Schedule the pumpkin scone intervention!

I have an addiction

The good news is that unlike the people on the A&E show 'Intervention', no one will get hurt from it

It is the Starbucks pumpkin scone and I blame the lovely and talented Alexandra Meikleham for this addiction. She introduced me to this tasty treat and contributed to the downfall of this blogger's waistline (I'm joking... ish)

And because of the seasonal nature of pumpkin scone, and the fact that I'm still getting used to this having a kid thing, I thought I should ferret out the recipe myself.
Fortunately for me, someone else has already done that.

I made a few small adjustments to the recipe, and let me tell you, my loved ones are seriously going to have to con me into a 'documentary' about scones and then tell me how my scone addiction has affected their lives negatively. Also they're going to need to get one of those slings that they transport whales in to get me out of the house one day.

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups all purpose flour
7 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking soda (it was supposed to be baking powder, but I made a mistake, and it worked out)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 cup canned pumpkin
3 tablespoons milk
1 large egg
6 tablespoons cold butter

Plain Glaze
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk

Spiced Icing
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons powdered sugar
2 tablespoons whole milk
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Also, a little tip, if you brew your coffee and throw about 1/2 a tsp of pumpkin pie spice in the basket, it's a tasty almost gingerbready flavoured coffee result.


So here goes... ready?
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon cloves, and 1/4 teaspoon ginger in a large bowl.

In a separate medium bowl, whisk together pumpkin, milk, and eggs.
Cut butter into cubes then add it to the dry ingredients. Use a pastry knife or a fork to combine butter with dry ingredients. Continue mixing until no chunks of butter are visible. You can also use a food processor: Pulse butter into dry ingredients until it is the texture of cornmeal or coarse sand. Or until your arm gets tired (if not using a food processor) or until you get fed up.

Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients, then form the dough into a ball. Pat out dough onto a lightly floured surface and form it into a 1 inch thick rectangle that is about 9 inches long and 3 inches wide. Use a large knife or a pizza wheel to slice the dough twice through the width, making three equal portions. Cut those three slices diagonally so that you have 6 triangular slices of dough. That's what the original recipe said, and it's fine, but if you're like me and need at least 1 scone per day, you might want to make them half the size so that you get 12 smaller ones.

Bake for 14 to 16 minutes on a baking sheet that has been lightly oiled. Scones should begin to turn light brown. If you're making 12 smaller ones, start with 9 minutes and then put them in longer if they aren't done yet -- every oven is different...

While scones cool, prepare plain glaze by combining ingredients in a medium bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed (actually a fork works too). Mix until smooth. When scones are cool, use a brush to paint a coating of the glaze over the top of each scone.

As that white glaze firms up, prepare spiced icing by combining ingredients in another medium bowl with an electric mixer (or fork) on medium speed (doesn't your fork have a medium speed? *scoff*). Drizzle this thicker icing over each scone and allow the icing to dry before serving (at least 1 hour). A squirt bottle works great for this, or you can drizzle with a whisk.

And if you can't wait for the scones to cool, skip the plain glaze, just make the spiced one and dip your scones into the bowl as you scarf down the whole batch.
(what? no one else does this?)

And I'll end this post with a picture of the creature -- because I need to prove that there really is a kid, and that I didn't just totally slack on the blog posts because I'm a lazy bum. There she is with Miss Olive - the patron saint of this blog (Saint Olive? that'll be the day)

Okay kids, thank you for joining our cheeseandolive drum circle, come back soon
xo
-Candace.

p.s. Alex, please don't be mad that I linked to your castingcallpro.com profile, it's free publicity :)

Cupcake Camp and the Smoked Fruit

Yellow everyone,
Back again!
This time to talk about the 2nd annual Cupcake Camp Montreal. I was at last year's and while it was very successful, nothing could have prepared me for this year's success. I cautiously agreed to participate this year because it took place November 21st, 6 days before my due date, thankfully the kid didn't come early and I was able to honour my commitment. Although I REALLY REALLY wanted to help out and be part of the organization, I thought it would be smarter if I waited until next year. So hit me up for any kind of help you need next year guys! I WILL be bugging you... but this year I stuck to baking only. My submission was Smoked Apple Cupcakes with Maple Cardamom Buttercream. So here goes, the recipe....

The cupcake recipe is partially pilfered from... um... well, uh *sigh* Martha Stewart. 
I'm sorry, I know, I know she's built of pure evil, but I'm sure she had nothing to do with it!!! I know A LOT of good people who went on to work for her. It's okay right?

Right?

