STEMS & FORKS

Beautiful musings of flora and fare.

Pear and Mascarpone Fritters

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Who doesn’t love a good deep fried donut hole? Especially if it’s filled with ripe sweet pear and the ever-so-pricey, silky Italian cream cheese (that we North Americans covet)mascarpone, then deep fried to a golden ball and tossed with some cinnamon and sugar. Pure bliss.

I often mention how I tend to mix ingredients that are on its way to expiry and this combination was just that. The pears I used were so ripe, they were melting as I peeled away the bruised skin and the mascarpone was open a few days prior for a chocolate cake I was working on (recipe to come!)  

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Tahini Maple Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

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It’s only been about 6 six weeks since I started this blog and so far I’m loving it. The more I bake, the better I get and the more I realize that I need to continue to challenge myself by not always replicating or adapting other bakers’ recipes. I need to create original recipes that actually taste great.
 
I suppose deep down inside I’m insecure. I have no formal baking education. Almost everything I learned has been through trial and error, ups and downs. Sometimes the failures turned out to be wonderful new recipes. Other times they are as my daughter would say, “Hashtag fail, Mom.” My insecurity still lingers, but with every victory in producing a winning recipe, that small, undermining voice gets a little more subdued.
 
These Tahini Maple Chocolate Sandwich Cookies are soft to bite, taste nutty and chocolatey (without any nuts) and are ultimately scrumptious. After concocting these mini sandwiches, I realized the cure to my self-doubt was simple. Make my own recipes. 
 
Bon app!
Tahini Maple Chocolate Sandwich Cookies
Yields 24
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COOKIES
  1. 300 g/ 2 1/2 cups AP flour
  2. 90g/ 3/4 cup hulled and roasted white sesame seeds
  3. 1 teaspoon baking powder
  4. 1/2 teaspoon salt
  5. 170 g/ 3/4 cup butter softened
  6. 2 eggs
  7. 110 g/ 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
  8. 100 g/ 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  9. 1/3 cup 100% maple syrup
  10. 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste or extract
CHOCOLATE FILLING
  1. 100g/ 1 cup Cocoa powder unsweetened
  2. 1 cup 100% maple syrup
  3. 90g/ 3/4 cup hulled and roasted white sesame seeds
  4. 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or extract
Instructions
  1. Sift flour, baking powder and salt in large bowl and set aside
  2. Take food processor/Kitchen Aid/Ninja and process all the sesame seeds until it is nicely ground.
  3. Take about half of the ground sesame seeds, add to the flour mixture, put aside the remaining sesame seeds to be used later for the chocolate filling
  4. In stand mixer with paddle attachment, beat the butter, brown sugar and white sugar for about a minute on low speed until they're well blended
  5. Add the maple syrup in slowly until just combined.
  6. Beat in egg, one at a time. Scrape bottom and sides
  7. Add the vanilla and beat for a few seconds
  8. Add flour and mix on low speed, scraping sides and bottom until flour has been fully incorporated - about half a minute or so
  9. Dough consistency should be moist and ever so slightly tacky...not sticky or gummy
  10. Take dough and make into a ball and double wrap with plastic wrap
  11. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour or overnight
  12. Place rack in middle of oven and preheat oven to 350F
  13. Take cookie dough out of fridge and let it come to room temperature about 10 minutes
  14. Roll out about 1/4 inch thick on lightly floured surface and cut out with desired cookie cookies
  15. Remember you need pairs to make the bottom and tops for cookie sandwiches!!
  16. Bake for 10 minutes until the shine on the cookies has disappeared.
  17. Allow to cool about 5 minutes on tray, then transfer to cookie rack
  18. Repeat for the remaining cookies
CHOCOLATE FILLING
  1. Take the remaining ground sesame seeds and add the maple syrup and blend with your food processing gadget (I used my NINJA) until it looks like tahini paste about 1 minute (depends on the gadget you're using)
  2. Add the vanilla bean paste or extract and blend
  3. Then add the cocoa powder and blend for another half minute
  4. Consistency should be like very thick paste
  5. After the cookies have cooled either pipe or spread the paste on one half of the cookie sandwich
  6. Put the other cookie on top of paste and give them a soft squeeze
Notes
  1. I used 1", 2" and 3" heart shaped cookie cutters which made approximately 24 cookie sandwiches.
  2. Store in air tight container for up to one week.
STEMS & FORKS https://www.stemsandforks.com/

Berry Galette Picnic

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It’s been tried, tested and its definitely true. Kids will be more willing to eat unfamiliar foods if they have a hand in helping to make it.  I won’t get into all the tedious facts and stats about the nutritional value of berries, as we all know by now, they’re super healthy and chock-full  of vitamins. So I found it fitting to make berry galettes with the kids last weekend. It was incredible. My 2 year old son Georges who doesn’t take instruction very well was so eager to follow his older sister’s lead on how to roll the dough, then toss the berries in. Some of the galettes may have had a bit too much sugar or one too many berries. But they all turned out super great and delicious once baked.
 
