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!
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!
Tiramisu! It's like we're at a fancy Italian Restaurant... when actually we can't leave the house!
Tiramisu! It just sounds delicious! This Italian dessert has layers of coffee soaked ladyfingers (which we made yesterday!), sandwiched with sweet fluffy mascarpone cheese filling, then topped with a sprinkle of cocoa powder! No Italian restaurant required!
This photo does not capture the deliciousness of this Tiramisu!
Tiramisu
Yield: 1 large serving dish, I believe my glass dish is about 2 litres, but use whatever pan you’ve got, the taller the container, the more layers you will get. You could also make this in a 9”x13” pan
Mascarpone Filling:
1 1/4 cup Whipping cream
4 Egg Yolks
1/2 cup Sugar
2 Tablespoons Frangelico - Traditionally this is made with Marsala wine, but I don’t have any, so use whatever liqueur you got!
pinch of Salt
1 1/4 cup Mascarpone Cheese, softened at room temperature
Ladyfinger Soaking Syrup :
2 cups of coffee
1/4 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons Frangelico (optional)
Approximately 24 ladyfingers (or one batch of the recipe we made yesterday)
Cocoa Powder - for dusting
In a shallow baking dish stir together your ladyfinger soaking syrup ingredients - coffee, sugar, Frangelico. Set this to the side.
In the bowl of your mixer (or by hand) whip the cream to soft peaks. Then leave in fridge until we are ready for it.
Get a pot with water simmering on the stove, we are going to do a water bath! Just an inch or two of water in the bottom of a large pot will be perfect.
Grab a metal bowl the will fit on top of your pot of water and in it place the egg yolks, sugar, Frangelico, and salt. Then stir them together and place it on top of the simmering water pot on the stove. The bowl should not be touching the water, we are just trying to steam the bottom of our bowl and cook the eggs so they are safe to eat.
Constantly stir your egg mixture while it is sitting on the waterbath until the eggs feel warm/hot and when you rub it between your fingers you cannot feel any grains of sugar. Then pour this mixture into the bowl of your mixer and whip on high until cool - it should be super fluffy and marshmallowy looking.
In a large bowl place your softened mascarpone cheese.
With a spatula fold in all of your egg mixture, being as gentle as you can so you don’t knock out too much air.
Now fold in about 1/3 of your whipped cream, again, being gentle!
Then fold in the rest of your cream. Now your filling is complete!
To layer your tiramisu you will start with a layer of ladyfingers. Grab one ladyfinger, dunk it into your coffee syrup on both sides and then place it into the bottom of your serving dish. Continue until you have fully covered the bottom of the pan (mine fit 8 cookies).
Now pour a layer of your mascarpone filling - my container would fit 3 layers of ladyfinger cookies, so I planned to do 3 layers of mascarpone filling, so I poured about 1/3 of the filling on top. but count up your ladyfingers in the base layer and see how many cookies you have for your baking dish and divide the filling evenly.
Continue to layer the soaked ladyfinger cookies, then the mascarpone filling until you use them all up.
Then lightly dust the top of your tiramisu with cocoa powder!
This baby is all finished now, it just needs to sit in the fridge for about 8 hours or overnight to let everything soak into each other.
Yum!
Date Bars, some call them "Matrimonial Slice" but you know commitment issues...we're just DATING!
Sometimes I am a 100 year old women, why? BECAUSE I LOVE DATE BARS! They are buttery, soft, crunchy, cinnamon-y, and sweet! Plus, they are made of dried fruit and oats, so as far as I’m concerned they are a breakfast food. If you aren’t into the dates, you can also replace the date filling with the apple pie filling we made for our turnovers a few days ago, just double the apple filling recipe so you use 2 apples!
Date Bars for when your not allowed to go on dates to bars.
Date Bars
Yield: one 8”x8” pan or something of a similar size
Preheat your oven to 350*F
Date Filling:
2 1/2 cups roughly chopping Dried Dates (about one pound)
1 cup Water
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Butter
1 Tablespoon Grand Marnier (optional)
Streusel:
3/4 cup Butter, soft
1 cup Brown Sugar
1 1/4 cup Flour
1 1/4 cup Oats
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
In a small pot over medium heat cook your dates, water, lemon juice, baking soda, salt and butter until it thickens and forms a puree type mixture. Remove from heat. (If your don’t want any larger date chunks you can puree this mixture in a food processor, but I like the texture so I just leave it as is!)
Add the Grand Marnier if using, then set to the side.
In a large bowl combine all the Streusel ingredients and rub them together with your hands until they are combined.
In a greased and lined 8”x8” pan pour about 2/3 of your streusel mixture and press into the bottom of the pan to form a crust.
Pour all of your date filling on top of the base crust and smooth it out evenly making sure to cover the entire base.
Now take the last 1/3 of streusel and crumble it on top of the date layer.
Bake in a preheated 350*F oven for about 25-35 minutes or until just starting to turn golden brown on the edges.
Let cool, then slice and eat! Or add to your tray of dainties if you are having a fancy team party like I wish I was having right now!
Lemon Cranberry Scones!
Did you see Julie Van Rosendaal and I did a live instagram! What!!! She’s only my idol, no big deal! Just kidding SUPER BIG DEAL! How exciting!!! Anyways Julie made biscuits and I made these lemon cranberry scones!
Lemony and delicious!
Lemon Cranberry Scones
Yield: 6 scones
Preheat your oven to 350*F
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 1/2 cups Flour
1/4 cup Sugar
1/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 1/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 cup Butter, cold, cubed
1/2 cup Buttermilk
1 Egg
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract (or the zest of 1 lemon)
1/4 cup Dried Cranberries
Glaze:
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
Enough Icing Sugar to thicken to a drizzling consistency ~1/4-1/2 cup
In a large bowl stir together your dry ingredients - salt, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder.
Using your fingers pinch and rub in the butter until the mixture looks sandy but still has some pea sized chunks of butter.
Now pour in your liquid ingredients - buttermilk, egg, lemon extract, and you can also add in the cranberries at this time too. Stir just until combined.
On a floured surface shape your dough into a rough circle about 1” thick, then using a knife cut the circle like a pie, into 6 pieces.
Place onto a lined baking tray and brush the tops with a little buttermilk and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned.
While baking, mix together your glaze, lemon juice and icing sugar, just add enough icing sugar until you get a thin paste.
Once your scones come out of the oven, drizzle the glaze on them while hot.
Now eat! Yay!!