Quadruple Pea Stir Fry

Even though winter has barely arrived on the calendar, it feels like it has been far too long since the greenness and life of living plants outdoors have been visible. The farmer's markets have been dormant for months now, and likewise the grocery store has been nothing but a black hole when it comes to sourcing any sort of fresh produce. When we can find fruit and vegetables out of cans and freezer bags, they're of dubious quality - not to mention they're prohibitively expensive, especially when we're cooking for a minimum of two produce addicts!

It's not like this is a brand new phenomenon here - for as long as I've been alive and longer, most Canadian winters are the deathly cold, windy and snowy variety. However, it's only been the past 10 or so years, when I've been buying groceries, that I've truly realized how bloody expensive anything fresh and vibrant is when we aren't in the 2-week-long growing season. With our garden proliferating over the summer, my Mom and I have become more or less proficient at blanching and freezing the hardier items like peas and beans. We also started cooking and freezing our homegrown soup beans for cheap and healthy dinners on the fly, and while I keep struggling with my indoor garden of herbs and microgreens, the ones that make it to harvest are delicious!

With a few bags of greenery sitting in the freezer and a yen for something more "springlike" than ice pellets and snowflakes, I decided to try re-making a dish I concocted over the summer - a somewhat unorthodox mixture of Asian and Italian cultures in a slightly spicy meal-in-a-bowl. The gnocchi (again, homemade from the freezer) mimics Korean-style tteok ppoki (rice cakes), Helping to soak up the delicious hoisin-ginger-garlic sauce along with the extra firm tofu and green veggie medley. In total, four varieties of the sweet, springy green vegetable make their way into the stir fry - the only one that you'd have to procure fresh is the pea shoots (but you can substitute parsley, watercress, even a small amount of spinach if you want).

Red Velvet Biscotti

Merry Christmas, everyone! Since I (like most of you I'm sure) are running around with a bazillion to-do lists in your minds, I'll keep my preamble short and sweet today. Suffice it to say that on days like today, the chance to sit down with a cup of coffee and a cookie is more welcome than normal. Even if that sitting down is in the car and the coffee is in a paper cup, taking along a sturdy, travel friendly snack like a biscotti can make the "break" complete.

We are most definitely fans of red velvet around here, and in particular I love the cream cheese frosting that caps off the slices so perfectly. Granted - I'm the type of person who would eat cream cheese frosting by the spoonful if given the chance, but the tang perfectly balances the sugar and adds to the hints from buttermilk. To make one of my favourite cakes "travel friendly", I decided to try them in the sturdiest form I knew: biscotti!

Using Sandra's recipe as my base, I switched up the fats to incorporate my favourite cream cheese, added rich brown sugar for its molasses note, and added some Red Velvet Emulsion to solidify the nuances of flavour that fill the cake and boost the red colour. A combination of an egg white and a whole egg allowed for crispness on the cut sides, while adding mayonnaise not only stood in for extra eggs but lent a slight tang not unlike the original buttermilk. A few white chocolate chips baked on top lightly caramelized and seemed almost like a toasted meringue frosting with their vanilla sweetness. At any rate, they were perfect on their own or with a coffee, and I've had requests for more!

Here's to you and yours, and have a fantastic holiday!

Candy Paint Dipped Apples

Like many people, I've always associated apples with the Fall. Thanksgiving was never without an apple pie to go alongside the traditional pumpkin, and it was only in October that indulging in apple fritters or a bowl of thick, chunky applesauce hot from the pot seemed right. At the mall, there would always be one or two shops that boasted the brightly coloured candied apples, dolled up to the nines with nuts or chocolate, but again, it looked out of place with the swimwear or the skis. On the rare occasion that we would get to buy one (usually from the Fall fair, where the prices were more reasonable than the $7 at the shop), the candy shell was never my cup of tea. If there was caramel, even plain, that was what my allowance would be invested in.

I haven't made candied apples in a dog's age, and frankly, the thought of ever doing them again never crossed my mind. After all, there are cookies, fudge and Toast Toppers to delve into! But when my co-teacher mentioned making these in class as our "holiday gift" for the kids, I couldn't see why not. Hard candy (which is all the shell really is) is cheap and fairly simple to make, easily coloured and sets up fast, meaning we could make them in the morning and they'd be ready and packed up at the end of the day. While checking the recipe (I still couldn't believe it was only hard-crack sugar) I came across a unique way of tinting the candy at Rose Bakes, where the mixture is made opaque with white food colouring and tinted with a bottle of gel dye. They looked so incredible I couldn't wait to try it out - and while the white dye is expensive, it is equally impressive and I would heartily recommend it. The volume of candy meant the bright red colouring I bought was significantly diluted, giving my baby apples a "pastel paint" appearance. The kids loved the Barbie pink, but if I wanted "true red" I would undoubtedly need a minimum of two jars of gel colour. Next Halloween I might try straight black - since it's dark it might not need the extra help in the opacity department.

