Do you hear that?

Listen carefully.

It’s the sound of all that holiday baking coming your way. While I am not one of those people that starts decorating the house for Christmas in July, I am one of those people that starts thinking about Christmas baking in … oh … say April.

And while I don’t actually start my Christmas baking until about two weeks before the holiday, it’s just never to early to start thinking about what beautiful things will soon issue forth from your oven.

To help get the baking juices flowing (mine and yours), I want to tell you about a cookbook that I had the pleasure of reviewing: Carole Walter’s Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More.

I don’t know a lot about Carole Walter beyond the fact that she’s an amazing baker who won an IACP award for Great Cookies: Secrets to Sensational Sweets.

How I wish I would have taken the time to learn more about her prior to this book as she’s clearly an amazing writer and baker! This cookbook is a gem filled with foundation recipes for all sorts of cakes, breads and more. There are some lovely photographs to compliment the more than 200 recipes for old-fashioned favourites and more modern interpretations of classics. Of particular interest to me were the chapters dedicated to old-style baked goods like strudel and danish pastry.

The book is well-written and well-organized. While many of the recipes are straightforward, some of them are also fairly dense and involved so for the beginner, I would recommend reading the recipes a few times.

Not that an inexperienced baker should be put off. These recipes work! Each entry is accompanied with an “At a Glance” section that tells you the degree of difficulty of the recipe, the baking time and the equipment you’ll need among other things.

Present throughout the book is an element that I always look for: the author’s voice. I’ve written about this before and often wonder if people think I’m a little nutty but my favourite cookbooks are the ones where I can very clearly sense the author’s voice and personality coming across. Carole Walter, as accomplished as she is, comes across as an excited baker who loves the task. There’s a sense of camaraderie created in the book that makes you feel like you’re baking with a good friend. For me, that’s an elusive quality and often the difference between a good cookbook and a great one.

As I always say, though, the proof of a cookbook’s quality is in the recipes. So what did I make?

Butter Pecan Pound Cake

Yes. That’s right. A pound cake that has an unbelievable butter pecan flavour. I could write about this cake for days but instead I will say that based on this cake alone, you should buy the book. I’ll stop there.

Nut-Crusted Orange Pound Cake

I made this cake soley because I was intrigued by the idea of baking a cake in a pan that was dusted with ground nuts! I’d never done that before and the results were delicious!

Dimpled Sugar Cake

I couldn’t wait to post this review simply because of this cake. Made with one of the most versatile (and easy) yeasted doughs I’ve ever come across, this cake is heaven in a pan. After dimpling the surface of the dough (the way you would dimple focaccia), you spoon brown sugar into each dimple and top it with butter. What you end up with is a caramelized crust on top of a soft, rich bread. So good!

Swedish Tea Ring

What I love about the foundation recipes in this book, like the yeasted dough mentioned above, is that they’re structured to yield enough to make two recipes. So with the other half of my dough I made this Swedish Tea Ring. Butter and nuts wrapped in a rich dough.
If this is what people in Sweden eat, I want to go there. Now.

Irish Whiskey Cake

I’d come across recipes for cake with whiskey before and always hesitated. I hope you don’t think less of me for admitting this but I’m not the biggest fan of whiskey. But Carole Walter convinced me to give it a try and I can honestly say that my world is a better place. This cake was moist and delicious with a boozy flavour that was pleasant, but not overwhelming.

“Too Good to be True” Bran Muffins

To me, the phrase “too good to be true” is like an open invitation for a baking smackdown. Too good to be true, eh? We’ll see about that! While I never imagined that I’d be waxing poetic over bran muffins of all things, these ones really are delicious. They’re spicy and surprisingly moist. And they’re healthy!

Scalloped Chocolate Pecan Strip

With yet another recipe for a yeasted dough I created this lovely braided coffee cake. I’m not good at the creation of braids in baking. Generally they come out looking very … unbraidlike. But I’m telling you, people, this dough is incredible! The chocolate and pecans also help.

