For April’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired with Karen of Lavender and Lovage. Karen is an English cook who loves to share British recipes and French inspired recipes that look AMAZING! Looking through her blog, I was so impressed with all the gorgeous things she’d make for tea time - a quintessential English practise. I definitely need to get more tea time in my life!

She has TONS of amazing looking recipes including these Little Victoria Lemon Daisy Cakes, this Victorian Spring Posy Cake, this sticky Ginger Marmalade Loaf and this beautiful looking fruit salad. She also has a ton of recipes using her mom’s lemon curd and she even has a recipe for strawberry curd! Yum!

I have to admit that I was really only looking at her sweet recipes as I was looking for something to make as a birthday cake for myself and Karen didn’t disappoint. After much debating, I ended up choosing her Fresh Orange Cake with Citrus Buttercream. It’s a variation of her Victoria Sandwich Cake – a sponge cake that can be made into any size that you want as all the ingredients used (butter/margarine, sugar, flour) are the same weight as the eggs used . The original recipe calls for 4 eggs, but I used 3 and it was pretty easy to adapt. I couldn’t quite convince myself to use the full measurements of margarine and sugar, so I reduced them a bit. I debated trying to make this egg free, but I wouldn’t have know how to adapt it given how the recipe is made.

The buttercream originally had lemon curd in it, but it isn’t quite as readily available in Canada as it is in England, so I substituted a mixture of orange zest, lemon juice and limoncello. I added strawberries in the filling and garnished with one on top.

I can’t wait to try this cake – it looks so tasty! I will be sharing it with my coworkers tomorrow morning as my birthday gift to them, so I’ll get the final verdict then!

Lavender and Lovage’s Fresh Orange Cake

3 free range eggs (215 g)
200 g of margarine
150 g of castor sugar (I used normal white sugar that I made finer in my magic bullet)
215 g of flour (I used a mixture of brown rice, sorghum (~2/3 of the weight) and tapioca and potato starch (~1/3 of the weight)
1 tsp. xathan gum
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
Zest of two oranges
Juice of one orange (probably could have used two)
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar

1. Preheat your oven to 350F and grease and line two 6″ cake pans.
2. Cream margarine and sugar together until fluffy.
3. Add orange zest. Add eggs one at a time until fully combined.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flours, gum, leavening and salt. Shift flour into the fat and fold in.
5. Mix in orange juice and vinegar.
6. Divide evenly between both pans and bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
7. Let cake sit in the pan for a couple minutes before removing to cool on a cooling rack.
8. Once cool, frost with buttercream icing.

Citrus Buttercream Icing

4oz margarine
8 oz icing sugar
Zest of half an orange
Orange Juice
Lemon Juice
Limoncello

1. Cream margarine and icing sugar.
2. Add orange zest and a mixture of orange juice, lemon juice and limoncello (one tbsp at a time) beating until you reach the desired consistency.
3. Frost cake once it’s cool.

Karen, it was truly a pleasure to look through your blog with all your delicious recipes and gorgeous photos! I felt that I really learned about British Cuisine and look forward to trying more of your recipes!

Please check out the rest of Group D’s recipes below!

For March’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired with Asiya of Chocolate and Chilies – a fellow Canadian! Asiya started her blog as a way to record of all the recipes that she’s tried and I’d say she’s done a great job at picking delicious recipes and taking great photos of them! She has tons and tons of beautiful, tasty looking recipes like this Spring Greens Risotto, this mango smoothie, these kiwi, lime and coconut muffins and this eggless, machine-less mango ice cream. She even has a coconut oil pie crust recipe and a whole page about substitutions!

After a lot of perusing her beautiful blog, I ended up choosing her Apple Coffee Cake and I wasn’t disappointed with my vegan, gluten free version! In the original recipe, you create a layer of apples, sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon between two layers of cake, but since vegan gluten-free cake batters are usually thicker than their non-vegan glutenated counterparts that just wasn’t going to happen. As a substitute, a tossed the sliced apples in cinnamon and then mixed them into the batter. Since I took this approach, I probably could have added a third apple.

The cake turned out really well! It rose beautifully, and the texture was fluffy and had a good crumb. It was also tasty – I’d definitely make it again, although I’ll add less sugar next time, especially in the topping.

