Steamed buns — pillows of deliciousness that can be sweet or savoury, stuffed or plain. The same dough recipe can be used to make a bao or stuffed bun and lends itself to many different fillings. These are also great make-ahead items! They can be done in a large batch and frozen, then pulled out a few at a time and re-steamed (or microwaved) as needed.
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I think we’ve mentioned this a few times before, but Megan and I like to plan our meals ahead of time to reduce meal planning decision fatigue (it’s a real thing!). To keep thinks interesting, we try to plan for a variety of different types of cuisine throughout the week: Taco Tuesday, Japanese Wednesday, Indian Thursday, … And while we’re definitely not opposed to eating the same thing every week, we also like to change things up once in a while for a little variety week to week. Our baby boy just turned one and has been reaching for our food more frequently, so a good way to reduce some of our meal prep is to get him to eat what we eat. At this point it’s not too difficult, it just means laying off on the salt and sugar, and making sure the consistency is manageable for him. Okonomiyaki has been a really great option for this! We have also discovered that with something like a pancake, it’s much easier for us to hide his vegetables.
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Growing up, most visits to my grandparents’ place involved tea time (which really just meant snacks for us kids). I have fond memories of this cake, as it made regular appearances at tea time every summer. I suppose it may not really be an upside down cake in the usual sense…Oma always kept the cake in the tray it was baked in, and simply sliced and served each piece upside down. I’m not entirely sure whether it’s possible to invert the whole cake onto a plate, but I wouldn’t want to mess with tradition, anyway (Royce confirms – yes, it is possible). As it turns out, this recipe comes together quite easily and is a fantastic way to use up plums when in season (Italian prune plums, to be specific – I used another variety of plums once and was promptly notified of my blunder). As fate would have it the Katsumi farm has both (Italian prune) plum and hazelnut trees, and both are starting to produce quite generously.
Read MoreGoing out with a bang! The last supper club of the summer was a big one…to celebrate the end of summer, but also an excuse to bust out some of the fancier items we’ve been hanging onto in our freezer (before we defrost it).
These cookies are a riff on our favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe from Tara O’Brady. The cookies are perfectly soft and chewy (our favourite type of CCC) and even better they are easy to make! Since discovering this recipe a few years back, it’s become our go-to and we rarely try anything else. This variation was the result of some recent, impulse shopping on Nuts.com. We first learned that you could buy half-popped popcorn from a friend a few years ago. Up until then, Royce was only able to enjoy them by scavenging the bottom of our bowls of popcorn. It turns out that there is a method to make only half-popped popcorn, but we’ve found the store-bought variety to be far superior to anything we’ve made at home so far.
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Smoothies & Sundaes 