• Baking Recipes,  Chocolates & confections,  From the books,  How-to,  Jeni's Genius Ice Creams

    My favourite way to candy nuts

    I don’t know of anyone who dislikes candied nuts. Even someone like me who doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth will take a bag of candied nuts from a crying child any day. Okay maybe not from a child, especially when said child is crying, but I would not hesitate for a second to nicely ask for a couple of pieces. Unless the nuts are candied to rock solid status and are so wrapped up in hardened sugar it’s like biting into a meteor. In which case, please take back your rock-hard nuts and throw it at your lover’s window so that she may come down and meet you.…

  • How-to

    Nothing quite like homemade applesauce

    Such a long overdue post this one is! Certain things have been happening in such a quick pace, it is almost as if my life has been dizzyingly like a rickety roller coaster ride. I have been busy and struggling these past few weeks, and tired from it all that I haven’t had the opportunity to write here. It hardly seems fair for me to complain about my little old life in the face of the events that have been happening in other parts of the world. They are so disheartening to say the least. Let us take a moment of silence to pray for the world and for each…

  • How-to

    {Do-It-Yourself} Homemade Buttermilk

    You know how sometimes you just don’t feel like getting into the car and driving all the way to the store just to buy a single missing ingredient, like say, buttermilk? Well my excuse is different. I don’t think we actually get any liquid buttermilk here. As you might know, aside from sour cream and yogurt, buttermilk is a staple in most quick bread, cupcake or muffin recipes, because it helps in creating a moist cake. And at some point I got sick of skipping over recipes I really wanted to try but had the word buttermilk in them. So in the spirit of experimentation, I made my own buttermilk. I…

  • How-to

    Let there be fizz!

    I had the suspicion that my baking powder had lost its leavening effect. I’ve been using up this container of baking powder for almost a year now so I thought it was the problem when a batch of muffins didn’t rise. I was very well prepared to bang my head on the spot reserved for baking failures on my wall, but as I would later find out, it was the recipe’s faulty instructions that were to blame. Thank goodness. I did follow the usual storage instructions for baking powder: store in an airtight container at room temperature in a dry place, away from any source of heat. I never put…