Dried peas with salt pork
I really liked this dish. Easy, slow cooked, and flavourful.
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Grandma’s strawberry shortcake
One of my favourite desserts! Straight from my grandmother’s recipes.
Soft sugar cookies
I thought for most of my life that I didn’t like sugar cookies. Turns out I just didn’t like bad sugar cookies. This recipe makes nice soft sugar cookies. I like to roll them thick and decorate! Modified from this recipe.
Ingredients
1.5 cups softened butter 2 cups sugar 4 eggs 1 tsp vanilla 5.5 cups flour 2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp salt
Instructions
Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla. Stir in dry ingredients. Chill for one hour. Preheat oven to 400 F. Roll out 1/4 to 1/2 in thick. Cut shapes. Bake 6-8 minutes.
This makes a LOT of cookies. Works well as a half recipe, and they freeze well, either iced or not. Be sure not to over-bake – just baked, nearly no browning on the bottom.
If you are going to add icing (highly recommended!), make sure you dry them for a good day before stacking. These cookies are also soft, so try not to move them much during the drying – they can flex and the icing can crack when half dry.
(Here’s a royal icing recipe for the decorations!)
Verdict
The best sugar cookies. Hands down. Try these if you’ve never been convinced about sugar cookies.
No-knead molasses seed bread
Easy bread that is more delicious than you might expect for the minimal effort it takes to make.
Tart pastry cases
This is less of a recipe, and more assembly instructions. I have not (yet) been brave enough to try making my own pâte feuilletée, or puff pastry. It’s an intimidating process of several hours. Fortunately, frozen puff pastry is widely available!
Make up some dessert cream, then bake these tart cases to fill with it! And even little kids can do the assembly.
Modified from original directions in From the Hearth. Makes about 12 tart cases.
Ingredients
200 grams frozen puff pastry, thawed 1-2 tbsp milk 1 egg yolk
Instructions
Preheat oven to 450F. Roll out puff pastry to 1/8" thickness. Cut 24 two-inch rounds. For half of the rounds (12), cut the centre out with a smaller cutter (1"). (Either keep the centres to bake as little lids, or knead them together, re-roll them out, and cut more tart shells from them). Brush the plain rounds with cold water and press the cut-out rounds on top. Brush the tops with either milk or a milk/egg yolk mixture. Bake for 10-15 minutes at 450F, or until delicately brown.
The only thing challenging thing in terms of timing is to remember take the puff pastry out of the freezer well in advance. Check the package about exact length of time to thaw and whether you should thaw in the fridge or at room temperature.
I was skeptical when I rolled this pastry out paper thin. This surely wouldn’t result in usable tarts?! But this pastry lives up to its name – it puffed up beautifully.
My kid very much enjoyed putting together his own tart, with dessert cream and a few pieces of candied peel on top.
The Verdict
As long as you are using the pre-made puff pastry, these are very easy and look quite impressive!
What would you put in these tarts? Sweet or savoury nibbles? Let us know in the comments!
Dessert Cream
Dessert cream has multiple uses, and it’s even delicious by the spoonful out of the fridge!
Lemon meringues
This is a sweet (and lemony) way to use egg whites when you’ve made a recipe that only takes the yolks!
Candied lemon peel
When I started making historic 18th-century recipes from a French colonial fortress on the coast of Canada, I figured that there would be ingredients that I would have trouble buying. I mean, we’re talking recipes from 275 years ago.
I didn’t think that candied lemon peel would be one of those ingredients, however. Seems like something that would be used in baking today, regularly. Alas, I have still not found it in any of the stores I’ve searched.
Luckily, I discovered that it’s really easy to make candied peel! (And then I discovered that my candied peel easily and steadily disappears from its jar, as it has become a treat for kids and adults both).
Candied peel is frequently used in From the Hearth, in dishes like Frangipan Pie, Lemon Meringues, and Dessert Cream.
This recipe is kind of an amalgam from a few different sites. You can make this with only lemons, or add the peels from other citrus fruits too. (I added mandarin oranges, because we had them).
Ingredients
4-6 lemon peels, cut in 1/4" wide strips 2 cups white sugar 1.5 cups water Coating: 1/2 cup white sugar
Instructions
Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add lemon peels and cook for 10 minutes (removes bitterness). Drain peels and set aside. Add 1 cup water and 2 cups sugar to the pot, and heat until sugar is dissolved. Add lemon peels to pot. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a low simmer and cook until a candy thermometer in the mixture reads 230F. This takes a while! Expect about an hour. Drain the syrup (but save it for flavouring other things!) using a strainer, and roll the sticky peel pieces in the last 1/2 cup of white sugar. Leave on a rack overnight to dry. Store in an airtight container.
The peels ended up being infused with sugar all the way through (you can see they are sort of translucent-looking now).
Don’t put them away too early. They really need quite a long time to dry. Don’t worry, they don’t become hard, but after the drying time they will keep their shape a bit more and won’t stick to each other in the jar.
This candied peel was really dead easy to make, even though it took a while. The result is bright, sweet, citrus-y good stuff. Just keep them out of reach of the kids if you want to keep enough to use them in your recipes!
Got other uses for candied peel? Let us know in the comments!
Frangipan pie (cream, almond flour, and candied lemon peel)
A delicious and yet unusual pie – once you have the ingredients on hand, this is straightforward and popular with both kids and adults.