I decided to make homemade ice cream again - this time a fancy “crème fraiche” recipe.  It had a four-fork rating on Epicurious, so I thought it was going to be a pretty safe recipe.  Best of all, you didn’t need any eggs!   No need to make a custard to begin the recipe.  Awesome!

I followed the readers’ instructions, substituting part of the buttermilk for evaporated milk and using superfine sugar.

And then there was the crème fraiche.

I didn’t quite have the two cups of crème that the recipe required, so I subbed a bit of yogurt cream (using my fancy coffee filter straining system).

You can see the water dripping into the mixing bowl.  Less water means less ice crystals in your ice cream.  Woot!

Sadly, I didn’t like this ice cream very much.  True to the Epicurious reviews, it was  very rich, but not quite tart enough to balance out the sweetness.  I wonder whether I should have reduced the amount of sugar since I used superfine instead of regular old white sugar.

But the clincher was the crème fraiche taste.  I had never used or tasted crème fraiche before and I guess I expected that it wouldn’t taste exactly like sour cream.  Very expensive sour cream.

Girlfriendly rating: 2/5

I’ve blogged this recipe before, but this time I’ve included better photos. Same delicious taste using apples from our veggie box, better white balance.  We tried putting a dollop of crème fraiche on top, but we weren’t so fond of the taste.  Kind of like expensive sour cream.  Meh.

Mom’s Apple Crisp

• 1/4 cup of margarine or butter
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup flour
• 3/4 cup oats (I used the 3-5 minute kind)
• pinch of salt

• 4 1/2 cups chopped apples (I like the skin on.. you may not)
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 1/4 cup sugar
• dashes of cinnamon and nutmeg

Mix the crumble ingredients well. Set aside. Chop up the apples and mix with lemon, sugar and spices. Empty into a square baking dish. Top with crumble.

Bake at 350F for 30 minutes.

* Tip from Mom: Throw in some candied ginger or cranberries.

Boyfriendly rating: 5/5

I’m definitely getting older. How do I know this? With each year that passes, I grow to love cranberry sauce more and more. And Coronation Street. There, it’s out there.

Some online searches turned up this easy recipe for cranberry sauce using cider and maple syrup. Done and done! 15 minutes later I had made my first homemade cranberry sauce.

Boyfriendly rating: 5/5 Delicious. Tart and sweet.

Baker’s note: I’m glad I made this a day ahead because I think it tasted even better on the second day.

Easy Cranberry Sauce

• 12 oz bag of cranberries
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 cup apple cider
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1/4 tsp (or more) ground ginger

After bringing the maple syrup and apple cider to the boil, add the whole cranberries and cinnamon stick. Bring to a boil again until the cranberries stop popping. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove cinnamon stick. Serve warm or chill. This will get very thick when cool and will keep for several weeks in the fridge.

After reading Nigella Lawson’s recipe for Guinness cake (featured in Feast) I was feeling particularly inspired to bake. Because over the holidays, there are no such things as calories. Right? To the grocery store I went. (My fellow Centretonians must have been baking up a storm, as the stocks of unsalted butter were dangerously low!) I ducked into the LCBO to pick up the Guinness, but first I spotted a squat little stubby and picked it up. It was the John By Imperial Stout locally made in Carleton Place. That’s when a bell went on in my head - a bake-off. Ding ding!

Let’s step into the Centretown Test Kitchen, shall we? On the left with have our local hero tipping in at 6.7% alcohol, a black syrupy consistency and a story about the Rideau Canal being a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the label. Can heritage value bake a better cake? Only our tastebuds will tell. On the right, the standard Guinness tipping in at 4.2% alcohol and only sold in a four-pack.

Heritage face-off! Who’s tangible (and tasty) barley value will produce the best cake? The John By stout took the first swing and produced a lovely dark and moist cake. Impressive.

I baked my cake in a regular 9 inch cake pan rather than the recommended spring form pan. This left extra batter for about 6 cupcakes. Bonus cupcakes definitely won a few brownie points. Oooh… that pun hurts me more than it hurts you.

And for the icing on the cake? Icing on the cake. Local lore delivers.