Old-Fashioned Apple Walnut Strudel

The experience of making this strudel made the entire cookbook more than worth it for me. If you would have ever told me that I would make strudel by hand, including the dough, I would have never believed you. But there I was stretching strudel dough over my kitchen table until it was so thin I could read a newspaper through it. The end result was a strudel that if I may say so myself, puts to shame most of the “strudels” you buy in commercial bakeries. What an incredible experience this was!

Glazed Orange Ricotta Cookies

While there is no picture of these cookies (I was too tired to take a picture), they’re representative of the cookie section in this book which is short, but excellent! These were soft cookies made with one of my favourite cheeses (ricotta) and finished with a lovely glaze and pine nuts!

If I had the time, I would have happily spent day after day baking from this book. Alas, work and family beckon so it’s not possible to bake all the time. But even if you bake some of the time, this book is a worthy companion.

I suggest you bring it along for the Christmas ride that is soon to begin!

Ciao!

Carol Walter has a site where she offers a number of recipes including this one for Pumpkin Pecan Loaf from her book Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More. Enjoy!

As much as I’ve enjoyed all of the sweet escapades the Daring Bakers have been on, secretly, I’ve longed for something savoury. Trust the beautiful Tanna to answer my wishes!

For November, she chose our first non-dessert baking challenge: Tender Potato Bread from the book Home Baking by Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford.

This has been a tough month for me between work and personal life and I’ll be very honest, for a split second I contemplated missing my very first Daring Baker challenge.

But I thought about Lis, and her determination to show up for each event (and the fact that she’d probably kick my butt if I didn’t do the challenge). I thought again about Tanna and the effort that she put into choosing a recipe. And I thought of bread baking, and how everytime I pull a loaf out of the oven, I feel renewed.

With this in mind, I set about making my very first bread that featured mashed potato as a main ingredient.

I wasn’t up to documenting the process as I often do. Something about snapping photos all along the way just didn’t appeal to me this time around. As much as I enjoy food photography, there was something about this bread that demanded my full attention. It was as though by me breaking away every few minutes to snap a photo, I’d be missing something important.

Instead, I mashed my potatoes and mixed them with water. I added yeast and flour. I waited patiently as my dough rose in our warm kitchen. While I would normally be running around trying to get a photo of the dough at just the right angle, I flipped through Home Baking and bookmarked a number of recipes I’d like to try.

Once my dough was ready to go, I opted for the simple loaf and was able to produce one 9 x 5-inch loaf and two 8 x 4-inch loaves. I let them rise a second time until they were puffy and beautiful and adorned them with butter and rosemary.

After a short visit to the oven, I pulled out three beautifully browned loaves.

I enjoyed the bread in the way that all warm bread should be enjoyed: slathered with butter. Tender, fresh and fluffy, this bread was delicious. It made me think of simplicity and wholesomeness. The bread that’s left will be used for sandwiches throughout the week.

I’d like to thank Tanna so much for pushing us once again past another obstacle. And I’d like to thank all the Daring Bakers for breaking bread in the month of November.

Ciao!

For the Tender Potato Bread recipe, please visit Tanna’s site.

To see what all the other Daring Bakers have done, please visit our official blogroll.

I’m always happy … no wait … make that THRILLED whenever I find someone who is as addicted to cookbooks as I am!

You can imagine how pleased … no wait … make that THRILLED I was Liliana of My Cookbook Addiction introduced herself to me. Not only is she a fellow Italian Canadian, as her blog name would suggest, she is as much in need of a 12-step program for the rehabilitation of a cookbook problem as I am!

During the summer, Liliana and I were e-mailing each other back and forth when the subject of a certain cookbook came up. The cookbook in questions was a new one, scheduled to be out in the fall, by Gina DePalma of Babbo fame.

I first learned about Gina DePalma several years ago when I found a recipe for Cannoli in Food & Wine magazine. The recipe, by DePalma, was the first I’d ever seen from here and I was fascinated to read about her success.

Naturally, Liliana and I circled the publication date on our calendars. As it turns out, it took a bit longer for the book to hit Canadian bookstores so I only recently received my copy of Dolce Italiano, one of the finest examples of cookbooks dedicated to Italian sweets.

