Category Archives: Foundation Skills

Marzipan is an tasty confection of powdered almond and sugar with a touch of rosewater. With ingredients like that it would be easy to guess that it began its worldly travels in the Middle East, and you would be correct. Brought back to Europe as explorers returned home, marzipan was for centuries food for the […]

I have wanted to share this for some time and encourage you to give it a try….homemade Greek style yoghurt. So yummy and yes, I make it with whole milk but it works with 2% and skim as well. An added bonus is that it costs 50% less than the same volume of purchased yoghurt […]

October and pumpkins what can I say, love and marriage? horse and carriage?. You definitely can’t have one without the other. Unless of course, you don’t like pumpkin, in which case check back around the 7th of the month. I thought a good place to start was with pumpkin puree and pumpkin spice, the basics […]

If you have never made jam before, please know it does not need to be an all day, sweat on the brow adventure, unless of course you want to impress the family. Five or six jars can easily be whipped up in under an hour and will bring lots of satisfaction and appreciation as the […]

Applesauce is one of those staples that can be really useful as the year goes by, especially in alternative and sugar reduced baking. Most of us have heard of serving applesauce with pork roast (or roasted goose in Europe) even if you don’t personally eat pork. But do you know the reason for this? The […]

I taught a goats milk soap making class last week and ended up with leftover goats milk that I used to make some doggie treats and this batch of chevre cheese. As a personal preference, I would normally choose a cow’s milk fresh cheese over goat’s milk so I was pleasantly suprised at the taste […]

When something is expensive and not easy to get, it is always a good idea to find a way to extend the flavour in some way. I did that this summer with my handful of cascade berries that were turned into liquour and then chocolates. It allows more people to share in the bounty. Originally […]

Tempering is the process of cooling something in order to gain strength for that product. It happens in glass and steel and chocolate. If chocolate is just melted and used to make a chocolate, the ingredients will melt in your hands before it can get to your mouth. Now please bare in mind I am talking […]

High teas are generally divided into three sections, the savoury options were often “finger” sandwiches (small enough to eat cleanly with two fingers). They were filled with cucumber slices, watercress, tuna and similar light fillings. I think I have shared the story of my grandfather as a boy, who regularly won MVP when playing soccer. The […]

Yesterday I posted a cookie recipe that includes a dusting of sugar while the cookies are warm out of the oven. It got me thinking about flavoured (my Canadian is showing) sugars and that led on to a couple of additional points every magical pantry can benefit from. First off, let’s chat about zesting. The […]