Baking recipes
Scroll through our posts below to try all sorts of delicious baking recipes from our instagram baking videos. New baking videos are posted the first week of each month on Instagram and Facebook.
To easily find one of our recipes type below:
Butter Tarts! Classic Canadian!
What’s the most Canadian dessert? I would say it’s a tie between butter tarts and Nanaimo bars, but butter tarts are definitely MY favourite! These little tarts are basically a buttery vanilla sugar pie, I love butter, I love sugar, what more do you need…RAISINS! Ok some people hate raisins in their butter tarts, I believe they are crucial, but do what you love, that’s the fun of baking, you can make them exactly how you want! The way I make my butter tarts is by adding the raisins before the filling, instead of mixing them together, so you can even make some with raisins and some without and then judge how you prefer them. So many options!
Look at those gooey edges!
Butter Tarts
Yield: 12 tarts (made in a muffin tin)
Preheat your oven to 375*F
Pie Dough:
Alternatively, you can skip the pie dough step and buy the frozen tart shells from your grocery store, just fill and bake them straight from the freezer, no thawing required!
2 cups Flour
1/2 cup COLD butter, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup shortening (you can replace this with butter if you prefer, I just like the texture it brings)
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Sugar
1/4-1/2 cup COLD water
Filling:
1/2 cup Raisins (optional)
1 teaspoon Dark Rum (optional)
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Corn Syrup
1/4 cup Butter, melted
1 Egg
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/4 teaspoon Salt
In a large bowl combine your flour, salt and sugar for the dough.
Toss in your cold butter and shortening and using your fingers pinch and rub the butter into the flour until it looks crumbly like sand, but still has some large pea sized chunks of butter - this is going to make things flaky!
Add your cold water, start with about 1/4 cup, and see how it feels, depending on your flour and how the butter has been incorporated, you might not need the full amount, You want the dough to stay together when pressed in your hand, I used about 1/3 cup in my dough.
Your bowl should still have some drier bits at the bottom, that is perfect, then dump the bowl of pastry out onto your counter and give it a few kneads until it comes into a nice ball, then press into a flat disk or rectangle and wrap in saran wrap. Chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
Once your dough is chilled, roll it out on a flat surface to about 1/8-1/4” thickness and cut into about 4” diameter circles, you want a circle that will fit into the cavity of a muffin tin, so see what fits best in yours. Or maybe you have actual tart tins, you can definitely use those too!
If you run out of dough, just lightly press the scraps together and continue cutting out the rounds.
Take each circle and press it into each cavity of your muffin tin, making sure to press in the corners so they are filled with dough.
Once all your muffin cavities are lined with dough, poke the bases a few times with a fork, this is called “docking” and helps any trapped air release during baking.
Pop your muffin tin into the freezer to firm up, at least 20 minutes.
Now for the filling, you can skip this step but it makes things more decadent, take your raisins and cover them with boiling water to soak. Just enough water to cover them, the amount doesn’t matter as we will be draining it all off. Soak 10+ minutes.
Once your raisins have soaked, drain them off, and squeeze out any excess moisture. Then toss with the 1 teaspoon of Rum! Set to the side.
In a large bowl combine all the rest of the ingredients for the filling - brown sugar, corn syrup, melted butter, egg, salt and vanilla. Stir to combine.
Now to put everything together! In your chilled tart shells, evenly distribute the raisins into the bottom of each tart (or however many you want raisins in!)
Scoop your filling mixture on top of the raisins in each tart shell, then pop into a preheated 375*F oven for about 15-25 minutes until gold and bubbly! The longer you bake them, the thicker your filling, if you like them gooier, bake them a little less.
Let cool and devour!
Blueberry Cake aka Blueberry Buckle!
This cake is family favourite! We would make it every summer whenever we had some fresh blueberries! It’s a soft buttery cake layered with blueberries and cinnamon streusel! the blueberries burst into the cake while it bakes making a delicious layer of blueberries and cinnamon in the middle! So good!
ALL the blueberries!