Gluten Free Vegan Apple Coffee Cake

Cake:

2/3 c. each of brown rice and sorghum flours
2/3 c. tapioca starch
1 tsp. xanthan gum
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. dairy free margarine
1/2 c. white sugar
2 egg replacers (1 tbsp powder + 1/4 c. almond milk)
1/2 c. almond milk
1 1/2 tsp. apple cider vinegar
2 apples, peeled and sliced and tossed in cinnamon (Could use 3)

Topping:
2-3 tbsp. brown rice flour
1 tbsp. dairy free margarine
1/4 c. white sugar (could also use brown/sucanat sugar)
1 tsp. cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 9″ cake pan with parchment paper and grease both the parchment paper and pan.
2. In a small bowl, mix together the topping using your hands. Set aside.
3. Whisk together the dry ingredients and set aside.
4. Beat margarine and sugar together until fluffy (takes a few minutes.)
5. Add egg replacer and beat until combined.
6. Alternate adding flour and milk to the fat mixture, starting and ending with flour. Add the apple cider vinegar.
7. Mix in the apples. Scrape into the pan and used a spatula to smooth out.
8. Sprinkle the topping evenly over the cake.
9. Bake for about 40 – 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in multiple places comes out dry.
10. Cool on a rack. Can serve warm or room temperature.
11. Enjoy!

Asiya, it was great looking through your blog and I look forward to trying more of your recipes!

Please check out all the other recipes for Secret Recipe Club’s Group D below:

What did you do? We did the cool thing and played crib by candlelight.

For February’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired with Dena of Oh! You Cook!. Dena is a Librarian by day and makes delicious looking Kosher food by night, including this delicious fruit salad, all these AMAZING looking Purim treats and these Moroccan carrots.

It was quite a treat for me to look through all her recipes and get a better understanding of what things one eats on various Jewish holidays. Purim sounds especially amazing with all those sweets.

After much humming and hawing, I finally chose her Jerusalem Carrot Salad, which is an approximation of a salad she had while in Jerusalem.

I pretty much followed the recipe exactly (shock, I know!) except that my spices almost burnt and then turned into these huge really dark brown spice clumps. My guess it’s because I added the honey while it was too hot, causing it to act kind of like sugar when you make candy. I salvaged what I could and added a bit more olive oil and honey whisked with the spices.

The result was decent, but I think I would have liked it better without the cumin as for some reason, I really don’t like cumin (and it doesn’t appear to like me either). On the same token, I didn’t want to leave it out as I wasn’t sure how that would affect the flavor profile of the salad. This salad is fairly delicate with the finely grated carrot, but if you’re short on time coarsely grating the carrot would make it easier to toss.

Dena, it was really fun to spend so much time looking through all of your recipes – you definitely prove that kosher food can look and taste delicious!

Please check out the rest of Group D’s recipes below!

Being me, I wanted them to be healthier(ish), but still tasty. They are based off Cybele Pascal’s Vegan Vanilla Cupcakes recipe from The Allergen-Free Baker’s Handbook (great book & resource!), but I reduced the sugar and added raspberry purée as a swirl to take away some of the sweetness. Many raspberry swirl cupcakes get you to add sugar to the raspberries, but I don’t think that’s necessary.

These cupcakes work well with or without frosting – just make sure that you don’t add tons of it if you’re trying to reduce your sugar intake! (Don’t take a page from Crave Cupcakes. Seriously. No mountain-high icing swirls for me!)

I brought them to work and my coworkers loved them (“this is gluten free? Everything I’ve ever tried that was gluten free was gross, but this is really good!”) – little did they know that they were also vegan!

I asked one of my coworkers how they compared in taste and texture to gluten ones and she said they were fairly similar and that mine were considerably less sweet, which was a good thing. I take that as praise for gluten free vegan baking!

Gluten Free Vegan Raspberry Swirl Cupcakes

1/2 c. Sorghum flour
3/4 c. Brown rice flour
1/2 c. Tapioca starch
1/4 c. Potato starch
1/2 tsp. xanthan gum
1/2 tsp. Salt
1 tsp. Baking powder
1 tsp. Baking soda
1 c. Almond milk
1 tsp. Apple cider vinegar
1/2 c. Vegan shortening (I used earth balance, which is unfortunately not soy free, but I needed to use it up)
3/4 c. Sugar (could probably use even less as I found them to be quite sweet)
1 1/2 tsp. Vanilla
1 Tbsp. Powdered egg replacer, whisked with 1/4 c. water
1 c. Frozen raspberries, thawed and mashed (you could purée them in a blender, but why make extra dishes when you don’t have to?)

