Some Warmth

The past few days here have been quite cold and it's not even December yet! With below zero temperatures and snow coming down hard today, here's something to warm up with. A bowl of hot stewed beef. Chock full of beef, carrots, celery, mushroom, and onions in a red wine sauce, it definitely warmed me up.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake

This is a recipe from Johnny Iuzzini's book, Dessert FourPlay. It has a peanut sponge base, peanut ganache made with milk chocolate, a feuilletine centre, and a caramel chocolate mousse. I tried spraying the top with a chocolate velvet spray but I only have the manual mouth-blown airbrush and I got a little out of breath so there's only a very faint spray of it.

Other than that, I'm really happy with the result and I recommend his book highly. It has a lot of great base recipes that I use in my repertoire and the instructions are clear. Pictures are great too which is always a bonus.

Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

I know I've done peanut butter jelly chocolates before here but it's been a few years and I am happy to say that I've learned a few things since then. Instead of filling cavities with just peanut butter and jam, I made a grape pate de fruit (from Welch's juice surprisingly enough) and a peanut butter ganache and dipped them. The result:
The ganache was very creamy and smooth. The pate de fruit was not as sweet as I thought it would be. I do need to work on my dipping skills though.

A Light Dinner

Pan fried sablefish on top of chayote squash, served with roasted beets (mmm...I love beets!) and a yam puree. Delicious and quick.

Coconut Mango Cake

This is something I came up with doing double duty as a friend's birthday cake, as well as a cake for an "Asian-inspired" cake contest; the contest one being in a different format of course.

Inside is a coconut syrup soaked brown butter genoise, with mango chunks, mango pudding, and coconut cream. Outside is finished with an italian meringue and decorated with some black sesame macarons, gold spray, and white chocolate decorations.

Seasonal Salad

Super quick salad made with mixed salad greens, brie, diced pear, and candied pecans.

Nut-Free Macarons

People with nut allergies can enjoy macarons! I've found recipes online using coconut in place of the ground almonds and some with a small ratio of coconut and sesame seeds. Although many people with nut allergies can eat coconuts, they are still considered a tree nut so I wanted to try out sesame seeds.

I was a bit wary as I haven't seen any recipes that use sesame seeds as the full amount but these turned out beautifully! I used roasted black sesame seeds and ground them in a spice grinder (ground to the same consistency as one would for ground almonds) and used that in place of the almonds. Everything looked the same; same consistency, same lift, same feet. The taste was amazing also. The only downside would be that it would be hard to flavour as the sesame taste is quite strong. I've tried it with white sesame as well and it works. Next up is another nut substitute that has a more neutral flavour and colour as well....quinoa perhaps?