If you’re a baker, a dessert lover, or if you have a pulse, you need to go and get this book!

In our excitement, Liliana and I decided that we’d pick a recipe from the book and post about it today. We settled on the recipe for Grappa-Soaked Mini Sponge Cakes because what Italian doesn’t love grappa.

Really.

The recipe was very straightforward and as the recipe notes explain, this is a variation on one of the most classic elements of Italian dessert, pan di spagna.

The grappa syrup was delicious, although the grappa flavour isn’t very strong as most of the alcohol does burn off while the syrup is cooking. The little cakes are just so pretty and everyone enjoyed them with a bit of whipped cream.

I won’t share the recipe because I didn’t adapt it any way. But I strongly encourage you to check this book out if you can. You won’t regret it.

Liliana, thanks for being my partner in this latest cookbook escapade!

Ciao!

Technorati tags: grappa, pan di spagna, cake

Remember No Knead Bread?

Remember when everywhere you turned, it was all you could read about? Since I’ve been blogging (December 2005), I can’t think of another food item that was so talked about and written about in both print and on-line.

Unfortunately for the Cream Puff, I had to sit and watch as the No Knead Bread craze passed me by. I felt like the kid in gym class that never gets picked for the team.

You see, even though I have a house full of baking pans and various other baking utensils, the one item I didn’t own during that memorable period of food history was a vessel with a lid that would be able to withstand the heat at which the bread needed to be baked.

It’s hard to believe, I know, but it’s true.

So while the rest of the world No-Kneaded, I just sat idly by. I salivated as I read post after post about the success of this incredible bread. And I wondered when, if ever, I’d get to share in the joy of eating that crusty bread.

Well I must have been a very good girl in 2006 because Santa gave me a gift certificate for one of my favourite kitchen stores. Of course being the disorganized creature that I am, I prompty put the gift certificate away for “safekeeping” and naturally forgot about it.

A few weeks ago, as I frantically searched for one item through the piles of paper on my desk, I of course ended up coming across another item, my gift certificate. Noticing that it was about to expire, I made my way over to The Main Course, surely one of Toronto’s most beautiful stores. And there, I set my eyes on (and did not take my eyes off of) an Emile Henry covered pot that you can use both on the stovetop and in the oven.

And get this. It withstands high heats.

Clutching my gift certificate, I walked right up to the first salesperson and pointed delightedly at the pot. Within half an hour, I was on my way home thinking of one thing and one thing only: No Knead Bread.

After getting home, I began searching for the recipe and once again I ended up finding something else in the process. I found a recipe for Chocolate-Cherry Pecan Bread, based on the No Knead Bread foundation, from the King Arthur Flour Web site. As you may have noticed, I’ve made the King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion my Flavour of the Month as it’s one of my very favourite cookbooks. When I came across their version of the No Knead Bread studded with chocolate, dried cherries and pecans, I had to try it.

The fact that the loaf on the King Arthur site was baked in what appeared to be the very same pot that I had purchased was only confirmation to me that the baking gods wanted me to make this bread.

Alas, I had no dried cherries, but I had plenty of chocolate and pecans and so I proceeded with the recipe. As so many people had experienced previously, it was a wonder to make and fascinating as well. I can hardly believe that I was able to get such a crackly, artisanal-like crust on a loaf of bread that I baked. Wow!

The bread was delicious! It had a beautiful crumb and everyone in my family enjoyed slathering (and I mean SLATHERING) loads of butter on it. The only problem I encountered was that the bottom crust burnt ever so slightly. Not that it prevented us from eating it, mind you, but I may try baking the bread at a slightly lower heat next time to ward off an overly blackened bottom.

Finally! I am a member of the No Knead Bread team and no longer sitting by myself in gym class!

Ciao!

Technorati tags: bread

When it comes to defining moments, it’s funny how they never seem defining as they’re happening. You don’t realize you’re in the right place at the right doing the right thing until it’s all done.

