pretzel, butterscotch & salty peanut blondies

I suffer from terrible indecision. Do I want a sweet snack or a savoury one? I don't know. If you are like me, rejoice, now you don't have to choose. These blondies are essentially big chocolate chip cookie squares with a load of salty bar snacks folded in. You can have it all. 

Butterscotch chips have a lovely, toasty, smooth brown sugar sort of flavour, but they are just a bit too sweet. Kind of like white chocolate, they are sort of simultaneously appealing and a bit cloying. Adding in the salty snacks balances out the butterscotch chips nicely, giving little pops of salty and sweet as you eat. 

pretzel, butterscotch and salty peanut blondies: 

Adapted from Bon Appetit and Smitten Kitchen, sort of smashed them together

• 1/2 cup butter, melted

• 1 cup brown sugar

• 1 egg

• 1 teaspoon vanilla

• a pinch of salt

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

• 1/3 cup butterscotch chips

• 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips

• 1 cup pretzels, lightly smashed

• 1 cup salted, roasted peanuts

Combine butter and sugar. Beat in egg and vanilla. Stir in flour and salt. Add butterscotch and chocolate chips, pretzels and peanuts and mix in evenly. 

Spread evenly in a 8"x 8" pan lined with parchment paper and bake at 350 degrees for around 20 minutes until just set. They should be soft in the centre and just crispy around the edges. I like them just slightly underbaked, so they are chewy rather than cakey. 

Let cool a bit, but definitely try them still warm. Probably with a bit of ice cream.

Photos: Tyrel Hiebert

big herb salad

Perhaps you are feeling, as I am, just a little overfed after the holiday season. My personal chocolate:vegetable ratio has been way off for a few weeks and I needed a little correction. This salad is an excellent and delicious way to get an entire day's vegetable servings in one meal. So efficient! Any new year's resolutions you may have about eating mountains of vegetables will be so easy to follow now. 

The abundance of bright, sunny herbs in this salad has been helping to combat my feelings of cold weather grumpiness. It's the opposite of standard winter fare, cozy warm, soups and stews and hearty, heavy dishes. Those are good too, but sometimes I want another kind of comforting winter meal, one that feels light and bright and reminds me that winter cannot actually last forever. It feels really luxurious to use herbs this way, as generously as a vegetable rather than as a sparse topping. 

Adding some roasted salmon or falafel makes it into a very filling meal. You can swap or add herbs; cilantro and basil would be great in this too. 

big herb salad: 

serves two as a main meal, more as a side

• 1 cup shredded purple cabbage
• 1/2 cucumber, thinly sliced
• 2 cups baby spinach
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved 
• 1 cup pea shoots
• 1/4 cup kalamata olives, roughly chopped 
• 1 cup fresh parsley, chopped
• 1 cup fresh mint, chopped
• 1 cup fresh dill, chopped
• a few slices of feta cheese 

Combine all ingredients and dress with yogurt dressing. Salt and pepper to taste. 

spicy yogurt dressing:

• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• juice from one lemon
• 3 tbs olive oil
• 2 tsp dried dill
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1  tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp crushed chile flakes 
• 1 tsp salt 

Blend all ingredients together and drizzle over salad. 

Photos: Tyrel Hiebert

quince gin fizz

Quince is a funny little fruit. It looks like a knobby, furry little pear and it's very hard and sour when raw. Cooking transforms it into a rosy-pink little gem with a citrusy-appley sort of taste. And the syrup it makes it so lovely and glowingly pink.

It also has slightly poisonous seeds that can give off hydrogen cyanide when ingested, so that's fun! Quince is like a really low risk fruit version of fugu fish. Don't worry though, you need to eat a lot of quince seeds to harm you. I think it's a good metaphor-fruit for a New Years Eve cocktail; about transforming something odd and a bit difficult into something lovely and slightly thrilling. Because all cocktails are elaborate metaphors about your life right? 

Anyway, happy new year! I hope you have a wonderful and quince-like 2017. 

quince gin fizz:

• gin
• limes
• quince syrup (recipe below)
• soda water
• mint sprigs for garnish

For each drink: 

Peel a strip of lime peel over a glass, aiming to catch the oils that spray out in the glass. Give it a squeeze to get a bit more oil into the glass. 

Combine 1 ounce gin, 1/2 ounce lime juice and 1/2 ounce syrup in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake vigorously and strain into the glass. Top up with soda water and garnish with mint. 

quince syrup: 

• 4 quinces, peeled and chopped
• 1 cup sugar 
• 2 tbs lime juice
• 2 cups water

Combine all ingredients in a small pan and simmer on low heat for two hours, until syrup thickens slightly and turns a lovely, jewelled rose colour. Store in refrigerator. 