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line muffin tins with paper cups (I made 20 mini cupcakes and 7 larger ones, but I think you could easily do 24 mini cupcakes and six bigger ones. This should make about 12 standard sized cupcakes.)
2. Whisk together dry ingredients. Set aside.
3. Measure out your almond milk and add the vinegar. Stir and set aside.
4. In the bowl of a mixer, beat together the shortening, sugar, egg replacer and vanilla until fluffy, about 2 min.
5. Add flour mixture in three parts and almond milk in two parts alternatively, starting and ending with the flour. Beat until smooth.
6. Scoop a but of batter into each muffin tin (about 1/3 full). Add about a scant tsp of raspberries to the mini cupcakes and a scant Tbsp to the large cupcakes.
7. Cover with batter until tins are 3/4 full. Using a toothpick, swirl the raspberries around the cupcake.
8. Bake in oven for ~14 min for the minis and ~20 min for the larger cupcakes it until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
   Immediately remove from tin onto a cooling rack.
9. Frost once cool, if desired.

Raspberry Frosting

1/2 c. vegan margarine
2+ c. icing sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 – 3 tbsp raspberry purée (left over from cupcakes)

1. Beat the margarine until fluffy.
2. Add icing sugar, vanilla and raspberry purée.
3. Beat until smooth. Add more icing sugar or purée to get the desired consistency.
4. Pipe onto cupcakes with a star tip.
5. Add heart sprinkles if desired.
6. Enjoy!

*I found this amount of frosting to be perfect as I managed to ice all of the cupcakes. As you can see, I tried not to add a ton of frosting, so if you want more on your cupcakes, you’ll need to make more frosting.

What are your plans for Valentine’s Day?

View of Kananaskis Lakes from Blueberry Hill

Ever gotten back into something that you used to do a lot?

Upper Kananaskis Lake – Looking toward the Point and Forks Campgrounds

Cross Country Skiing is that for me. As a kid, we used to go fairly frequently and then I went sporadically as a teenager and adult. However, in the last month, I have gone three times. Mr. Bean and I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade our gear so we’re no longer using secondhand stuff from the 80s. It definitely helps!

It can be so peaceful skiing through the snow covered trees and seeing things like this creek… Plus, now that I’m used to my new skis, I can snowplow with greater control and don’t do the “ahhh!! I’m going to fall – goodbye balance!!” dance while going down hills. Am I the only person who does that?

I am so grateful that I live so close to the mountains and have the opportunity to go out and enjoy them – does it make me weird if I want this warm weather to go away so it’ll snow so I can go skiing?

No twigs or pine needles in my eyes – my safety glasses did their best to replace my broken sunglasses.

Last weekend my mom and I headed out the Peter Lougheed Park and skied up to Blueberry Hill. It was a beautiful and warm day and lucky us got spoiled on the way back – what an amazing sunset to end a fantastic day!

I tried to adjust the colours so they looked similar to what I actually saw – still is nothing close to the real thing!

Have you gotten back into something after not really doing it for a while?

After ready through Shari’s story, I really want to take my mom’s cookbook of recipes she copied from her mom when she got married and cook through the whole lot. It might be challenging given my food restrictions, but it would totally be worth it and a good way to remember my Grannie. Perhaps a 2013 challenge?

Shari has tons of delicious recipes – while I was sick, I literally clicked through over 50 pages of her blog because everything looked so good and I couldn’t decide on anything! There are things like her mom’s legendary banana bread, this homemade nutella, these slow-cooked beef tips and this blueberry cucumber feta salad. I eventually ended up choosing her Bean Salad.

It’s not your traditional bean salad as it only has green beans and chickpeas instead of a whole assortment of other beans. I didn’t mind as it was definitely very tasty! I used less marinade/sauce as I am really not a sauce person and added a bit of honey to take away the zing of raw onions/leeks.

