachio Cake

[Insert nutty joke here.]
I just don't have an appropriate joke to start off this post with. Then again, there's no reason as to why I have to lighten the mood with laughter. Pistachio cake is very serious business. But if you want to know what is funny, it's that I can't trim cakes. Did I plan on making tiny little cakelettes? No. I wanted to make a loaf-sized cake glazed in chocolate and cut into pieces like a pound cake. It turns out that cutting three identical straight edged layers was beyond my talent. So I kept trimming and trimming until what became tiny towers of cake.

Pistachio Cake
(Makes enough to fill one loaf pan and a 8 x 8 square pan)

3/4 cups of shelled pistachio nuts
1 1/3 cup of granulated sugar
2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
2 sticks of unsalted butter
1/2 cup of milk
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
5 eggs

1. Preheat the oven to 350F and spread the shelled pistachio nuts on a baking pan. Toast in the oven for 7-9 minutes. When finished, let it cool completely.
2. Line the bottom of your cake pans with parchment paper.
3. Using food processor or blender with a chopping blade, grind the toasted pistachio until it becomes a flour.
4. In a mixing bowl, combine the pistachio flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, and salt. Give it a good whisk, about 30 seconds.
5. Add in the milk, vanilla extract, and eggs. Mix until combined and the batter is nice and smooth.
6. Divide the batter into your parchment-lined baking pans and bake for about 30-40 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean from the center.
7. Peel off the parchment paper and allow the cakes to cool on wire racks.

When you're ready to assemble the cake (cakes in my case), trim them to size. Spread raspberry jam (or strawberry jam, but the tartness of the raspberry is just fantastic here) on the top of the cake. Sandwich the jam with another cake layer.

Using a double boiler, make chocolate ganache (chocolate chips and heavy cream) to glaze the cakes. A spatula helps spread the chocolate over the edges. This part gets a little messy. Don't worry if they don't look perfect. I'm not sure who would resist a chocolate covered pistachio cake.

Chop up some pistachios and crumble on top as decoration.

Let the glaze cool and set.

Or just eat it. Why wait? It makes a lovely breakfast, healthy in my opinion! The cake itself isn't too sweet (hence the chocolate) and the raspberry jam really brightens up the flavours.

Disclaimer: We received product samples from Diamond of California. The shelled pistachios are new to their line and we also received chopped walnuts and chopped pecans. There was no requirement to produce a positive review of their products. All opinions are our own.

Butter Avenue

Butter Avenue

Pâtisserie and Café

3467 Yonge Street

Toronto, ON M4N 2N3

(647) 341- 8686

They're on Facebook and Twitter too!

Oh I am so excited to share this with you! Although, it's most likely that you've already paid Butter Avenue a visit and you're rolling your eyes at my ridiculously late arrival. Friends have raved about this place, but it wasn't until I saw that they serve Afternoon Tea that I asked Howard to take me there for a date.

The Afternoon Tea menu includes an amuse-bouche, macarons, mini tarts, cakes, and specialty teas. Take a look at Kitchen Frolic's blog here.

So you would think this post would be about our Afternoon Tea experience... but no, I screwed up. I didn't realize we had to make reservations first. But, this means we're making a return trip, because we made the reservation right then and there!

I wasn't going to leave without trying something, I mean, you try looking at the display cases and walking out. Howard and I shared the St. Honoré aux Macarons, consisting of crème chantilly pistachio, fresh raspberries, and raspberry macarons.

Macarons on a tart? Fresh fruit? Light crème? Yes, please!

I ... uh ... also got six macarons to snack on. Howard did scold me and said I should have gotten these to go and that I wouldn't be able to finish them.

Well, I showed him! And he had to eat his words because he ate the halves of five of those macarons!

I picked out the white chocolate strawberry, cream cheese passion fruit, matcha chestnut, earl grey, oolong, and the sea salt caramel macarons to try.

Our top favourite favourites? It's hard to choose, but we really enjoyed the sea salt caramel, oolong, passion fruit, matcha chestnut, white chocolate strawberry, and the earl grey. Yeah, I just listed them all again. Like I said, it's hard to choose!

They were very kind to let me snap some more photos of the lovely treats we'll be coming back to try! The above is the St. Honoré aux Fraises: strawberry chantilly, pâte sucrée, candy cane macarons, and fresh strawberries. Now that I think about it, I should have ordered this one, because it looks like a seasonal one. Fingers crossed that it'll still be there in January.

St. Honoré Cassis: crème chantilly cassis, fresh blueberries, and Secret Garden macarons. What are Secret Garden macarons?!?