Initially, I smoked the apples whole, but then I realized that peeling them was hell. So, word of advice, peel, core and cut your apples into 8ths or 6ths. It's much easier than trying to peel a smoked apple.


•2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
•2 teaspoons baking soda
•1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
•1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
•1 teaspoon salt
•1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
•1 cups sugar
•1/2 cup demerara sugar
•1/4 cup demerara sugar
•2 large eggs
•1 inch vanilla bean scraped to death
•8 apples (4 yellow delicious, 4 MacIntosh, if possible) peeled, cored, and cut

Start off by putting your apples in a disposable pie pan (or 2) and sprinkle the 1/4 cup of demerara sugar on top. Smoke for 1.5 hours at about 220 degrees. It's best if you do it a few days before because some liquid leaches out of the apples and has a very strong smoky sweet flavour. When you first take the apples out of the smoker, a lot of the smoky flavour is caught in the sugar residue that you won't be able to get into the batter. The apple juices that leach out sort of wash the sugar off the pie plate and you get a smokier flavour in your batter.

(pssst. these are Martha's instructions slightly adapted)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 standard muffin tins with paper liners; set aside. Whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside.

Put butter and both sugars (1/2 cup demerara, 1 cup regular white) into a bowl and mix on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Mix in eggs and vanilla. Coarsely chop apples in a food processo and mix in apples to the wet mixture. Add flour mixture; mix, scraping down sides of bowl as needed, until just combined.

Divide batter among lined cups, filling halfway; bake until tops are springy to the touch, 18 to 20 minutes. Remove cupcakes from tins; transfer to a wire rack; let cool completely. (makes 24)

For the icing, I will try to give you the recipe but I really winged it

•1 cup room temperature unsalted butter
•2 1/2 cups sifted icing sugar
•1/4 cup + 2 tbsp REAL maple syrup
•1 tbsp ground cardamom

Whip up the butter with an electric mixer pouring in the maple syrup slowly.  It will be clumpy and weird looking. As you sift in the sugar (I did it 1/2  a cup at a time because my hand was getting tired) it will become smoother.

About halfway through, I added the cardamom, mixing on medium speed. Once all your sugar is in and you're satisfied with the consistency, then you can ice your cupcakes.

If you want a stiffer icing, simply add more icing sugar.

Also, something that I will share with you.... I made a test batch... and I didn't find them smoky enough, so I added 1 or 2 dashes of liquid smoke to the icing.  It was only for the test batch, but I feel guilty divulging that fact. Anyways, if you need it, liquid smoke will help you out and won't ask for anything in return.

So here's the picture of my finished cakes. Next year I think I'll spend more time on the beauty aspect.  But they were tasty : )

So once these were iced and packed up, we brought them downtown to Cupcake Camp Montreal 2010!!
And even though I had a panic attack there, I take that as a good sign. THERE WERE TOO MANY PEOPLE -- bad for sensitive wimps like me, good for the organizers and the charities (Kids Help Phone and La Tablée des Chefs). This year they raised $34,500!!!!

Kyle and I got some phenomenal cupakes, there was the Double Chocolate with sugar cookie on top from Macchi Inc. (Make sure you read The Mrs Macchi Blog and follow her on twitter), there was the Double Cupcake: Mini chocolate on the top, vanilla on the bottom with a lovely snowflake detail from Montreal Confections (who incidentally did our wedding cake last year and she's super nice).  There was the ridiculously poufy and decadent Oreo cupcake with some sort of cream cheese icing covered in oreo dust from RawSugr. And unfortunately we don't know where the other three came from: another Oreo creation, Cookie Dough cupcake with a wee cookie on top, and a caramel fleur de sel. 

Oh right, the one in the middle. That was the raspberry truffle ice cream cupcake from Bilboquet. That one didn't make it home - partially because it was awesome and partially because of the melt factor.  Here's a bad picture of a 'cross section' (AKA after we bit into it) of the ice cream one :)

So that was Cupcake Camp Montreal 2010. Now my next task is to spit out a person.  She's supposed to arrive this saturday, but you never know what can happen. I guess that's all for now. Thanks again for taking the time to browse the aisles of the Cheese and Olive Superstore. 

xoxo

-Candace

Stay with me here... Potato... Ice Cream... trust me okay?

Hello everyone!
Look!!! It’s me again! And without a 3 month break!
How exciting....

Any-hoo, on the 12th of October I went to a product launch by infoods for their incusin line of purees with the effervescent Chuck Hughes.