 
Some tips to ensure this activity is fun and clean-up is minimal:
-To lay your biggest table cloth on the floor and have the kids assemble on top.
-Make the dough the night before.
-Have your kids roll them out on cutting boards or cheeseboards 
-Spread everything out on the floor
-Have the starch and sugar premixed in a bowl with a laddle or wooden spoon( I separated the starch and sugar…oops!)
-have the fruits in separate bowls and spread them out 
 

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White Cake with White Buttercream Icing

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 For children, birthdays are up there on the list of favourite occasions with Christmas and Halloween. Aside from the gifts, they get tons of attention and feel wonderful to be more “grown up”. It’s  also the only day of the year I see my kids’ faces light up with wonder when it’s time to blow out the candles. That moment when they get to make a wish. A wish that cannot be shared with anyone or it won’t come true. 
 
“All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince
 
I remember the feeling of aging began on my 35th birthday. In my head I multiplied 35 by 2 and I came up with 70. Was I halfway through my life? What have I done for society so far? Why am I here? Well thankfully I was too busy with my floral business and a young child I didn’t have time to analyze my existential questions. I had weddings and diapers to deal with. Those questions would be dealt with at a later time,  I had told myself.
 

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White Chocolate Grapefruit Poundcake

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It’s not often that I come up with my own recipe. Typically I adapt someone else’s.  Why reinvent the wheel if it works, right? Wrong. Cooking/baking is truly an art. A perishable, consumable art form that has evolved so much since humans began to eat (so since forever). In every culture and society, food is one of the most tangible elements that defines us. Without the innate need to push the envelope or evolve our culinary creativity, humans wouldn’t have invented sous-vide cooking or Cronuts, (the latter, which I still haven’t tried). But enough of sliding down this sociological slope. 

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French Crullers

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I recall when my husband Pierre immigrated here (Canada) in 2005 from Europe, he was fascinated by the Canadian obsession with Tim Hortons. He would without fail, cry out, “Quelle horreur!” every time we’d pass one. He couldn’t understand why Canadians would line up 24/7 for a large water-downed coffee and deep-fried, saccharin-drenched, yeast-leavened rings known as the donut.

Coming from Belgium he is definitely a food snob. Delicious and perfect Croissants and eclairs can be found on every street corner in Brussels. Here in Toronto, there are only a small handful of authentic Patiserrie/boulanger. Sure I get it. Tim Hortons looks and tastes nothing like Herman van Dender or Pierre Herme, but Tim Hortons is not bad. It’s consistent and for me it’s “comfort pastries” and an iconic Canadian experience. 

In fact my love for “pastries” started probably in kindergarten when my mother bought me my first chocolate walnut cruller at Mister Donut (now Dunkin Donuts). I still remember that donut to this day. I was standing in line twirling around in my brown floral dress feeling like Liesel from The Sound of Music, when my mom passed me what I thought looked like feces. Of course being 4 years old I immediately said no. That’s when my dad firmly told me to at least try. The donut was bliss. The glaze, the crunch, and the soft chocolate dough whirled around in my mouth like a beautiful symphony.

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Chocolate Cut Out Cookies

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I remember seeing a Staples ‘Back to School’ commercial last fall, to the tune of, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” In this commercial, the dad gleefully drags a rope attached to a sofa with his grumpy kids in anticipation of getting them out of the house and seeing them off to the start of school. Fast forward a couple months, and as the winter holidays are coming to a close here in Ontario,  I’m feeling a bit giddy like that dad in that Staples commercial. 

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Earl Grey and Orange Ganache Chocolate Macarons

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I have this recurring nightmare that’s been haunting me for decades. I’m in a bakery surrounded by delectable and mouthwatering mounds of pastries. Croissants, cakes, pies, macarons and muffins piled high in baskets and platters in varying hues of browns and beiges. I can see steam wafting from the butter croissants and fresh icing still runny, dripping off the danishes. It’s one of the most beautiful and delicious sights ever. I’m overwhelmed by the wondrous selection and I can’t decide which to eat first. Chocolate torte first? Then I won’t have space for the tarts. I’m so torn. This indecisiveness goes on and on and feels as if the entire night of dreaming is spent trying to decide which pastry to taste first. Then the dream becomes a nightmare. I awake without having made a choice. My indecisiveness leaves me empty handed. As I’d slowly awake to reality, I’d be filled with regret for not having sunk my teeth into one of those heavenly pastries.

