As some of you may know, I was attempting berry clafoutis last weekend with mixed success. Clafoutis is a decidedly French dessert that the Food Network's Alton Brown calls a combination of custard, pie and pancake. It is supposedly one of the easiest dishes to make in the French dessert repertoire, a vast continuum of sweet confections. Indeed, clafoutis is easy to make, but difficult to make well. Me, I wanted something Jenn and I could easily and quickly put together after a trip to the farmer's market on a weekday. You know, a sweet reward after a long work day. Essentially, I wanted something that would provide 2 servings. It would have to be light and delicate. It should feature seasonal berries.

After mourning the loss of several pints of ripe seasonal berries, raspberries, blueberries, and some sour cherries, I decided to toss the recipes away and go free-hand. What the failed clafoutises (that's the plural right?) taught me involved coating the baking dish in something that would release the egg-based dessert; keeping the berries from sinking to the bottom by coating them in starch or flour; and baking the clafoutis until just done or risk it becoming dense. Also, the time it takes the clafoutis to brown risks it becoming dense.

Eventually, I put something together that would fit the pair of oval gratin dishes we use for small pot pies. Borrowing from the "Dutch baby" and pop-over tradition I decided to use approximately equal parts (by volume) of milk and flour and an egg. The rest, flavouring to enrich the custard and compliment the chosen berries. Finally, everything would be baked at 400F. This is the temperature required to make pop-over-style batter rise.

After coming across the British Columbia Blueberry Council's 2010 Blogger recipe contest, Jenn and I tailored the flavouring to blueberries. Here is our entry for the contest:

Blueberry Clafoutis w/Lemon and Almond

Recipe

Sugar Coated Bakeware

Finely Chopped Lemon Zest

Fleur de Lait Cheese

Floured Blueberries

Egg and Sugar Mixture, Beaten until Lightened

More after the jump...

Earlier this summer, friend and triathlete Isabelle Rivard (@spoonsie aka: @trispoonsie) proposed the idea of putting together bacon recipes to sell a cookbook, all proceeds going to her isaonabike.com Give to Live campaign to raise funds to fight cancer. Given Izzy has a recipe for chocolate chip bacon cookies, we decided to make reverse chocolate chip mocha bacon cookies. But, we wanted to candy the bacon.

Candied Bacon Chocolate Mocha Cookies

The mocha component comes from Starbuck's mocha powder, which may be 1/3 sugar, based on reverse-engineered recipes on the web.

Starbuck's Mocha Powder
In hindsight, we missed an opportunity to add a true Java-bean flavour to the cookies, something we plan to remedy in the near future.

Still, the resultant cookies were rich, sweet, and slightly smokey. When I sprung half a batch on my office, only the like-minded foodie, someone who is currently eating her way across Italy, tasted the savoury component. Though, having brought beet brownies and pear chocolate cake to the office previously, most everyone figured there was something "different" about the cookies. Suffice it to say, I have an interesting reputation with my co-workers...

Recipe for Candied Bacon Chocolate Mocha Cookies

Candied Bacon Added to Last Sift of Flour

Completed Batter

Cookies Cooling on a Rack

Cookies Boxed

What You'll Need:

• 1 cup butter (2 sticks)
• 1/2 cup white granulated sugar
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup mocha powder (or 1/8 cup Dutch processed cocoa + 1/8 cup skim milk powder + 1/8 cup icing sugar)
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 tsps vanilla
• 1 3/4 cups cake flour
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 cup of white chocolate chips (less if desired)
• 1/4 cup chopped candied bacon

More after the jump...

It's been an amazing year between last year's Food Day Canada and this year's. Our little blog is sporting a new layout. We've participated in several food blogger and blogger events in Ottawa. We've a healthy Twitter account, whose tweet count is about to cross the 14,000 tweet milestone with a little over 2600 wonderful followers. We've started a Facebook fan page. And, most importantly, we've made new friends and kept up with old ones.

For those of you who don't know, Food Day Canada is a day that was established to celebrate Canada's agricultural bounty by grilling up something local, "The World's Longest Barbecue." Originally, author and culinary activist Anita Stewart intended it to be Canada Day 2. She later expanded Food Day Canada to create a genuine food holiday, encouraging all Canadians to participate and share our food stories.

This is the second year, Jenn and I have participated. Though, it tends to be "Food Day Canada" much more often than once a year in our household. To make an event of the occasion, we chose a new recipe to try. Again, our food story would be one about our neighbourhood's Epicurean Row of shops we love so much. Again, with two burly backpacks, loaded with ice packs, we raced down Wellington Street W. and Richmond Road on our bikes. This year, we would prepare a locally sourced meal around "Scotch Eggs."

Food Day Canada Scotch Eggs
Why Scotch Eggs? A tweep who goes by the Twitter handle @dbast (one of the Government of Canada's forward thinkers) was chatting about how to prepare eggs. We caught wind of the conversation when he asked twitter Ottawa where he could order the British originating food that encases a hard boiled egg in sausage meat and coats it with breadcrumbs. According to Webster's Online Dictionary, despite the dish's name, scotch eggs were the innovation of a London food shop, Fortnum & Mason, in 1738. They are typically served with pickles or a salad. We chose to pair ours with a salad that was lightly dressed in balsamic and balsamic seasoned grilled sweet corn.

Our first stop: Parkdale [Farmer's] Market

Crowded Market
There, we literally raided our favourite stall, a Savour Ottawa accredited one belonging to Rochon Farms.