Salad
1/2 to 3/4 package frozen beans
1/4 red onions, thinly sliced
3 green onions, sliced
1/3 yellow pepper, thinly sliced
1/2 c. thinly sliced leeks
1 rib celery, sliced
1 small can of chickpeas
1/2 c. parsley, chopped

Dressing
1/4 c. white vinegar
1/4 c. olive oil
Juice of one lemon
1/4 – 1/2 tsp. dry mustard (could use 1 tbsp. dijon mustard)
1 tsp. honey
1/4 tsp. black pepper
Pinch of salt

Lettuce Leaves

1. Place beans in a pot, cover with water and bring to a boil. Once the pot boils, drain and rinse with cool water.
2. Place beans in a large bowl with the remainder of the ingredients. Toss.
3. Whisk together dressing (below) and pour over salad. Toss salad to even coat.
4. Let sit for a few hours, stirring occasionally.
5. Serve over leaves of lettuce or plain if you desire.
6. Enjoy!

Please make sure to check out the rest of Group D’s recipes below for January’s Secret Recipe Club!

Decorations for the Baby Shower I Threw for a Friend – Inspired by InkObsessionDesigns

It’s already almost the end of January and 2013 has already started to pick up, so 2012 almost seems like a faint memory despite it being less than a month ago. Such is life, I guess.

Newborn Shoot for a Friend

2012 was definitely a year full of firsts, challenges and triumphs. I also apparently took way more photos than I thought – as can be seen with the accompanying collages (look at alt-text for descriptions!) I also finished my Photography Certificate of Achievement through SAIT – go figure that procrastinating me has yet to submit my form to get the actual certificate.

Annual Field Trip

In 2012, I got my first “Real” job, watched one of my siblings get married,  Shot a wedding as the Primary Photographer, climbed a 10,000ft Mountain and sent out a Christmas card and letter. You know, small things like that.

House my Family let for my Brother’s Wedding

My Brother and Sister-in-Law’s Wedding

First of all, I learned a LOT at work. Not just technical stuff, but things about myself like how I am more capable than I think I am and that I can survive through embarrassing situations where I wish the floor would swallow me up as have fun to boot!

Okay, I’ll fill you in – at the end of August, I went up to Fort St. John on a field trip and I was so out of it on the first day that I dropped my glass of water on the floor (and all over myself) while at the client’s office. Go me! Despite being super spastic, I ended up having fun, but it could also because I have a tendency to get incredibly hyper when I’m really, really tired. I’ll keep believing the former as it makes me feel better about myself.

Summer Fun at the Cabin

Mr. Bean and I also spent a fair amount of time at the cabin having fires. I ate waaaaaay too many s’mores, but I justify it by saying that I’m making up for almost 12+ years of not eating them. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Vancouver Island

I also learned that I need to be better at taking care of myself. There was a period in June and July (before I went on a glorious vacation) that all I did was work, ride my bike to and from work, eat and sleep. I had no desire (or time) to do anything with other people. Not exactly the best example of enjoying life to its fullest. Or at all.

Friend’s Engagement Photos

While shooting my first official wedding, I gained even more respect for wedding photographers – everything happens SO quickly and you can really only hope that you’re able to capture everything and that it looks good. I was so happy that Mr. Bean helped me!

Friend’s Wedding Photos

I did manage to do a bit of hiking in 2012 – first I went with my parents to Mt. Lipsett in Kananaskis, Piper Pass in Kananaskis with my family while my sister was visiting, the Plain of the Six Glaciers in Lake Louise with my mom (where we saw a huge chunk of ice fall off a glacier – very cool) and to Pocaterra Cirque with Mr. Bean during the height of the larch trees. I LOVE larch trees.

Hiking in 2012 – Mt. Lipsett, Piper’s Pass/Elbow Trail, Lake Louise – Plain of the Six Glaciers, Pocaterra Cirque

My mom and I also went on a backpacking trip into the Skoki area in behind Lake Louise ski hill in Banff National Park. There, we climbed Mt. Richardson – take that, fear of heights! – my first 10,000 ft peak. We had a few issues with weather (hiking in the pouring rain isn’t the most fun), with our camp stove, forgetting sunscreen only to realize that there was some in the care after we went back to the Lake Louise townsite to get more and thinking that sunscreen was lotion, but we still had fun. We also ate delicious dehydrated meals, similar to our previous meals. The area was so beautiful that I convinced Mr. Bean that it would be a good idea to head to Skoki Lodge for our 5th wedding anniversary this year (in the same cabin that Will & Kate stayed in when they visited in 2011!)

Annual Backpacking Trip with my Mom

The year ended well and poorly – we celebrated a wonderful Christmas with both sides of our family and I baked a lot. Unfortunately, shortly after Christmas, I got the flu which eventually morphed into viral Bronchitis. I guess it was okay – it’s only because I was sick that I made all these storyboards!

