Poached Pears with Chocolate Sauce

There’s something exotic-sounding about a poached pear.  It doesn’t really mater if it’s poached in water, fruit juice or wine, the presentation will make your family and friends salivate.  So simple to make and you can fiddle with the poaching ingredients to suit your taste (i.e. orange peel, star anise, ginger, lemon peel).  Poaching in…

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Chewy Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies

Oatmeal cookies have been around since 1896 (first published in the Boston Cooking School cookbook).  The humble cookie has been around since the end of the 14th century where little filled wafers were sold on the streets of Paris.  Renaissance cookbooks were rich in cookie recipes.  Biscuits (aka cookie) became the ideal traveling food because…

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Rosemary Shortbread

I’ve come to the conclusion that tattooed baristas along with body piercings are the ones who really make great cappuccinos!  TIBS, Just Us, Smiling Goat, Culture Espresso Bar, Joe to name a few all make some of the best cappuccinos I have ever tasted outside of Italy!  Making flawless coffee is an art in itself…

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Fresh Fruit Cake

I had a craving for something sweet and because it’s just the two of us, making a cake doesn’t make sense as we would be eating it for days to come.  This super easy dessert stays moist even on day three!  It’s so easy to whip up and I like the idea of baking it…

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Mango Sorbet – an ode to summer!

With the days becoming shorter and the nights cooler, summer is slowly saying goodbye.  However, this sunny-looking mango sorbet will always remind me of summer no matter what time of year it is.  Sorbet is basically frozen water or juice sweetened with fruit or even fresh herbs and can be sweet or savory.  Use the…

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Star Anise Ice Cream

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I am a gadget queen but I certainly enjoy using the ice cream maker attachment for my KitchenAid mixer.  I’ve had it 2 months now and have made strawberry ice cream, lemon ice cream and now this one.  Each time feels as though it’s my first and…

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The Best Homemade Lemon Ice Cream!

This recipe (adapted from Gourmet) forms part of another – Frozen Lemon Gingersnap Pie – which I will share with you in another post.  There’s something so quintessentially summer whenever lemons are mentioned in a recipe, making any day of the year sunny.  Flavored shaved ice (precursor to ice cream) has been used for thousands…

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Easy Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream

An ice cream maker had been on my list when we were living in Asia but I never did purchase one because the voltage there is 220 and that meant when we moved back to Canada it would not work unless I had a converter .  I went that route when we moved from Canada…

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Strawberry Cupcakes

Fresh strawberries always remind me of summer.  As a child I distinctly recall picking wild strawberries in my grandparents’ field…this was not an easy task as it would take forever to pick a pint (wild strawberries are tiny!).  All the whinging that took place was soon placated by strawberry shortcake topped with sweetened whipped cream…

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Pear Fritters with Lemon and Ginger

I have to admit that growing up I wasn’t too keen on pears.  But as an adult I have come to enjoy them in savory and sweet dishes.  Pears are not only juicy and sweet but are a good source of vitamin C and copper (helps protect the body from free radical damage).  They’re also…

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