There was quite a bit of awesome food presented and served. Being a big giant gestational pod, I couldn’t sample the salmon tartare and the parsley vodka shooter. But the blinis with caramelized onions were fantastic. There were potato croquettes on a stick which I didn’t photograph. A cauliflower cappucino, and a scallop atop a puree with carrot butter. There were also 2 sweet offerings, that I didn’t exactly catch what they consisted of except that they were CHOCK FULL of awesome.

See the pictures below, and make sure you bring a napkin to mop up the drool.

There was also sort of a blog challenge to create something with the insnax / incuisin line and then blog about it. It’s technically a contest, but since there’s no chance of me winning, I’ll just call it a blog challenge.

I decided to turn one of the purees into an ice cream. Since I don’t have an ice cream maker, and am wholly inexperienced at ice cream making, I expected it to fail spectacularly. It wasn’t too bad though. I think it would have been better if I could find a way to extract some of the water from the potato puree but even in this format it was very tasty. AND it did taste of the potato puree, so it’s not like it was just a textural thing.

I scoured the internet for how to make ice cream without an ice cream maker and it does take a bit of diligence.

Here goes....
What you'll need
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp unsalted butter
3/4 cup incuisin butter and cream potato puree
tiny pinch of salt
1 1/2 tbsp sugar (or more if you want)

A shallow pan that can go in the freezer
A freezer
about 2h to wait

Pour the milk into a saucepan and bring slowly up to boiling point but DO NOT LET IT BOIL. Add the butter and mix it up

In a bowl, beat together the egg yolks and sugar until thick. Pour the milk into the mixture of egg yolks and sugar whilst stirring. Pour the mixture back into the pan and heat gently, stirring until the custard thickens - DO NOT BRING TO THE BOIL BECAUSE CURDLED CUSTARD BLOWS. When it's nice and thick and about halfway to pudding texture, add the frozen potato puree.

The potato will cool the custard and the custard will thaw the potato puree. If necessary turn the heat on again just low though. When the custard/potato mix is cold stir in the cream and salt.
Your next step is to pour everything into a baking dish made of something that can handle being frozen and throw it in the freezer. From here on I defer to Mr. David Lebovitz because that's where I found the technique.  After 45 minutes have passed, go back and stir it up really well.

Then go back every half hour or 20 minutes and mix it up again. And there you have it.  Eat it.
The only problem was that after it reached the perfect consistency, it kept freezing, rock hard. I think it's because of the water content  in the potato. I didn't want to cook the potato down into oblivion so I'm kind of at a loss how to fix it.  But I'm sure SOMEONE out there will have a suggestion.
AND if you get it at its perfect moment of frozen-ness, it's really quite fabulously tasty and indulgent.

Well thanks to infoods and Miss Mayssam Samaha For inviting me to that lovely evening, and my apologies to Chuck for accidentally tripping him with my bag.... (that was embarrassing)
If anyone has any suggestions on how to combat the over-freezing let me know because it was definitely something I would want to make again.
Merci and thanks for washing your feet in the fountain of Candace.... (ew, that was a little weird) anyways, thanks for reading. Come back soon

Xoxox
-Candace

Mango Showdown

Ahh here we are again, the first challenge of 2010. You may remember the chicken challenge from last year. Well, we're back again with mango challenge, AND we've added another contender. TINA! from Brooks Pepperfire / Peppermaster and Operation Ayiti and don't forget to head over to Snack to check out Caty's submission.

So this is Challenge #2 Mango Showdown. 2 dishes for this one, Mango Scallop Ceviche, and Smoky Spicy Mango Sorbet.

#1 Mango Scallop Ceviche: This summer I was fortunate enough to attend a cooking class in Old Montreal with 4 wonderful friends. One of the dishes we made was a scallop ceviche. A ceviche is a raw fish preparation, but the amount of citrus in the marinade 'cooks' the fish. I've adapted the recipe to be spicier and more tropical (i.e. Mango).

Ingredients:

1 1/2 tbsp finely chopped or grated zest of orange, lemon, and lime. Whatever combination / ratio you prefer.

3 toes garlic, minced (A Dutch friend of mine once sent me a recipe where he listed the garlic cloves as 'toes' I have loved that ever since)

The juice of 1 orange, 1 lime, and 1/2 lemon

8 large sea scallops (not bay scallops) sliced thinly

a pinch of salt

1 habanero pepper, minced

1 1/2 tbsp cilantro, chopped

the cheeks of an underripe mango. What cheeks means is the broad flat sides of the mango where you can get the most meat. If you want you can take the rest of the mago flesh off the narrow sides, but I found that it was enough just to use the cheeks. The mango needs to be hard enough that it doesn't fall apart or add too much juice to the marinade but ripe enough that it's actually edible.