I didn't get a photo of the lovely treat behind, but it's the Château De Framboise: chocolate, almond, and raspberry.

Terre Et Neige: matcha and dark chocolate.

Nutty Dark Chocolate.

Mini macarons! In a bubble tea cup? Cute!

The next few photos are just rows and rows of beautiful macarons. Enjoy!

Dreamy isn't it? Do you think they'd let me work there part-time? ;)

Birthday Weekend Lunch

I just wanted to share my birthday weekend treats with you. Howard and I started off being really good! Bright and early, we both went to the gym - step class for me and the elliptical for him. It was such an uncharacteristic January day, sunny and warm, so we went downtown to have lunch at Nadege Patisserie. We've been before to pick up pastries, but we hadn't tried their sandwiches yet!

My favourite of the two was the smoked salmon, cucumber, dill, and cream cheese! A delicious buttery and flaky croissant with the crunch of the cucumber. Smoked salmon and cream cheese, always a winning combination.

We tried their breakfast sandwich which consists of bacon, scrambled eggs, cheddar, and tomato. They heat it up for you so that you're not eating room temperature eggs and bacon.

The first dessert we tried was this green fuzzy-looking cube with the raspberry garnish and cute Japanese decal. Inside, the matcha green tea cake is composed of two layers, the top being raspberry mouse and the bottom being brown rice pudding.

Unable to resist, we tried two more desserts. The salted caramel mousse, which looks like a mouse, was very rich. Breaking it open, we were surprised to see that there are layers in this dessert!

Finally, our favourite of the picks that day, the raspberry tart. Seeds removed and filled with a syrup or jam, the raspberries themselves were a dessert on their own. But, on top of that scrumptious pastry cream, just wonderful!

If you are going to only pick one dessert, I think Nadege's tarts are worth a try. On previous visits, we've had the grapefruit and earl grey tart, a personal favourite of mine, and the mango coconut tart. They all have a great balance of sweet and sour.

PS: Took the photos on my iPhone. I need to remember to bring my camera out more often!

Ladurée and Sucré

Ladurée

864 Madison Avenue

New York, NY 10021

(646) 558-3157

Look at the rain on the window! Still soaked, we walked eight minutes south from Lady M Confections to Ladurée. Howard hates wet and squishy socks, but he kept us on course (he loves me so). I was almost ready to give up. I just really wanted a hot shower and to change into dry clothes.

But, as it was our last day in New York, we weren't going home without visiting the newly opened and first Ladurée location in North America. We were going to get our Upper East Side on and try their famous macarons.

There was a bit of a line up there, but Ladurée had lots of helpful staff behind the counter. There were macaron towers on display around the entire shop. The famous Ladurée boxes - in pink and green. And do you spot the wall of ribbons?

We decided to get half a dozen of macarons. My colour of choice? The distinguishable green. I was absurdly pleased to finally be owning the box.

Howard said I should keep it as a jewelry box - yes... if I had jewelry (hint hint Howard).

It felt so dainty and precious to open the box and unveil the macarons!

From left to right: vanilla, raspberry, coffee, coconut, lemon, and morello and almond.

Other flavours we wanted, but were sold out that day: pistachio, chocolate, and salted caramel.

If you look at the photo above, you can see that the macarons don't look perfect. For some, the pied (feet) of the macarons were broken. Then, some had more fillings than others, this is also visible in the photograph.

I will admit, not getting to try the flavours we intended to and seeing the less than perfect macarons was a disappointment. I mean, this is the place for macarons, they are famous worldwide, and it just felt like there wasn't enough of an effort put into these dainty treats.

How about the taste? Ladurée recommends that you consume the macarons within three days after purchase and that they should be stored in the lower part of your refrigerator. We didn't eat them at the store (there is no seating there) and had to commute by subway back. We did our best to keep the little box of macarons safe in our bag, away from the rain. However, I think the humidity in the subway might have still gotten to it.

When we ate them that night, a few of the macarons felt soft, but we'll never know what the original texture was. We can say that the flavours were scrumptious. The vanilla and coconut ones pleasantly surprised us!

Wait, I'm not done yet! I picked up another treat at the store:

That's right. Ladurée's Sucré: The Recipes. This book was on my wish list last year, but I never found it in bookstores and was uncomfortable ordering it online. There is a French version, so make sure you get the English one if you can't read French.

Just like the macarons, the book is wrapped and nested inside a box.

With bated breath!

The cover of the book is wrapped in fabric! I would have never guessed that, it just makes it one of those books you want to touch.

The edges? Gold of course.

The Ladurée macaron recipe? Check!

The desserts still keep their French names, but don't worry, the instructions are in English.

Just adorable!