Rochon Farms Stall
We visit this stall so often, one of the daughters of farmer Gerry Rochon recognizes us. She immediately points us to the newest arrivals and tells us what's in season. Like we tell tourists waffling at Rochon Farms' Byward Market stall, Rochon is the first one to the market and the last to leave. They are usually the first to supply foodieprints' meager kitchen with greens, cucumbers, strawberries, onions (that never saw a kiln), corn, zucchini, and squash. We like to purchase the tomatoes we turn into our winter's stash of sauce from them as well. On Food Day, Rochon supplied us with cucumbers, red and white onions, caramel and peaches and cream corn, and beefsteak tomatoes.

Peaches and Cream Corn

Caramel Corn

Beef Steak Tomatoes

Purchased Tomatoes

Purchased Onions
Cost: $10.00

More after the jump...

A dear friend of ours, Isabelle (@spoonsie) is quite the runner and cyclist. She spent the past year, training for a triathlon. This coming fall, she has challenged herself to cycle from Vancouver, British Columbia to Austen, Texas. The 4,264 km route will take 12 days to compete. To qualify, she has elected to raise $10,000 for the Canadian Cancer Society in the five months leading up to October 11. 2010.

She recently launched her website to co-ordinate sponsorship and fundraising.

isaonabike.com
As per her Canadian Cancer Society fundraising website, Izzy will be leveraging social media for her campaign and will be holding community events.

One of her community events was a bake sale at last weekend's Great Glebe Garage Sale.

Great Glebe Garage Sale 2010
Source: Greg (@cyclaw)

In total, she raised a respectable $1,107.25. Some local bakeries and fine food shops contributed bakery and candy, including the newly opened Flour Shoppe (Ottawa's first cupcakery), Wild Oats Cafe and Catering, and Second Avenue Sweets.

We contributed a dozen red velvet cupcakes (recipe) and 14 bags of biscotti (recipe), everything freshly baked the night before.

Not so Red-Red Velvet Cupcakes, flavoured with Maple Vinegar and topped with Cream Cheese Frosting

Cranberry, Almond, and Apricot Biscotti

Upcoming fundraising events we are planning include a poutine crawl of downtown Ottawa and a women's barbecue. For more information, subscribe via e-mail to isaonabike.com.

Particulars:
The FlourShoppe
617 Bank St (@Stratchcona)
(613)695-3752

Wild Oats Bakery Cafe And Catering
817 Bank Street
(613)232-6232

Second Avenue Sweets
151B Second Avenue
(613)233-7277

There are some things you don't say "no" to. One, I recently encountered, involves four and five year old children, selling lemonade in my office building's lobby. The daycare they attend was apparently raising money for a graduation party for the elder children who will not be returning next year. They will be starting full-day school. $5 for a small glass of home-made lemonade? Sure!

When my better half's sis asked me to help her bake white chocolate macadamia cookies to celebrate the 6 month anniversary of she and her boyfriend's first date, my heart likewise melt. As a trained project manager, I instinctively asked her for "requirements."

Receiving a blank stare, I rephrased the question, "What texture of cookie would you like?"

Her response: "cakey." And, she wanted to "bake" a message into it.

"Eh?", I thought. "Why don't we try making fortune cookies then."

Nope! White chocolate macadamia cookies are his favourite. So, there and then, I had been issued a project, complete with mandate, requirements, acceptance criteria, and apparently funding. I was not allowed to buy the ingredients.

After some quick research, which mostly consisted of wandering the web, I decided to develop a proof of concept recipe, using research and development funds, of course. My better half and I always stock our pantry with the necessary ingredients for chocolate chip and sugar cookies, contingencies for when we need to bake something hurriedly for a bake sale or an unexpected potluck.

Using Alton Brown's sage "puffy" chocolate chip cookie recipe as a base, here is what we turned out:

Cute Kitty Photo
Before you ask, little Jasmine is a big fan of Hello Kitty, so I thought the picture appropriate.

Recipe:

Batter

Disher'ed Portions

Baked Cookies Cooling

What You'll Need

• 1 cup butter
• 1/2 cup finely granulated sugar
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 2 1/4 cup cake flour
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• As many chocolate chips as you'd like (minimum: 1 cup)

Prep

1. Soften the butter by leaving it out at room temperature or taking a rolling pin to two sticks, wrapped in wax or parchment paper. I've been using the rolling pin technique lately. It's a lot of fun...
2. Sift together the salt, baking powder, and cake flour an set it aside. We use a flexible cutting mat for easy dosing.

Method

1. Preheat an oven to 350F and line sheet pans (or cookie sheets) with parchment paper.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together using an egg beater or stand mixer until it is fluffy. You could use a wooden spoon and a metal bowl like I did, but it takes a while.
3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing them in completely after each addition
4. Mix in the vanilla
5. Gently fold in the flour mixture in batches. Overworking (overmixing) the dough wheat flour dough produces gluten, which will make the cookies chewy. We're looking for cakey this time around.
6. Fold in the chocolate chips
7. Cover the cookie dough with plastic wrap and chill in the freezer to relax any developed gluten and firm up the fat. This will keep the cookies from spreading too much.
8. Disher up the cookies onto your sheet pans (6 to each pan), pressing them down to form thick pucks.
9. Return the unused dough to the fridge, covering again with plastic wrap.
10. Bake until cookies brown inwards from the edges, halfway into the center. If the cookies brown completely, the bottom maybe over browned or burned. For us, this took 18 minutes. We recommend checking after 10 minutes, and every 3-5 minutes thereafter.
11. Remove the cookies from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes on the sheets.
12. Place the cookies on cooling racks.
13. Repeat the dishing and baking until you have used up all your cookie dough.

We highly recommend against doing the "message" thing as it involves wrapping slips of paper in aluminium foil and placing the "silver nugget" into the uncooked puck.

That said, the resultant cookies baked up tall and cakey. The recipe will do well with white chocolate and macadamia nuts.