So, right, the pictures...

I used a vegetable peeler to remove the zest (the outer coloured area of the peel) from the citrus fruits. However, I guess the skin on the lime was too thin and I trespassed into the pith. You can see in the picture below, the white part. This is bitter and must be removed.

Here are some nice plump scallops, they shouldn't be mushy or smell like fish at all.

And don't forget to tweet while juicing the fruits :)

All ingredients except for the cilantro and put it in the fridge for a few hours. At least 3. You can see that the scallops have already started to turn whitish, this means that the 'cooking' process is starting.

Just before serving, add the cilantro and mix it up. I garnished. Yeah, you know it.

#2 Smoky Spicy Mango Sorbet: So January is sorbet month, as I may have mentioned. This one is not designed to cool you however. I paired the sweet juicy mango with the smoky spiciness of a VERY hot pepper. The Bhut Jolokia (AKA Naga Jolokia) peppers that I bought from Épices de Cru were of the smoked variety, and VERY VERY hot.

Ingredients:

2 ripe mangoes (for some reason I can't help typing Mangies, I like that word better)

1 dried smoked Bhut Jolokia Pepper. For those of you who might be intimidated by the 'HOTTEST PEPPER' you might want to substitute with a chipotle or even an Ancho Pepper would be nice.

1/2 cup mango juice

2 cups simple syrup

1 1/2 cups of water

1/2 tsp vanilla

To add to the smokiness, I cut and peeled the mangoes and then placed them in a very hot pan in order to char them. This WILL make a mess of your pan (burnt sugar is eeeeevil). After the fruit is removed I added 1 1/2 cups of water and the dried pepper. This will dislodge some of the material from the bottom of the pan and help to reconstitute the pepper.

To make the simple syrup, just combine a 1:1 ratio of granulated sugar with water and heat until the mixture turns completely clear. Add that to a pot with the chopped charred mangoes (mangies) and the reconstituted pepper (also chopped), and the liquid from the frying pan.

Cook over medium heat until the mangoes are mushy and cooked through. Add 1/2 tsp vanilla and blend with an immersion blender or in a conventional blender. Add 2 tsp vodka and pour into a shallow pan. Freeze over night. And as usual, since the vodka is out, make a drink, otherwise it won't freeze, honest!

Then shave it with a spoon and put it into small cups to serve. Consider serving it with a piece of cake or buttered scone. This baby's spicy, you're going to need some help.

I can't wait to see what my 2 other challengers have cooked up, and you should too!

Mangoes are tasty, but one last thing to note, don't cut too close to the seed. The seed is fibrous and you will be flossing for hours if you eat the flesh that's too close to the seed.

That's all for now kiddies. I will post very soon about the upcoming Wine to Water event in Montreal (tentatively scheduled for mid-May) sponsored by Barefoot wines. Until then, happy mangoes and thanks for visiting the cheeseandolive national zoo!

xoxo -Candace

Sore Bays

I’ve been thinking a lot about sorbets, sorbets and non-traditional ingredients. In this post, I’ve done three. 2 were a success, one was a sad, perfumey mess. Rosewater is a harsh mistress my friends; tread lightly along that path. So January is sorbet month at the SnookRoussel Ranch. I’ve really enjoyed playing with it because you can experiment to your heart’s content. And if there’s a misstep, it doesn’t feel like such a big deal. My first stumbling block I was faced with was my lack of ice cream maker. You would think that you could just stick it in the freezer and presto, frozen right? Well, yes, it’s frozen, but you could also kill a man with it. The goal is something softer that you can then turn into an edible treat. The solution? Vodka. 2 tsps of vodka in a pan of sorbet prevents it freezing to a diamond-like consistency. It stays a little soft and you can easily shave it with a spoon. I WOULD like to know if there was an alternative to vodka, or spirits of any kind. While MY veins run with pure wine, I can understand if someone wouldn’t want to feed their child a spiked sorbet, even if it is only 2 tsp for the whole thing. Does anyone know of anything else one could use in the absence of an ice cream maker?

Well anyways, the three flavours of sorbet that I made were:
1) Grapefruit Basil
2) Pear Vanilla Rosemary
3) Blooming Tea and Rosewater (fail)

The beginning of all sweet sorbets should be a simple syrup. The recipe for that is simple, as the name suggests. Combine a 1:1 ratio of water to granulated sugar, and heat until the sugar is completely dissolved and the syrup is clear. Let it cool.

