Eggnog french toast

3-4 eggs

A big splash of eggnog

A splash of vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

Mix it up.

6 thick slices of your favourite bread.

A knob of butter for frying.

Heat pan, add some butter..

Dip the bread in the mixture, let it soak a few seconds then fry them up until golden on both sides flipping half way.

Enjoy with maple syrup or your favourite topping.

Maple mini Corn bread

1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus more for the pan - reserve 1 tbsp aside from the 1/3 cups.

1 cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled

1 cups cornmeal

1 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 cups whole milk

2 large eggs

1/3 cup maple syrup, reserve 2 tbsp aside mixed with the reserved melted butter.

1. Heat oven to 400° F. Butter cupcake tray very well! (must be non stick) .

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add the milk, eggs, the maple syrup, and the butter; whisk together the wet ingredients, then incorporate the dry ingredients until just combined (do not overmix).

3. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 10 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the remaining butter and maple syrup. After removing the corn bread from oven, brush with the glaze butter mixture. Pop them out of the pan while still warm so they don't stick.

Makes 12, or 1 cupcake tray.

Enjoy !

Recipe adapted from Dine & Dish

Warm Green Bean Pasta Salad

One of my favourite warm (or cold) salads

Can easily be made into a pasta salad too!

Ingredients:

-Boiled green beans (frozen or fresh - regular cut or french style strips)

- Red onion (diced or sliced thinly)

- Red pepper (chopped in small cubes)

- Salt & Pepper

- Lemon juice (a squeeze to taste)

-Olive oil

- Pomegranate Molasses (just a drizzle)
- Ground Sumac (just a pinch)

-Boiled pasta (optional)

Toss all the salad ingredients and let them sit for a bit, the longer it sits the more flavourful it gets.

For a pasta salad toss in the warm pasta and serve!

Candied Pear Slices

Slice pears thinly with knife or mandolin.

Sprinkle a few table spoons of sugar on a flat plate.

Press the pear slices into the sugar and coat both sides.

Gently lay the pear slices on a tray lined with parchment and bake at 250 F until caramelized and dehydrated. Flipping them from time to time.

Or alternately bake at 320 F for 15 minutes and flip over slices and bake for another 15 minutes.

Serve with ice cream or dessert of your choice!

Apple wafers are another treat idea!

Make sure to remove seeds before baking or in this case eating as they can be toxic.

Apple Pie Ice Cream

Here's a little something I made and it seems all the elements came together beautifully in one dessert.

The ice cream part is an apple pie ice cream using a vanilla custard base, if you have an ice cream maker I would highly recommend trying it, it's easy and you just forget about it!

You need to do this 12 hours in advance before the part where you use the ice cream maker.

Vanilla Ice Cream Base:

2 1/2 cups heavy cream

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1 large vanilla bean, scraped

1 cup sugar

10 yolks

Follow the photo sequence of instructions here just for the vanilla base, not the banana part (unless you want to make banana ice cream! :) )

Thanks to Zoe bakes for the great ice cream making instructions.

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Now for the Apple pie part, well it really is just a pie, a whole pie baked and then chopped up in big chunks and layered with the ice cream. I made it in a form of a galette, like this except without the almonds and marzipan.

I always seem to have some pate brisee in my freezer, one batch can be divided in 4 and frozen in disks so I took some out and rolled it out, topped with apple slices that were sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, knobs of butter and then before baking I sprinkled the entire exposed crust with sugar.

I don't know if the sugar did anything specific but my goal was to caramelize the crust so that it would avoid it going mushy and soaking up any liquid while layered inside the vanilla ice cream. I think the idea worked pretty good because the crust remained amazing! I also baked it on a lower temperature for longer to really get a delicious crispy crust.

When the galette cooled I chopped it using a knife into large pieces/chunks and set them on a plate in the freezer.

Once the vanilla base ice cream mixture was put through the machine and completely churned I layered the soft ice cream in a casserole with the pieces of pie and set it back in the freezer to firm up.

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Caramelized Apple

After visiting the farmers market last week I had more apples than to know what to do with so I set out to bake some. These soft caramelized baked apple pieces were perfect to serve with the apple pie ice cream!

Chop your apples into bite sized pieces, sprinkle with sugar and dollops of butter and bake on 375 in a single layer in a casserole dish until they are tender, plump delicious, sweet and sticky with brown bits here and there.

Set aside to cool before topping your ice cream.

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Apple slice wafers

This part was a bit of an experiment. It turned out really great though! Very concenetrated apple flavour in that chips and makes a nice presentation.

Set the oven on low, 250 F is good.

Slice your apples thinly with a knife or mandolin. Press each piece front and back in a plate of sugar and then on a tray lined with parchment.

Bake and keep an eye on them, remember they do firm up once they come out so if they're a little sticky and soft just remove one and set it on another cooled piece of parchment and if it sets up you'll know it's ready. The sugar on the slice caramelizes so make sure it doesn't go the other way and just burn either.

Once they are done and cooled on another piece of parchment you can garnish your desserts or just snack on them.

October

A fun weekend filled with food and art. On the menu is southern fried chicken, guacamole and apple pie ice cream (yes that's an apple pie, filling crust and all layered with homemade vanilla ice cream) topped with caramelized apples and an apple slice wafer.

Lots of pumpkin seeds from the carved out pumpkins... roasting ideas in the next post as well as more details on the dessert elements.

I've always thought fried chicken was complicated but it is probably the easiest thing to make!

I threw the chicken in a bath of buttermilk (really just watered down yogurt - lots of it!) and spices. Paprika, garlic, onion powder, cajun seasoning, first rubbed all over the chicken then saturated with buttermilk and left to marinade for 24 hours in the fridge.

The following day I set all the chicken in a strainer and let the buttermilk strain off, if it's too thick you can wash them a bit and let them dry.

Now they go into a flour mixture (just seasoned with salt, and more yummy seasonings as mentioned above)

This step is very important, they have to sit for an hour to absorb all the flour and create a "dough" so set them back in the fridge.

Now they get fried up and sprinkled with a bit of salt when they come out, served with fries.

Guacamole appetizer, another one of those easy party dishes, it's a big hit and you can make a huge batch.

Normally I add the cilantro into the mix but it doesn't look so good in pictures so I left it out and sprinkled it over later.

Chop up your guacamole, tomato, red onion, cilantro.

Add some smashed garlic, olive oil, lime juice and season with salt and a touch of cumin.

Some people like to mush up the avocado a bit into a dip but I like mine in cubes and not too "mushy"

Garnished and served with corn chips.

I served with these chipotle flavoured corn disks that were on discount at the supermarket because a few broke in the pack - so I took the opportunity to break the rest of them into chip sided pieces.

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