When I think back to last November 19th, I could never have imagined that one simple post about pretzels would have sparked the birth of one of the most incredible things to happen in food blogdom: the Daring Bakers!

None of this could have been possible if not for a person who I have come to call one of my dearest friends (even though we’ve never actually met in person!). Lis of La Mia Cucina has found a place in my life and I could not imagine not knowing her.

So how did it all start? After a few e-mail discussions, Lis and I decided to try making pretzels at home, something that we’d never done before. We thought it would be fun if we both tried the same recipe and blogged about it on the same day. On November 19th, 2006, we put up our posts.

The reaction was tremendous! So much so that we quickly decided to try the idea again in December, except this time we were making biscotti. As word spread, people began e-mailing us and asking to take part in the next baking “challenge”.

Today, we number more than 300. Together, we have woken up at 4:00 a.m. to roll croissants, we developed a passion for fourless chocolate cakes, we have invested in red velvet, we have built monuments to crepes, we have made St. Honoré our patron saint, we have paid homage to bagels, we have looked at ourselves in the mirror, we have tarted ourselves up with caramel and chocolate, we have girded our buns with cinnamon, we have conquered bostini and this month … well … that’s still a secret.

So now that a year is behind us, what lies ahead in the year to come? For starters, Lis and I are hoping to give the Daring Bakers a proper Web site. We currently have a blogroll that lists all of our members but it’s time for the DBers (that’s what we call ourselves) to get a spiffy new site. Toward that end, we’re asking for your help. If anyone is interested in helping us with a new site design, please get in touch with us (lamiacucina67@gmail.com or creampuffsinvenice@gmail.com). Unfortunately this won’t be a paying gig (although perhaps we can arrange the delivery of some baked goods … ), but it would be a great opportunity and would offer great exposure. Beyond that, Lis and I hope to watch this group continue to grow and explore the possibilities of baking.

To be sure there have been some growing pains, but the incredible experiences of the last year have far outweighed those. And it goes without saying that the last year has been made easier with the help of a few individuals who must be acknowledged. Every Daring Baker is special but without the tireless work of our blog administrator, Mary of alpineberry, I just don’t know how this group would function. Mary oversees our private blog and she handles the huge task of communicating with every new member of the Daring Bakers. Mary, I bow to you!

Lis and I also owe a huge thanks to Veronica of Veronica’s Test Kitchen. She took it upon herself to approach Ximena of Lobstersquad about designing a logo. Thanks to her the Daring Bakers have an emblem that it all ours. Veronica also takes on the job of sending the logo out to every new member. Many thanks, Veronica!

Having come full circle, Lis and I decided that we would honour the occasion with … what else … pretzels.

Happy Birthday to the Daring Bakers! Many happy returns!

Ciao!

Note: Pictured above are Pistachio Pretzels from the the December 1999 issue of Better Homes and Gardens.

Technorati tags: daring bakers

In Italian, we use the word cantina to refer to what in English is commonly called the cold cellar. Growing up, every Italian family I knew had a cantina. Without question, all of these cantinas could be expected to contain the following: jars of tomatoes, a variety of preserves, barrels of homemade wine, olive oil, and cured homemade meats. I remember once being shocked when a relative said they’d purchased a home that didn’t have a cantina. “But where will they put their jars of tomatoes?” is what my little self wondered.

When I was given the opportunity to review a copy of Isabel Cruz’s cookbook, Isabel’s Cantina, I was interested in finding out whether this cookbook would offer the same sort of comfy homecooked fare that I usually associate with a cantina.

I was not disappointed.

Prior to receiving this cookbook, I’d never head of Isabel Cruz. Based on her cookbook and her site, I found out that she’s the owner of five restaurants that focus on providing dishes that are heavily influenced by Latin cuisine, as well as a number of other cuisines including Thai and Japanese.

After browsing her site for a bit, I found the following quote: “A Cantina is a warm, neighborhood place where people gather at any hour to talk about their day.”

