I first saw the play on soap and bubbles as a dessert by Andoni of Mugaritz. Inspired by this, for some time now I had been meaning to work on a rubber ducky and bubbles dessert. I finally got around to putting something together the other day. The resulting dish was nostalgic and playful — and it gave me the chance to try out a fun application of an aquarium air pump.
In my cooking program, students typically have the freedom to explore whatever recipes they want, with a budget and a final consumer in mind of course. When students create a savoury dish, it normally goes to a catering gig or to clients of the food bank. On the other hand, sweets often end up in the stomachs of hungry teenagers. If you know teenagers like I do, it won’t come as a surprise that each year there are requests for a few common items: cookies, brownies and a molten lava cake.
A major challenge of giving students freedom with their recipe choices is consistency. If we want to be able to sell the product, and avoid wasting ingredients, we need to have some confidence in the results. One goal of mine is to come up with a reliable set of recipes for some of these favourites. First up: the brownie. Continue reading
Isn’t he cute?
A fun approach to this recipe would be to make two batches – one coke gummy mixture and one rum gummy mixture and pipe them into two separate layers for some nice colour/flavour contrast. This would work for other drinks as well…Moscow mule anyone? With enough planning, our next party may have a gummy bar. Continue reading
For some time now, I have been debating whether or not it’s worthwhile to polish panned products. The approach of making your chocolate panned items shine is becoming more and more popular recently. This process is sometimes finicky, the final shine is very much dependent on time, temperature, relative humidity, and even batch size – many variables as you can see. I guess it comes down to a preference, what do you prefer?
Before polish and shellac
We love ramen. Sure, who doesn’t? But homemade ramen is not something that is part of our usual repertoire. In fact, it would likely not have come about were it not for a certain friend of mine. This particular food adventure was set in motion by a long overdue pig roast. Continue reading
Two Sundays ago, I was fortunate enough to attend (and have backstage access to) a fundraising dinner for Canada’s 2019 Bocuse d’Or representative: Trevor Ritchie. Continue reading
This bar is a mish-mash of a couple recipes from one of my many idols/internet crushes: My New Roots. It’s healthy in the way that most things are healthy. In the end its healthy-ness is dependent on how much you eat and also what your specific nutrition requirements are. This is not something I’ll pretend to know anything about. I know some people avoid fat, while some avoid sugars, and others avoid carbs in general. This bar has these things. But it’s made with nice, whole, unprocessed foods. No refined sugars. Also plant-based and gluten free if that’s your deal. All in all, it’s a really great alternative to those sugar-loaded, ultra-processed candy bars that are so delicious and yet so horrible.
Continue reading
The window pane test is a baker’s technique to determine whether or not the gluten in the dough is developed enough. If you can stretch the dough to the point where it’s almost see-through, then you’re good to go.
| PORTIONS | 8 – 10 |
| PREPARATION | 35 minutes |
| COOKING | 1 hour |