The competitor? Traditional draught Guinness. Let’s see if “luck of the Irish” will help in the cupcake test. Baker’s note: I ran out of large muffin papers, so the cupcake was graded only on colour and flavour.

The Guinness cupcake is on the left and clearly produced a milk-chocolate coloured cupcake while the John By Stout baked into a dark chocolate colour.

The taste test: Results were unanimous. Both the boy and I preferred the John By stout in the bake-off. Local history takes the cake!

Boyfriendly rating: 5/5

Baker’s note #2: The loser Guinness beers did not go to waste.

Baker’s note #3: The John By Stout is available for a limited time as it is a seasonal product.

With a last name like “Stewart” you’d think I’d make stew a lot more often. Truth is, I never really liked stew. I still scrunch up my nose at the sound of the word. Let’s call this a thick soup and move on.

This week’s veggie basket included parsley root. Except, I really thought I was ordering parsnips! So much for shopping by picture - always read the fine print! Once the parsley root confusion got sorted out, the next question was.. what the heck do I do with parsley root? Until this week, I’d lived almost (ALMOST!) 30 years blissfully ignorant of their existence.

Readers from Europe-land will probably laugh at my ignorance of such a staple vegetable. It seems this quirky little vegetable is a staple in Holland, Germany and Poland… so much so they even call it “Dutch parsley” or “German parsley” depending on which side of the Smart Car you’re standing on. : )

I decided to side with the fraulines and make a Germanic-y stew with caraway dumplings.

The plan? To turn this:

Into this:

It turned out to be a nice hearty soup.  Not STEW.  I put more little pearl onions in because I thought they looked cool.  Because when you make stew… I mean SOUP… it’s important to maintain optimal coolness.

The only thing I didn’t love was the dumplings.  I put in waaaaaay too many caraway seeds.  Each little dumpling had the flavour of a thousand loaves of rye bread.  Maybe that’s how the fraulines dig it, but I found it distracting from the taste of my soup.  And there was no need to distract from the soup - it was delicious.

The parsley root was a nice change too, but I’m not sure how to describe the taste.  Green?  Nutty?  Sort of like parsnip that lost its sweetness.  It blended well with the other vegetables, so it gets an A+ for “playing well with others.”  If parsely root was a person, it would probably be a wallflower at the school dance.  You just need to give it a try to find out that underneath it all, it’s a really nice person.

Chicken Stew with Caraway Dumplings

• 1 1/2 Tbsp. butter
• 500 grams chicken thighs chopped (I used 6)
• 1 onion
• 1/4 cup flour
• 2 leeks (white part only)
• 1 pound bag of parsley root
• 2 parsnips
• 3 carrots
• 12 small white pearl onions
• 10 peppercorns
• 2 bay leafs
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1 tsp thyme, rosemary
• Salt & pepper
• 4 cups water
• 2 tsp chicken stock
• 1 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice

For the dumplings:

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup flour
• 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
• Salt
• 2 Tbsp caraway seeds (I’d use less next time .. maybe 1 Tbsp.)

In a dutch oven (German recipe, Dutch oven!), melt the butter over medium high heat. Brown the chicken and chopped onion.

Sprinkle the flour over the chicken pieces and mix to absorb the flour. Add the parsnips, parsley roots, carrots, whole white onions, peppercorns, thyme, rosemary, chicken stock and bay leafs. Cover with water and bring to just below a boil. Simmer until vegetables are soft - about 30 minutes. Add the peas and cook for 10 more minutes. Season with salt and pepper and add the lemon juice.

While the stew is simmering, prepare the dumplings. Stir together the eggs, flour, vegetable oil, salt and caraway seeds. Drop the dough by the tablespoon on top of the stewing chicken, making sure the balls don’t sink into the gravy. Cover and cook for 20 minutes without looking. Serve immediately.

Makes 6 servings.

Boyfriendly rating: *4/5 *The boy said 5/5, but I think it’s really a 4/5.

I poked into the bookstore on the way home last night to browse and thaw my toes (just a little bit).  I came across Nigella Lawson’s Feast in the bargain bin pile.  This tomb of a cookbook was on sale for $20.  Woo $20!!  Any Nigella recipe I’ve ever made has turned out.  Including baked goods.  And I am no baker.