Another consideration is the variety of apple you choose. I strongly suggest a tart apple (i.e. Granny Smith or Russett) so that the combination of the sweet-sweet sugar and tangy fruit is in perfect balance. Our "classroom" apples were Galas (definitely one of my least favourite apples) - they are fairly sweet, not that the kids minded at all - but if I was making them for myself I would have added a sour flavour to the candy instead (lime with a dash of citric acid maybe, or even classic sour apple!). Of course, you can go wild with the flavour options available these days, even in our relatively small bakery supply store a couple town over they have a cabinet of LorAnn candy and chocolate flavours, most of which would work wonderfully with the fruit. While the apples were kept au naturale for the kids, I did pick up some of the Red Velvet Emulsion and Anise Oil this year for holiday baking and candy-making, and I bet the cinnamon would be amazing here, especially with a sweet apple.

Regardless of the colour and flavour you choose, these are definite showstoppers on the holiday table, and make great parting gifts for kids. Just remember not to bite the rock-hard candy - unless you want broken teeth! (Although I guess then you could ask Santa for "your two front teeth", but I digress)

Shared with Gluten Free Fridays #226

Butterless Walnut Chocolate Chunkers #CreativeCookieExchange

Last weekend my house was filled to bursting with everything sweet and rich - aromas of buttery shortbread, spicy gingerbread, dried fruit and nuts macerated in wine, creamy fudge and pounds of both milk and bittersweet chocolate. Blocks of butter were perpetually out on the countertop to soften and the oven was on so much that my mom wanted to open the windows to cool off the kitchen - crazy in the -20C chill!

While butter, and dairy in general, are definitely heavy hitters in the holiday baking game, a lot of my friends and some of my family are avoiding milk and milk products - some are lactose intolerant, others outright allergic, still others vegan for ethical reasons. For them, the glory of the annual shortbread marathon is lost, along with the caramels, fudge, truffles and brioche. For them (and everyone else at the annual get-together on Christmas Eve), I whipped up a batch of these rather fancy, "grown up" chocolate chunk cookies. In lieu of butter, I chose a combination of canola and rich walnut oil, amplifying the flavour with minced walnuts and garnishing everything with chopped, high quality, super-dark chocolate. Like the Full of Secrets Chocolate Chip Cookies, they contained mayonnaise and custard powder to create and maintain the perfect balance of chewiness and tenderness.

Nuts in cookies are a tradition celebrated all over the world--and Creative Cookie Exchange has joined the party!

You can also use us as a great resource for cookie recipes. Be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts (you can find all of them here at The Spiced Life). You will be able to find them the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month! Also, if you are looking for inspiration to get in the kitchen and start baking, check out what all of the hosting bloggers have made:

• Honey Mixed Nut Bars from All That's Left Are The Crumbs
• Butterless Walnut Chocolate Chunkers from What Smells So Good?
• Almond Linzer Cookies from Spiceroots
• Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti from Oven Delights
• Pistachio, Rosewater and Cardamom Shortbread Cookies from A Shaggy Dough Story
• Salted Chocolate Pecan Caramel Bars from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Pistachio Cranberry Rugelach from A Baker's House
• White Chocolate Cranberry Nut Cookies from 2 Cookin Mamas
• Biarritz Sandwich Cookies from The Spiced Life

Peanut Butter, Banana & Honey Granola

I've been on a granola kick again this year, using the neutral bulking properties of oats and various grains to carry the flavour I happen to be craving at the time. With treats like Blueberry Crisp and a "Southern Belle"  peach cobbler for inspiration, I turned to one of my childhood comfort foods - the peanut butter, banana and honey sandwich.

I come by my PB love honestly. My whole family is guilty of eating mass quantities of the stuff - whether it's smeared on a slab of Challah, dolloped on crackers alongside a 5-alarm chili or simply on a spoon au naturale. More than that, Dad and I ADORE the sweet and salty combination of peanut butter and honey with the sticky caramelized notes of banana. This granola is everything the sandwich is, in portable, snackable form! Perfect for the holiday rush, a baggie of this crunchy cereal is easy to tuck away into your purse or backpack, and a lot cheaper than picking up something from the mall food court. To up the decadence even more with my second batch, I tossed in some dark chocolate chips as well. Either way, it has no added oil or fat except from the peanut butter (I even used an all-natural style, which worked perfectly), is perfectly sweet without being "brush-your-teeth required", and has an added hit of satiating protein and fibre from the toasted soy flour.

Shared with Gluten Free Fridays #225