Suzie's Sweets

Ok so first up in my holiday bake sesh were shortbread cookies. Typically, when I talk to people about baking shortbread the biggest challenge that’s mentioned is timing. I find cookies in general hard to bake because some of the baking is done after you take them out of the oven, making deciding when to take them out a bit difficult. Shortbread cookies are finicky with baking because you want an even light golden colour for all of them; if you leave them in too long they’ll get darker edges that won’t look as nice, or some of them will be different colours. I’ve made shortbread in the past successfully and usually I time the cookies very carefully, which I normally don’t do with any cooking or baking. This time I forgot to do that. Consequently some of the cookies were cooked longer than I wanted, and the colouring was off from the rest of the batch. They still tasted fine, but they were not as pretty. However, the red and green sprinkles that I used made up for it. Cute!

Another difficulty I have with cookies, especially shortbread, is rolling the dough out to the proper thickness without ripping it when I remove the waxed paper. This time I stuck the dough in the fridge for about half an hour before I rolled it and that seemed to work pretty well.

Shortbread dough rolled out and cut.

So here’s the recipe I followed, but I substituted brown sugar for white sugar; It adds a richer taste and a more golden colour. The recipe said it makes 24, but I halved the recipe and got over 24, and my cookie cutters are fat.

• 2 cups butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar (Note: I used the same amount of brown sug. instead)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 4 cups all-purpose flour

The holiday party season is upon us and has hit me in a large but concentrated way. I’m attending three parties this weekend, and two the following weekend. This year I tried to choose a variety of treats for friends’ parties, so picked one classic, one favourite, and one new dessert. I’m really excited! One of the parties  is a waffle brunch that I’m hosting, so that’s pretty simple. The last party is my extended family’s annual Christmas party and I don’t know quite yet what I’ll be making for that one but I need to figure that out soon.

Normally, all of this baking out be no problem, and I could space it out so that I’m not stressed out. But everything is so close together that it causes a bit of a situation.

My freezer isn’t that big and my roommate and I always keep it pretty full with frozen pierogies, icecream and homemade soup (baking doesn’t usually last long enough to be frozen for extended periods of time). Our lack of freezer space means that I have to do all my Christmas baking right before each party. Taking the day of a party to bake isn’t generally a problem, since I am still unemployed; I have an incredibly flexible schedule so I can just do a bit more job hunting on the days surrounding the party. However, three parties in two days is a lot of baking, especially since one of those days I won’t have time to bake, and I still need to fit in all my errands and job hunting.

So, the point of this rant is to say that I have a baking-heavy few days coming up so expect a bunch of Christmas-y posts and recipes early next week.

Yay butter!

Susan

ladiesrhythmandmovementclub:

22 years ago today, 14 women at Ecole Polytechnique lost their lives for simply being women. Even as we mourn, the government is taking the last remaining safeguard off the very weapon that murdered these women. 

Today, The LRMC remembers Ecole Polytechnique and recommits to fighting to end violence against women. After today, we will continue to gather and share our knowledge, expertise, politics and support with one another to foster a culture of safety, reciprocity and creativity and for all people - women and men - in our community. 

We remember Ecole Polytechnique. We look forward to our next Workshop together. 

emptyspacemachines:

I’ve been an avid cyclist since returning to Ottawa from Rome in the early 90’s, and been commuting to school(s) by bike since grade 5. It always seemed normal and safe, but recently with the increase in cyclists in my city, collisions seem to be at the forefront of my mind.

It’s been a…

emptyspacemachines:

I run, actually I run a lot. When most people are hunkering down into hibernation mode at this time of year, I’m just starting to ramp up my outdoors. The best part is being able to run without overheating, one of the advantages of late fall and winter.

When I go out, unless I’m on a mission…

omg.

creativeinspiration:

Red Velvet Hot Chocolate with Cream Cheese Whipped Cream

4 cups whole milk

1 dash water

3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp. red food coloring

1 cup heavy whipping cream

2 - 4 tbsn. whipped cream cheese, room temperature

In a stand mixer, combine the heavy cream and sugar. Whip on medium speed with the whisk attachment for 2 - 3 minutes. Just before peaks form, add the cream cheese and whisk for another 2 minutes. Taste and add more cream cheese to taste. Be careful not to over whip though, or else you’ll have butter! In a medium saucepan, heat the milk over medium heat. Add a splash of water and the chocolate chips, constantly stirring gently. When almost melted, add the red food coloring and stir. When the chocolate chips are thoroughly melted, pour the hot chocolate into mugs and top with the whipped cream.

(Source: pinterest.com)

After I made the pumpkin muffins the other week I had a lot of leftover pumpkin that I wanted to use. I found an interesting recipe for pumpkin maple baked bean cornbread casserole (oh my!) and decided to try it. The recipe warns that the cornbread topping is great for the casserole but not really great as a stand-alone cornbread recipe. The cornbread didn’t rise at all, and even though I halved the recipe next time I wouldn’t halve the topping part.

Beans, pumpkin, onion and craisins cooking down

Casserole before being baked

The casserole turned out well. It’s an interesting mix of hearty and sweet. I’m not a huge fan of onions, at least obvious onions (like getting a big moutful of onion), so next time I would use less onion and chop them smaller than the recipe called for (I wouldn’t leave them out entirely because the onion flavour complimented the pumpkin and cornbread well and added a nice balance to the sweetness of the craisins and maple syrup). Overall I would make this recipe again. I love cornbread, I love beans, and I love casseroles. Win!

Susan

Squash, I’ma get to you in a minute but…

My parents have a giant garden. They moved to the country last year and now have 2 acres of land, and went a little batshit with planting this spring. As a result, they grew about 5 times what they can eat and freeze for the winter. My parents have gotten really creative in using up the food they can’t consume. They freeze and can as much as possible (my mom has been making new, and sometimes weird, dishes) but they give a lot away to neighbours as well as the local foodbank.

To give you an example of how much food they’ve grown, this year they grew about 50 squash. The larger squash they’ve grown, some weighing up to 70 lbs. (srsly.), present a bigger challenge in using since they are too big to donate, too unweildly to process to cook up, and probably wouldn’t taste very good either. In an attempt to get rid of some of the big ones they gave one to the cattle farmer down the road, because apparently cows really like pumpkins, and this was big like a pumpkin so the cows wouldn’t know the difference right? The farmer never called them for a second squash.

But back to my dinner.

My parents’ over active garden means that whenever I visit them they drive me back to Toronto just so that I can bring a ton of vegetables back for my friends an myself.

Thus, when I graduated last week my parents used their trip to Toronto to see me cross the stage as an excuse to offload some squash and beets. I gave one of the squash to a friend, who made the most fantastic soup (I made some cornbread to eat with it). I used a second squash, a delicata that a neighbour traded for one of my parents’ squash (everybody is trying to get rid of squash!), to make stuffed squash.

I used this recipe, but added a bit of bacon and used regular milk instead of almond milk.

The end result: I ate half of a squash for dinner, and the other half for lunch the next day. It destroyed my runger.

It also satisfied my need for Fall-like meals.

And apparently you can roast squash seeds like pumpkin seeds:

Susan

This is so adorable and I want to make these.

dirtydeedsdyan:

elizabethfury:

pinkeyeonmyleg:

oldfilmsflicker:

dreamwalkers:

Apple pie in an apple

come to me

oh muh god, yes.

OH YES, PLEASE.  

ooooh.

(via cooldownjane)

Happy Hallowe’en!