For the grapefruit basil sorbet, I used 2 cups of simple syrup, 2 cups of fresh squeezed pink grapefruit juice, and some nice wide strips of grapefruit zest. I heated it until it was boiling just a little bit and then shut off the heat and threw a handful of basil leaves in there to steep. About a 1/4 of a cup, maybe a bit less.



It then gets strained and poured into a shallow pan. This is the point where you add the 2 tsp of vodka. This is also the point where you make yourself a drink, you know, since the bottle is out already.

Wait overnight or many hours and you can shave it with a spoon into a bowl very easily, due to the vodka. Serve as a light dessert :)

Sorbet #2 Pear Rosemary Vanilla. I started out with the same 2 cups simple syrup. Then cooked 3 VERY RIPE pears and their juices in the simple syrup until they were mashably soft, the time really depends on how ripe your pears were to start out with. In retrospect, I would have added about 1 cup of pear nectar / juice because I found it too light on pear flavour. Then turn the heat down to low and add about 1 tsp dried rosemary (or more if you want) and the seeds of 1/2 a vanilla bean, or vanilla extract.

The next part gets a little messy, and I suppose you can use the same method for any flavour that has real fruit pieces in it. Our mesh strainer was being used so I used cheese cloth (available at supermarkets). After draining the liquid out into a shallow pan, I put the pear pulp into a little cheese cloth sack and twisted it tighter and tighter to extract the liquid from the pulp. I suspect that pushing the pears through a mesh strainer with the back of a spoon would have been easier, but then I wouldn't have been able to share this slightly gross photo with you.


Again, it all goes into a shallow pan with 2 tsp of vodka. And have another drink at this point.
It won't work unless you do...

And overnight, PRESTO! Sorbet.
I love the little black seeds that you get from using the real vanilla bean.

Ugh, and Sorbet #3
Do I have to? ehhh okay. I thought this would be a great idea, it would be flowery and comforting. But it turned out to be a mouthful of bitter perfume. Blooming tea (don't know what flavour) and rosewater sorbet. It started with the same 2 cups simple syrup, 2 balls of blooming tea steeped in 1 1/2 cups of water, 1 tbsp of rosewater... why am I writing this? It was terrible, no one wants the recipe... well after I realized it was terrible and all hell broke loose and I started adding vanilla extract and lemon juice, but nothing could save it. However it started out with a very pretty picture of the blooming tea. Incidentally, this was quite a difficult picture to take... when you have the perfect sunbeam on the floor and 2 cats.

Don't be fooled by my prompting, this was AFTER they had already had their way with the tea and I had to chase it across the floor three times. Oh and make sure you listen to it with the audio, apparently the music from the TV ties it all together... especially at the end heh heh heh (flush)




At this point I still thought that the sorbet would be a success, it was so pretty and then I forgot about the tea. This is where the bitter comes in. The other failing was WAY too much rosewater, as I may have mentioned before.


And then to add insult to injury, I thought that adding gin as the antifreeze alcohol would go well with the combination. Yeah, it didn't.


So I put it in the freezer anyways, and it was actually really pretty with lovely ice shapes. But by this point I knew it would not actually TASTE good.



Here is a picture of the scraping. I thought it might be helpful for the other more succesful sorbet attempts if I showed the scraping. It works very quickly and with not a lot of elbow grease.

And the final product. Kyle says that it's not that bad, as a garnish or in small quantities it is okay. But I think it's horrid and so I photoshopped the background in this picture to be all dark so that it looks a little sinister.

So the moral of the story is, sorbets are easy and fast to prepare (even though they take a while to freeze) but just be careful with the intensity of your flavours. You need to 'over flavour' a little bit to counteract the effects of the cold, but don't go overboard. If it's offensive before you freeze it, it will be offensive after you freeze it. And if anyone knows of an anti-freeze solution that doesn't involve alcohol, please let me know. Oh! And share your sorbets if you make any, I'd be interested to hear what people have tried or made.

On the Wine to Water Montreal Event newsfront, we have a wine sponsor!!!! Barefoot Wines will be sponsoring half the wine for the event!!! It's alive and well and we're well on our way to making it happen, so stay tuned for more developments.

Another reason to stay tuned is that Caty Marzi of Snack & I will be having another blog challenge at the end of the month, AND we have recruited Tina Brooks of Brooks Pepperfire Foods as our 3rd challenge member. VERY exciting! It is the Mango Challenge. Thanks again
xoxox
-Candace