While it doesn’t exactly equate with what my definition of cantina is, I figured that a book built around food that people could share and enjoy together couldn’t be a bad thing. So with this in mind, I delved into the cookbook.

Isabel’s Cantina is a 224-page cookbook divided into chapters that cover Starters; Salads; Soups; Main Courses; Rice, Beans, and Other Sides; Salsas, Sauces, and Marinades; Desserts; Drinks and Breakfasts. Recipes are neatly laid out and quite easy to follow. A colourful cookbook, Isabel’s Cantina is peppered with some pretty tempting photographs. I don’t cook Latin cuisine at home so I for one was happy to see how easy the recipes were to follow. But the proof, as they say, is in the pudding so I headed to the kitchen to put those recipes to the test.

Here’s what I made:

Chicken and Lettuce Wraps in Cilantro Lime Sauce

I turned to the Starters section first and my eyes brightened as soon as I saw the recipe for Chicken and Lettuce Wraps with Cilantro Lime Sauce. I made this for a Saturday lunch and it was perfect. Sauteed chicken is wrapped in crisp lettuce leaves and then drenched in an incredible Cilantro Lime Sauce. The flavours were bright and crisp and everyone loved it. Not a bad start!

Spanish Potato Salad

It seems strange to be thinking of potato salad as we approach winter, but I for one could eat potatoes every single day, 365 days a year! This particular salad is more of a warm dish with a wonderful vinaigrette that the potatoes just soak up. It’s quick to make and perfect for any weeknight dinner.

Halibut with Cherry Tomato-Habenero Salsa and Cucumber Cilantro Sauce

I never thought I liked cilantro until I began testing recipes for this book. As it turns out, my appreciation of the herb is growing. One of the things that I really enjoyed about Isabel’s book is that there is a heavy focus on fish dishes. This particular halibut dish featured the last of our cherry tomatoes. Once again there were a lot of bright, fresh flavours that made the dish disappear very quickly!

Jalapeno Shrimp

We are a family addicted (and I mean addicted) to spicy food. If it’s not spicy, chances are we’re going to ask you for some pepper. This shrimp was right up our alley. Lots of jalapeno and tomato paired with firm, juicy shrimp. Delicious!

Chicken Diablo

We haven’t always had a lot of luck grilling chicken. I think the problem is that we’re just so eager to eat it that we end up burning it! Luckily we exercised caution while making this simple chicken dish and it turned out great. It was a snap to put together and the flavour of the spicy, juicy chicken made this one a winner that we’ll make again and again.

Charbroiled Carne Asada Tacos

All of Isabel’s recipes are introduced with a few words on where the recipe comes from or what inspired the dish. I love that this book introduced me to so many different Latin dishes that I’d never heard of, like carne asada. This dish also made us realize that we just don’t eat skirt steak nearly enough. It was incredible!

Black Beans (with White Rice)

I love beans, but as I skimmed through the Rice, Beans, and Other Sides section I realized that we don’t eat them nearly enough. There are instructions on how to make a quick version of this dish, but I opted for the version that included soaking dried beans overnight. I think it makes you appreciate the dish more. We ended up with a creamy and highly flavoured pot of beans that were the perfect accompaniment to any number of dishes.

Coconut Flan

Of course when I first received the book I immediately looked at the Desserts section before I looked at any other part of the book. I wasn’t disappointed. While it’s not a huge section, the offerings were all intriguing. I settled on trying the Coconut Flan first because I adore flan and of course you know that I LOVE coconut! This flan was interesting because it features cream cheese as a component of the recipe. The texture of the final product was slightly different than most flans that I’ve eaten. It was delicious! It was quick and easy and unmolded beautifully, which is always a concern with flan.

Croissant Bread Pudding with Mexican Chocolate and Almonds

Stop the presses! Of all the recipes I tried this was the hands down winner. It’s a cross between a bread pudding and a really moist cake. I made individual puddings and they were so well received that I’m considering featuring this dessert during the holidays.

I’d hoped to try recipes from the Soups section as well as the Drinks section, but time seems to be the enemy these days. With the holidays approaching, I figured I’d better tell you about this book now.