Night Photography

What are the best moments of 2012 for you?

Prayer is more powerful than I’d like to admit. It’s scary and seemingly dangerous but it does make the best and most difficult things happen.

What I write in my journal this morning. Apparently, I’m afraid of things majorly changing.

A few days after Christmas, I got the flu, which then morphed into viral bronchitis (fun, eh?), so I haven’t spent that much time making anything other than tea and chicken soup. However, I was really itching to bake something before I go back to work, so I thought: “why not make something that is full of cold-fighting ingredients, so it doesn’t make me feel worse?” (Any excuse works when it comes to me justifying my desire to bake!)  Things like:

• Honey – can soothe sore throats, is full of antioxidants and is anti-bacterial (source)
• Oranges & cranberries – contain vitamin C, which helps you fight colds (source – a book written by my favourite chemist, Linus Pauling. Yes, I am a nerd.)
• Ginger – is an antihistamine and decongestant (source)
• Coconut oil – helps your immune system and isn’t soy. (source)

Since sugar is known to not help your immune system, I wanted to reduce the amount used and use honey instead for its illness fighting properties. I did include a small amount of unrefined granulated sugar as I know that cakes get part of their fine crumb from granulated sugar. Plus, I’ve never really baked with honey so I didn’t want to stray too much from the original recipe.

The cake turned out quite well – it wasn’t overly sweet, the cranberries and orange flavour played off each other wonderfully, the cranberries were sufficiently goopy and delicious (look at the edge of the cake – upside down cakes can’t get better than that!) and the cake texture is moist and delicate. It wasn’t overly ginger-y, so if you like ginger, please feel free to add more!

I’m pretty sure that you can make this recipe to be egg free easily – either add two egg replacers or increase the xanthan gum to 1 tsp, add an extra tsp. of baking powder and increase liquid by ~ 4tbsp or until your batter reaches the desired consistency. If you try this, please let me know!

The cake was inspired by this honey cake from Free From Kitchen. The upside-down-ness was inspired by this Cranberry Upside-down Cake by The Daily Dietribe, this cake from Hungry Cravings and the pineapple upside down cake in the Joy of Cooking.

Gluten, Dairy, Refined Sugar and Soy Free Honey Orange Ginger Cranberry Upside Down Cake

For Cranberry Upside-Down-ness
~ 3 tbsp coconut oil
1/3 c. honey
Grated fresh ginger (~ 1/2″ x 1″ knob, more or less to taste)
1 – 2 tbsp. sucanat
1 package fresh cranberries

For Cake
45 g brown rice flour
40 g sorghum flour
20 g millet flour
30 g sweet rice flour
40 g tapioca starch
1/2 tsp. xanthan gum
2 tsp. baking powder
Pinch of Salt
100g coconut oil
150g honey
35 g sucanat
1 tbsp. orange zest
1 tsp. grated ginger
1 – 2+ tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice
2 tbsp. almond milk
2 large eggs

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Place the 3 tbsp. coconut oil in a 9″ cake pan and place in the oven until melted (about a minute). Swirl around to coat the bottom.
3. Combine honey, ginger and sucanat in a measuring cup. Pour into pan and spread out over the coconut oil.
4. Place pan back in oven, stirring every few minutes until sugar mixture bubbles a lot. Remove from oven.
5. While pan is heating, wash cranberries and remove the gross ones. Once pan is out of oven, spread cranberries over pan until it is entirely covered in a single layer. Set aside.
6. Zest orange and squeeze the juice out of one half. Grate the ginger.
7. Whisk together the flours, xanthan gum, baking powder and salt.  Set Aside.
8. In a small saucepan, mix together the coconut oil, honey and sucanat. Heat up, stirring, until the sugar starts to dissolve. The coconut oil will stay separate from the honey and that is okay.
9. Pour mixture into bowl of a stand mixer. Add zest and ginger.
10. Alternate adding flour with the orange juice/almond milk, adding more liquid if needed. Beat until combined. Don’t over beat as you’ll end up with channels in your cake like I did.
11. Add eggs one at a time and beat until smooth.
12. Scrape into pan over cranberries and spread evenly.
13. Bake in oven for 25 – 35 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Place a pan on the rack below to catch any drips.
14. Let cool for a few minutes on a rack before placing a serving plate over the pan and inverting. Remove pan and let cool.
15. Enjoy!

What do you do for sweets while sick?