Photos: Tyrel Hiebert

maple walnut honeycomb

One more quick candy for any really severely last minute holiday emergencies you are having. Honeycomb or sponge toffee is a light, crispy, foamy candy - it's what's inside a Crunchy bar. It's great with chocolate on top, or with maple syrup and toasted walnuts as I did here. It's quick, it's an excellent stocking stuffer and you will find watching it magically bubble up strangely soothing in the midst of seasonal panic. Or at least I did. If the foaming isn't quite soothing enough, there is also some very cathartic smashing to look forward to. It puffs up so much it seems impossible. Make sure to choose a large enough pan to contain the foam explosion.

I hope you have a lovely, happy Christmas or holiday or your choice! 

maple walnut honeycomb

adapted from Merrill Stubbs at Food 52

• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1 tbs baking soda
• 1/3 cup toasted walnuts, roughly chopped
• big pinch flaky salt, if you wish
   

Line a cookie sheet with parchment and place this on a heat tolerant cutting board or trivet. 

Heat sugar, syrup and 1/3 cup water in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Swirl mixture a couple times but do not stir. Cook until mixture reaches 300°F on a candy thermometer. 

Remove the pan from heat and very quickly stir in baking soda. Mixture will foam up a lot so stir rapidly to mix soda thoroughly. Add half the nuts and dump mixture out onto prepared baking sheet. Sprinkle remaining nuts and salt on top. 

Let toffee cool completely and then smash it up into bite size chunks. Store in an airtight container, toffee will wilt and weep if left out for too long.

Photos: Tyrel Hiebert

spiced whiskey & apple caramels

Need a stocking stuffer, secret santa, party favour or just general emergency gift? A bag of juicy, spicy and slightly boozy caramels fit the bill nicely. And they are very quick to throw together for any festive crisis you encounter. They keep for a couple weeks in an airtight container + parchment wrappers at room temperature. 

Candy making is slightly intimidating, it needs a bit of precision and it can also hurt you real bad. Sugar burns are awful, so please be very careful adding things to boiling sugar and pouring the caramels. Also, I highly recommend not setting your sugar on fire, setting off all the smoke alarms, alarming & annoying the other building residents, having to call the charming fire-people to come turn the stupid thing off and ruining a perfectly good pan, as I did once making caramel. Just stay there and watch your caramel like a hawk. Despite these potential stumbling blocks, candy making is pretty easy if you have a reliable thermometer and lots of fun. 

Adapted from Bon Appetit

• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 2 cups apple juice, preferably cloudy
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• ½ cup heavy cream
• 5 tbs butter
• 1 teaspoon flaky sea salt
• 4 tbs spiced whiskey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Line an 8"x8" square pan with parchment. 

Combine juice, sugars and cinnamon in a medium pan and cook on high heat until mixture registers 280° on a candy thermometer. Remove from heat and and cream butter and salt. The sugar will bubble up-be careful. Return to heat until mixture reaches 250°. Add whiskey and vanilla. Pour caramel into prepared pan and chill until firm. 

Slice into small rectangles and wrap in parchment squares. 

Photos: Tyrel Hiebert 

mini sticky toffee puddings

If you are casting around for a Christmas dessert, or what to serve at any upcoming holiday party, may I suggest mini sticky toffee puddings. Sticky toffee pudding is alchemy. It consists of a date cake soaked in a buttery toffee sauce, but the flavour combination transcends the fairly humble ingredients it's made from. It doesn't really have any showy, braggart ingredients, nothing hard to source or especially expensive. But the combination is almost magically greater than the sum of its parts. I'm not exaggerating, it's transcendent.

My family have been having STP as Christmas dessert for a few years and we have always made it in the traditional way, in a big pan. To increase toffee sauce-cake permeation I poked lots of holes in the cake with a skewer, hoping get the sauce really soaked in there. But I thought that creating a larger surface area for sauce contact would really help them get thoroughly sauced. I used a miniature bun to bake these and the little nooks and crannies really catch the toffee sauce.  If you don't have a mini bundt pan, use a muffin tin or a 8" round cake pan, increasing the baking time to around 50 minutes. 

Note: Both puddings and sauce freeze very well. Just reheat sauce and cakes when thawed in a 350° oven.  

Adapted from Martha Stewart

date cake

• 1/2 cup  butter, room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour and extra for the pans
• 8 ounces pitted dates, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Butter and flour the mini bundt pans or whichever pans you will use. Heat oven to 250° F.

Boil a kettle and combine chopped dates with 1/2 cup boiling water in a small bowl. Cover with a lid or plate and set aside. Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. 

Cream butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy and add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Blitz the soaked dates in a food processor until a chunky paste forms. Add flour mixture, date paste and vanilla to mixer bowl and mix on medium until just combined, making sure to scrape the bottom. 

Using an ice cream scoop fill bundt pans 2/3 of the way full. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. I found that they released from the pan best when they were still hot. Wiggle a toothpick around the edge of the pans to help unstick them, and pull them gently away from the edge with your fingers once they are cool enough to not burn you. Once they are pretty loose, pry em out.

toffee sauce

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients over low heat in a small saucepan. Simmer about 10 minutes. 

To serve, pour warm sauce over mini puds, and add a little bit of cream or ice cream if you like. 

Photos: Tyrel Hiebert