Blueberry Cake
Recipe courtesy of my mama Patty Lotecki
Yield: one 9”x13” pan
Preheat your oven to 350*F
Streusel:
1/4 cup Butter
1 cup Brown Sugar
1 Tablespoon Cinnamon
Blueberry Layer:
2 cups Blueberries
1/2 cup Sugar
Cake:
3/4 cup soft Butter
3/4 cup Sugar
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
2 Eggs
1 cup buttermilk (or sour cream, or yogurt, or 1 cup milk plus 1 teaspoon vinegar)
2 cups Flour
In a bowl combine your streusel ingredients (butter, brown sugar and cinnamon) by rubbing them together with your hands until combined. Set aside.
In a bowl combine your blueberry layer ingredients - blueberries and sugar. Toss to combine. Set aside.
In the bowl of a mixer place your butter, sugar, salt, baking soda, baking powder and vanilla. Whip until light and fluffy.
Add eggs one at a time, mixing between each egg until they are combined. Then give your bowl a scrape down and whip for a few more minutes or until light and fluffy.
Slowly add about 1/3 of your flour to the butter mixture, once it’s almost fully combined add half of the buttermilk, then continue alternating the buttermilk and flour until it’s all used up. I usually do 3 portions of flour and two of buttermilk. Then scrape your bowl down and mix for about 20 seconds until the batter is nice and combined.
In a greased 9”x13” pan put about 2/3 of your cake batter and smear so it covers the entire base of the pan.
Next, layer all of your blueberry mixture, spreading it evenly on top of the cake batter.
Then layer all of your streusel topping on top of the blueberry layer as evenly as possible.
Now dollop spoonfuls of the remaining batter randomly on top of the streusel layer so you can still see the streusel peeking through.
Bake in a preheated 350*F oven until golden brown and comes out clean when stabbed with a toothpick.
Let it cool then devour!
Mini Egg Nanaimo Bars!!!!! Yes, you read that correctly!
Mini eggs - they’re my addiction! Normally I would be in the midst of making a zillion mini egg cakes and bunny shaped sugar cookies, but alas it’s quarantine! Now I have a ridiculous amount of mini eggs and all I want to do is eat them by the handful…which I do, but we should bake some too! Genius idea - MINI EGG NANAIMO BARS! It came to me as I was eating mini eggs out of a bowl like they were cereal and they are HEAVENLY!
Mini Egg Nanaimo Bars before slicing!
Mini Egg Nanaimo Bars
Yield: 8”x8” pan
Preheat your oven to 350*F
Base:
1 cup Graham Cracker Crumbs
3/4 cup Sweetened Coconut (or unsweetened)
1/2 cup Toasted Almonds, chopped up (can substitute another nut, or replace with graham cracker crumbs)
1/4 cup Cocoa Powder
1/4 cup Sugar
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1/3 cup Butter, melted
1 Egg
Icing Filling:
1/2 cup Butter, soft
2 Tablespoons Hot Chocolate Powder (or 1 Tablespoon Cocoa powder)
2 Tablespoons Milk
1 teaspoon Vanilla
2 cups Icing Sugar
1/4 cup Crushed Mini Eggs (I crushed them in a food processor)
Chocolate Topping:
3/4 cup Dark Chocolate (semi-sweet Chocolate chips will work great!)
1.5 Tablespoons Butter
2 Tablespoons Crushed Mini eggs
Roughly chopped mini eggs for top decor ~ 1/4 cup
In a bowl combine the base dry ingredients - graham cracker crumbs, coconut, almonds, cocoa, sugar, and salt. Stir to combine.
Add your melted butter and egg, and stir until combined.
Pour your base mixture into a parchment lined 8”x8” baking pan, and using your hands press it evenly over the base of the pan until its evenly covered and compacted.
Bake your base for about 10-15 minutes until it feels firm and you can’t see any liquid bits. Let cool.
Once your base is cool, in the bowl of a mixer combine your icing filling ingredients. Start with the milk and hot chocolate powder, stir them together to moisten the powder, then add all the other ingredients - butter, icing sugar, mini eggs, and vanilla extract. Mix on medium high speed until light and fluffy looking 4-6 minutes.
Smear the icing filling on top of your cooled base and evenly spread it out, trying to make the top as smooth as possible. Chill until firm, at least 30 minutes.
In a microwaveable bowl, or a double boiler (if you want to use a stove), melt together your chocolate and butter until fully melted.
Stir in the crushed mini eggs to the chocolate and quickly spread on top of the firm icing layer.
Sprinkle with more chopped mini eggs!
Chill until set, ideally 4 hours.
Cut and eat! These also freeze great!