When I flipped through the book, I saw she had an entire chapter devoted to chocolate cake.  In fact, she calls it her “Chocolate Hall of Fame”.  Inside the hall of fame was a recipe for a Guinness beer chocolate cake with fluffy white icing - making the cake resemble a very squat pint of beer.  Sold.  What recipe could possible be more boyfriendly than beer cake?

The husband has mastered making crème caramels. After finding the recipe in an issue of Delicious, it’s become his staple fancy dessert. I couldn’t tell you exactly how it’s made, nor do I want to. This blissful ignorance means that the boy will always have to make it for us. Ahhh.

The caramels are sweet and light and make the perfect ending to a big dinner. The husband has made them with real vanilla beans in the past.  The specky black dots from the vanilla bean add a bit of interest and colour.

We’ve even tried drizzling PEI maple wine over the top - which is also pretty awesome. If you’re on PEI, you should definitely pick this up.

Girlfriendly rating: 5/5 “I love this dessert!”

This recipe online seems similar to the one the boy makes.

The boy tended to the meat and dessert for dinner and I forged ahead with a vegetable dish. I saw this recipe for a veggie shepherd’s pie over at BBC Good Food and thought it would be a good way to use up all of those carrots in our fridge.

I did skew from the recipe (as always!). I used fresh tomatoes and lentils instead of canned. It was an extra step to cook the brown lentils, but I prefer fresh. The canned ones are pretty mushy. I probably used more cheese than I was supposed to.. the recipe calls for 85g. I don’t have a scale, so I went with the “as much cheese as it takes to cover the pie” measurement. (Probably 3/4 cup.)

It’s definitely a keeper. The Sweet potato is my runner-up vegetable after parsnips. Don’t be alarmed by the ’safety orange’ colour of the cheese - it’s just really hard to take good photos at night in our kitchen.

This is a real bread for a winter day.  I have a lot of bits and pieces in the fridge.  Applesauce left over from making gingerbread decorations, yogurt and cranberries.  I tweaked a recipe that I found online to use up all of these “bits”.  Sometimes my experiments go the way of the garbage can.  (Like when I used to go to my grandmother’s house and make “soufflé” by throwing a lot of random ingredients into a bowl and covering it with sprinkles.)  And sometimes my food experiments work out.  Luckily, this was one of those times.  Hey, it only took 25 years to get here!

Yogurt Cranberry Bread (1 lb. loaf)

• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1/3 cup plain yogurt
• 2 Tbsp. unsweetened applesauce
• 1 Tbsp. maple syrup
• 1 cup unbleached white flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 2 tsp. bread machine yeast

Select the lightest setting on your bread machine and press start!

Boyfriendly rating: 5/5

Finally, a baking success. I had been reading about the health benefits of millet in Heidi’s “Super Natural Coooking” book and online. So, after some Googling I came across an interesting millet muffin recipe. Not one to play by the books, I tweaked the recipe a bit for my own kitchen.

I really love this recipe.  It reminds me a bit of bran muffins, but not so heavy.  It’s light and a bit crunchy.   Sweet, but not too sweet.  I think it will make a perfect mid-morning snack with a cup of tea. In fact, I’ve eaten two already.

No boyfriendly rating yet.

Millet Muffins

(Makes 12 regular muffins)

• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 5 Tbsp. melted unsalted butter
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup + 1 Tbsp. millet
• 1 cup unbleached white flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3/4 cup + 1/8 cup buttermilk *

In a food processor, lightly grind the millet to break it up. Don’t grind it to a flour, you want to keep it a bit crunchy.

Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla until mixed. Add the butter and half the buttermilk. Mix to combine. Stir in the millet, dry ingredients and the remaining buttermilk.

Line a muffin pan with paper muffin cups. Scoop the batter into cups.

Bake for 20 minutes at 350F.

* I didn’t have any buttermilk so I substituted soured milk. Take regular milk and add a tablespoon of lemon juice and let sit for 5 minutes. Easy!