I was pleasantly surprised by the content of the book and by how easy and delicious the recipes were. I learned quite a bit and I was able to try a few dishes that I’m hoping will become a regular part of my cooking repertoire.

Now to get me to one of Isabel’s Cantinas!

Ciao!

Mexican Chocolate
From Isabel’s Cantina by Isabel Cruz

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Mix the chocolate, the sugar and the cinnamon in a food processor and pusle until it’s finely ground. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. You can sprinkle this in warm milk or in desserts for an extra quick. You can also melt it and use it as a dipping sauce!

While I don’t have a Magazine Mondays entry this week, I’ve been a bit too busy to hit the magazine pile recently, I did think it a good idea to keep the general housekeeping theme for Mondays with this catch-all post. I’ve got some news and a tart that will make your mouth water!

First off, the news.

Zorra of Kochtopf is hosting the November 2007 edition of DMBLGIT and she has very kindly asked me to be a judge. I still shake my head and laugh whenever people ask me anything to do with photography as I don’t consider myself a photographer in any sense of the word. However, I am greatly honoured by Zorra’s request.

So if you have a photo from October 2007 that you think might earn you some accolades, please do submit it. All the details can be found here. Good luck!

The second bit of news that I have to share has a bit of apology mixed in. Lydia of The Perfect Pantry has been championing a wonderful cause and event and invited bloggers to participate with her. Five years ago, Lydia created the idea for Drop In & Decorate Cookies for Donation. After hosting a cookie decorating party, the cookies are donated to a charity. A simple act of generosity on Lydia’s part transformed the holiday season for some people who needed it. Lydia has continued the tradition and this year has partnered with King Arthur Flour. Lydia asked bloggers to post about this event between November 4th and 10th. Unfortunately, I was unable to get my post up. But I wanted to spread the word anyway and to let everyone know what a worthy cause this is. Lydia, count me in for next year!

And finally we get to the tart! I was cleaning out my photos folder and realized that I’d never shared this gorgeous Bacon and Onion Tart with you. The recipe is from the Stonewall Kitchen Harvest book which is an absolute gem. A buttery crust holds a creamy onion and bacon filling flavoured with thyme. Yummy! While I took the photographs of this tart, I must give credit to Mama Cream Puff who actually made it.

But I got to eat it and in the end, that’s the best part! Have a wonderful week everyone!

Ciao!

Technorati tags: tart, bacon, onion, drop in and decorate cookies for donation, dmblgit

Today is the spectacular Lis’ birthday!

I regularly thank my lucky stars for the day that I first met one of the nicest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. Lis of La Mia Cucina is a friend, a sister, a confidante, a problem solver, a listener, a buddy and a sweetheart.

For her birthday, I want to share with her (and all of you) a yogurt cake for the ages. Like Lis, this cake is warm, wholesome, comforting and oh-so-sweet.

Happy birthday, Lis!

Ciao!

The Best Yogurt Cake
From Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours (with a few tweaks).

Note: I’d never heard of yogurt cake until shortly after I received my copy of Dorie’s book. Of course who else but the great Dorie Greenspan to inspire one to take a glorious cake and make it even more glorious?! I’ve changed the lemon flavour of the original to an orange flavour, enhanced with the addition of Grand Marnier. This cake will serve 6 to 8 (or one very greedy Cream Puff) and will keep for several days.

For the cake:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cake and pastry flour (sifted)
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup vanilla sugar (if you don’t have vanilla sugar, just use a whole cup of granulated sugar)
grated zest of an orange
1/2 cup plain yogurt (don’t use low fat yogurt)
3 large eggs
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tbsp. Grand Marnier
1/2 cup canola oil

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. and butter a small loaf pan (8 x 4 inches or similar size).

In a bowl, combine the flours and the baking powder.

In another bowl, combine the sugar and the orange zest. This is an interesting way of introducing zest into a cake. Rub the zest into the sugar so that it’s fragrant.

