My Favorite Cook Books

Mastering The Art of French Cooking
Julia Child

The How-To Guide:
This book taught me a lot about the basics of cooking. The first few chapters are a base for every cook including: a decription of every piece of kitchen equipment you'll ever need, a decription of the various temperatures for cooking and baking and there extreme importance, and an introduction to several cutting methods. The chapters are very well separated and the recipes are of a wide range; starting form simply cooking eggs to sweet souffles. If your new to cooking this book is irreplaceable, the instructions are detailed and easy to follow.

Jamie's 30 Minute Meals
Jamie Oliver

A Revolution to Cooking Food Fast:
Jamie taught me how to be an efficient cook. His approach to cooking is simple and creative. As long as your ingredients are fresh and good-quality this book will help you produce amazing meals. Some recipes to note that are especially fantastic: Rhubard Millefeuille (great for summer BBQ's) and Rib- Eye Stirfry. The book also includes a lot of simple curry recipes which are easy to make.

The Best of Mrs. Beeton's British Cooking

A classic for any home! This small recipe books is full of English classics! From Lemon Pudding to Chicken Pie, this collection is full of tradition. I enjoy this one because of the simplicity of the recipes; each recipe has very few ingredients so creating amazing meals is easy. A must-have for those who love homecooking.

The Perfect Scoop
David Lebovity

After purchasing a Kitchen-Aid Ice Cream Maker attachment for our mixer this has been in constant use. Although the recipes take time and effort the results are fantastic. I recommend making your ice cream the night before and placing it in the fridge and freezing it the next day as the outcome seems to have been better for me. This is great for the upcoming summer months and who doesn't love a nice bowl of ice cream!

My Famous Banana Bread

So unusually make this recipe as a loaf but I recently bought a mini loaf pan from Market Kitchen, a small kitchenware store on Granville Island. So, I decided try out my recipe with the smaller loaf pans.

Here's the recipe:

1/2cup margarine
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups mashed ripe bananas ( around 3 large bananas)
2 cups ap flour
1 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350F if you have a convect use it
Grease and flour your loaf or loaves pa s

Cream margarine and sugar until smooth
Beat in eggs
Then mashed bananas
Add flour and baking soda until just combined
Feel free add nuts such as pecans or chocolate chips now (I usually add 1/2 of a cup)
Pour into prepared pans ( I use an ice cream scoop)
Bake for 1 hour in large loaf pans or for 25 mins in mini loaves pans

Check with toothpick
Remove and cool on wire racks

Makes one loaf (9x5) or 10 mini loaves

Hope you enjoy your banana bread!!
xx

Easter Baking Recommendations

So, as the Easter weekend comes to an end I wanted to give you all a review on the new recipes I used; some were flawless other's needed a bit of work. So here goes my first blog post:


Carrot Cake:
I always love to try new recipes and thinking of the Easter Bunny I decided to attempt a carrot cake. I had heard of the Joy of Baking website before and heard good reviews, so I decided to give their recipe a go. I also enjoyed the fact that a video was included; as I always find seeing the texture and consistency of the batter, icing, etc. helps me immmensely when i'm trying things for the first time.

The recipe, which I linked below, was FANTASTIC! The batter was smooth and fragrant, and the cakes came out prefectly risen and I had no trouble removing them from the pans. I made the cakes the day before then assembled them the next day so they were fully cooled, I did; however, only make half of the icing recipe. I did this because my famiy doesnt like pounds of icing and I also don't like when you can only taste the icing of a cake. Overall, this recipe was a 9/10.
http://www.joyofbaking.com/CarrotCake.html

Egg Custard:
This recipe I found on Epicurious, I was a little hesitent at first to use an American Egg Custard recipe as I am used to English one's passed down through my family. But, I was up to giving it a go.

This recipe was excellent the custard set perfectly and everyone enjoyed the taste. I decided to make two pies, so I doubled the recipe. I ended up with tons of custard, I ended up having enough to make around four pies! So, I would say if you were looking for two regular sized pies one recipe will be plenty.

PS don't add the food colouring I found no need the pie was yellow enough for me.
Overall, 9/10
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/grandmas-egg-custard-pie/