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Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

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As a mother I am always trying to sneak healthy foods into my kids’ meals. As every parent knows, chicken nuggets and pizza can be great to satiate the kids, but the challenge is trying to include nutrient-rich foods into their fickle little diets. Sometimes these covert operations are met with more success than other times. Recently, I was making chocolate zucchini bread (well, chocolate bread to my 10 year old daughter), when she caught me red-handed standing over the bowl of chocolate batter with the offensive green squash in one hand and a grater in the other. I may as well have been holding a a bottle of rat poison and a dirty syringe based on her reaction.

Just as the trust was being rebuilt, (and she was finally convinced I wasn’t trying to poison her), my culinary antics were blown wide open again. For years I had strained anchovies into her miso soup, but the gig was finally up when she discovered a tiny little anchovy eyeball staring back at her from her bowl. Clearly, I should have used a finer strainer. Her reaction was epic as far as meltdowns go.

Even now, I still mince yellow peppers (so finely that it might as well be a puree) into her spaghetti bolognese. The older she grows, the more her taste buds and sense of smell evolves. Most attempts at concealing healthy food now are as she put it a “#fail”. Thus the days of fooling my little princess into believing her food is unadulterated are pretty much done.

Trying to outsmart a 10 year old is challenging. My daughter likes things simple. If it’s apple pie, it better not have blueberries, just apples. Same with chocolate cake. Add a few raspberries on top and suddenly its not a chocolate cake anymore. It’s a raspberry cake.

I recently made cookies with black currants when my daughter finally dropped the big question. “Can’t you bake normal stuff?” I stopped and realized that some of the baked goods I was preparing she wasn’t interested in at all. From a child’s perspective, some of my baking was exclusively for grown ups. Children desire plain and simple. They’re not interested in unique baked goods like Korean Pear Galette or ricotta cheesecakes. So I’ve added another New Year’s resolution. That is, to bake “normal” recipes. This ones for you Moineau. xo

 

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Yields 36
Crispy on the outside. Chewy on the inside.
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Prep Time
15 min
Total Time
57 min
Prep Time
15 min
Total Time
57 min
Ingredients
  1. 227 g or 1 cup unsalted butter room temperature
  2. 200 g or 1 cup packed brown sugar
  3. 150 g or 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  4. 2 eggs room temperature
  5. 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  6. 260 g or 2 cups all purpose flour
  7. 1 1/4 cups quick oats
  8. 1 teaspoon baking powder
  9. 1 teaspoon baking soda
  10. 1 teaspoon salt
  11. 2 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips Or chopped chocolates of your choice
  12. 125 g or 1 Cup chopped Walnuts
  13. 1/2 cup turbinado brown sugar (Optional)
Instructions
  1. Line baking tray with silpat or parchment paper
  2. In a large bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix in quick oats and set aside
  3. In stand mixer or bowl, paddle beat the butter about 1 minute.
  4. Add both sugars until light and creamy about 2 minutes. Add vanilla extract
  5. Beat in eggs, one at a time until just incorporated
  6. Take the dry mix of flour, baking soda etc and stir in the butter sugar mixture until just incorporated.
  7. Add the chocolate chips and walnuts. Don't over mix
  8. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 30 minutes
  9. Preheat oven to 375F/190C, place rack in middle of oven
  10. Roll cookie dough into 1 inch balls or I use a 1 inch ice cream scoop
  11. Roll in the turbinado sugar until its completely covered (optional)
  12. Drop on Cookie sheet about 2 inches apart
  13. Bake for about 10-11 minutes or until just slightly golden on the edges
  14. Let cool before transferring to a rack.
  15. Once cool, take a small tumbler glass with a flat bottom and gently press the cookies down. Alternatively you can bang your cookie tray on the counter about a minute after it comes out of oven. This helps spread them out.
Notes
  1. Refrigerating cookie dough prior to baking prevents the cookie from spreading too much when baking. However if you're strapped for time, pop the cookie balls in freezer for 10 minutes.
Adapted from from the back of a bag of PC Decadent Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips!
Adapted from from the back of a bag of PC Decadent Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips!
STEMS & FORKS https://www.stemsandforks.com/