Add the yogurt, eggs, vanilla extract and Grand Marnier to the sugar/zest mixture. Whisk until smooth.

Slowly add the dry ingredients, whisking all the while to ensure there are no lumps.

Add the oil mixing carefully until the you have a smooth batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 45 to 50 minutes, testing for doneness with a cake tester or a toothpick.

Transfer the cake to a wire rack and let cool for about 10 minutes before carefully unmolding. Once unmolded, glaze the cake.

For the glaze:

1/2 cup apricot jam (or any jam or marmalade of your choice)
1 to 2 tsp. Grand Marnier (enough to make it a smooth glaze that will pour rather easily)

Heat the jam and the Grand Marnier in a small saucepan. Stir until you have a smooth mixture that will pour easily.

Immediately pour it over the unmolded cake, using a brush to make sure that you reach all the little nooks.

I like to serve this cake warm, but it’s also very good at room temperature.

Enjoy!

Technorati tags: la mia cucina, cake, yogurt cake, dorie greenspan

November is a hard month for me.

Ever since I was a child I’ve also felt that November is a creepy month. Maybe it’s the lingering Halloween effect or just the fact that it’s dark so early in the day.

The cheery fall weather of October begins to move determinedly towards winter. You can pretend it’s not going to happen but you just know that the first snowfall isn’t far away.

November is the month that I lost my father. That, in and of itself, makes it challenging to get through.

While I’m usually a social creature, during November I find that I mostly just want to rush home after work and curl up on the couch. The only respite I seek from this routine is baking.

It just feels good to bake in November. It’s soothing and comforting and right.

Looking at The Overburdened Bookshelf, there were hundreds of cookbooks to choose from (where did all these cookbooks come from???) for the November 2007 Flavour of the Month. I thought of some of the newer cookbooks like Indulge or Demolition Desserts. And then I considered some of the older books Trattoria Cooking. In the end, I settled on one of my very favourites: The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion.

Like an old friend, this book is open and welcoming. Thorough, easy-to-use, appropriate for both the beginner and the more experienced baker, this cookbook covers every aspect of baking imagineable from breads to cookies to cakes.

I’ve turned to this book so many times whenever I want to bake something that is deeply comforting. To me, the book celebrates one of the fundamental joys of baking: bringing warmth into your kitchen.

Here’s to a November of warmth, light and baking!

Ciao!

Technorati tags: oatmeal, cookies

For this third edition of Magazine Mondays, I bring you what is quite possibly one of the most sinfully delicious things I have ever made.

Why I waited so long to try this recipe from the October 2004 issue of Food & Wine magazine is beyond me.

Beyond me.

Cream cheese. Caramel. And a hint of salt.

Dip your spoon through the caramel, sink into the cream cheese and taste the salty sweetness of it. And all the while, you watch as caramel oozes into the indentation you created with your spoon.

Don’t faint. Don’t wait. Just go and make this.

Oh yeah … and have a great week!

Ciao!

Magazine Monday #3: Salted Caramel Cheesecake.

Technorati tags: magazine mondays, cheesecake, caramel

Wondering what to do with leftover Halloween candy?

No worries.

Just bake with it!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Ciao!

Buttery Peanut Butter Cup Cupcakes
From a variety of sources and the imagination of one Cream Puff.

1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup chunky peanut butter (you can use smooth peanut butter as well)
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
1-1/2 cups brown sugar (light or dark)
3-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
12 peanut butter cups (or any chocolate candy you’d like to use)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line a 12-cup muffin tin with liners.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter at medium-high speed until smooth and creamy (for about a minute).

Add the peanut butter and the vanilla extract and beat for another two minutes.

In a small bowl, mix together the flour, brown sugar, baking powder and salt.

Add the flour mixture to the butter/sugar mixture all at once and mix on low speed until combined.

Add the milk and eggs and mix until you have a smooth batter (no more than 2 or 3 minutes).

Spoon the batter into the liners. Take your chocolate candy and press it into the centre of each cupcake.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the cupcakes are baked through (test with a toothpick or a cake tester).

Enjoy!

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