Standardby Julie3 Comments

I’m a sucker for anything topped with torched meringue, but my preference is ice cream, baked Alaska-style. (Yes, this is essentially a baked Alaska.. though B.A. is typically frozen in a bowl, so it’s dome-shaped, like this.) Ice cream “cake” was my birthday cake of choice as a kid.. because really, the scoop of ice cream beside the cake is always the best part. If you’re making it yourself, layered ice cream negates the need to turn on the oven, or even follow a recipe—it’s ideal for the baking intimidated. You don’t require a specific cake pan size (or a cake pan at all, really), and an ice cream “cake” can be made in advance and stashed away in the freezer for days, weeks or even months— until you’re ready to finish it with a simple cooked meringue, which is easy to work with and finish with swirls and flourishes.

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Standardby Julie5 Comments

Ice cream cake was my birthday “cake” of choice growing up, and still it’s funny how people get excited over an ice cream cake or pie – I made a few last summer for my latest cookbook, and each time, everyone was thrilled. And yet they’re as easy as it gets – I enlisted my five year old grand-niece to help assemble one, scooping soft ice cream in alternating flavours into a cookie crust, and sprinkling chopped chocolate bars and mini peanut butter cups in between. As it firmed up in the freezer we made a batch of ganache – warmed cream and chocolate that tastes like a smooth melted truffle – to pour overtop. It was a blast, everyone was thrilled, and we didn’t even need to turn on the oven.

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Standardby Julie12 Comments

It’s a sure sign we’re solidly into summer when the first cherries arrive from BC. The other day a small grocery store by the dog park had an enormous bowl of them at the checkout, and people were milling about far after they had their groceries bagged, chatting, downing as many as they could. BC cherries always arrive bigger, juicier and meatier than I remember, and the action of working out a cherry pit with your tongue and spitting it into the grass channels decades worth of summer nostalgia.

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Standardby Julie19 Comments

There are few new ideas in the culinary world – most recipes out there are tweaks of existing things or creative new versions of same, and I suppose this is no different. But when someone on Twitter questioned why no ice cream version of the Nanaimo bar exists – beyond, yes, an ice cream pie (though I wonder about the vanilla ice cream filling with dry custard powder stirred in…) – in response to the conversation about the new Canadian dessert stamps and how the Nanaimo bar stamp looks more like an ice cream bar, ratio-wise, I leapt at the challenge. And so I give you Nanaimo ice cream bars with a Nanaimo bar base and frozen custard ice cream made with Bird’s custard powder. Oh yes.

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Standardby Julie5 Comments

This post was created with the support of BC Blueberries (the title was too long to add Blog Flog!) – I’m a huge fan of blueberries from our next-door neighbours and as always, any words, thoughts and photos are my own. I’m almost overwhelmed by the possibilities once BC blueberries arrive and make their way to my kitchen. They were a few weeks late this season, and I found myself missing them – the big, plump, juicy highbush berries we always have a bowlful on the counter to nibble from at this time of year. I toss them in batters and on waffles, make cobblers and crisps, tarts and grunkles, pile them on a bowl of plain yogurt and granola, muddle them in drinks (try a small handful in a mojito) and simmer them into jam. BC is the biggest highbush blueberry region in the world, and they’re Canada’s biggest fruit export. I always buy more than I need, squirreling some away in the freezerContinue reading

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Standardby Julie9 Comments

I don’t know if you know, but ice cream is my jam. My desert island food. I used the heat of the last couple days as an excuse to make a batch – strawberry-rhubarb, since the best part about the pie is the ice cream pairing. You can skip the pastry and the baking and get the job done all in one go. Also – there’s something about pure pink ice cream that digs deep into the best part of your childhood. It reminds me of digging the thick stripes of strawberry and chocolate out of the tub of neapolitan. I sometimes roast strawberries and rhubarb for ice cream, but that would require turning on the oven, and it hit 31 degrees at dinnertime last night. You can use fresh, uncooked strawberries, lightly mashed, but I find those combined with heat and sugar become the best form of themselves, and are easier to distribute throughout the cream. Bonus: it’s easy to simmer some rhubarb alongside.

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Standardby Julie23 Comments

I thought I was prepared for summer, the end of school and the start of Stampede this year. I was not. I’m not even used to it being June yet, and it’s well into July. (I see a recurring theme here…) But. Priorities: I have figured out how to make those iconic midway treats I always picked as a kid, when my sisters would opt for cotton candy (mostly air) and candy apples (just a whole fruit, disguised with sticky red stuff – suckers!). The teenage summer staff would make Fiddlestix onsite in their box-sized concessions, opening up a box of vanilla ice cream, slicing it into bars, then dipping each piece into chocolate and rolling it in peanuts before handing it through the window in exchange for $2. I’m sure there’s a more mechanized, streamlined version out there now – but I still hold on to a scrap of nostalgia for ice cream that was sliced instead of scooped. I came across a recipeContinue reading

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Standardby Julie28 Comments

Dinner was a barbecue at Cheryl‘s tonight, where we both met Aimée of Under the High Chair, who was coming through town from BC en route home to Montréal, for the first time in actual 3D. That’s us: Cheryl, Aimée, Me. They’re holding Mila and Matteo; the two three-year-old boys are trying to figure out how to blow up the house from the empty planter behind us. Curiously we didn’t spend a whole lot of time alienating our husbands by huddling in the kitchen or chatting about food blogs and camera lenses and Twitter. It could be that we were too busy monitoring our collective toddlers, attempting to keep them from steamrolling each other (no need to mention which one might have been steamrolling the others) – in fact, an unassuming passerby might have fancied us a regular group of friends getting together on a Friday night until dinner came out, and we all pounced for our cameras, maneuvering around the picnic table like aContinue reading

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Standardby Julie84 Comments

I planned to let you all know yesterday that I was pregnant. I found out the morning of Canada Day, thinking it would be smart to pee on that stick before the onslaught of parties and Stampede, and having just brought home 23 cases of beer (from the CBC beer pool). Instead, the pregnancy ended. It was early – between 6 and 7 weeks, and it was only for 10 days that we believed a new baby would be arriving in March, but I can’t seem to sit down in front of the keyboard and spin tales of what we ate as if it was just another day. I’m glad it was so early – my first pregnancy ended the last day of my first trimester – and I know it’s common. It still sucks. (For those keeping tabs: that’s a new roof, $3000 worth of dental work, a tax audit, a he-nearly-died medical emergency (not mine) a pregnancy and a miscarriage in a littleContinue reading

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