Clockwork Lemon

British Flapjacks

Oats are often used in healthy breakfast and snack-time recipes full of wholesome ingredients that you can feel good about. People see a baked good made out of a oats and think "this is probably good for me".

That's precisely what I thought when I was in England and saw an pile of oat squares for sale at a train station. My first tip that these bars were not necessarily meant for breakfast should have been that they were being sold along side chocolate bars and candy, but I was momentarily confused by the name on the wrapper so I wasn't focusing on the obvious "these are not good for you" clues. The oat squares were called 'Flapjacks" which is what we Canadians call pancakes.

(it gets more confusing, the pancakes in England were what we Canadians would call crepes so there was no good way to describe the stack-o-flapjacks I was picturing in my mind).

Anyways, it only took one bite - one delicious delicious bite - to realize that these sweet, buttery, oaty bars were obviously a treat, not a health food item.

 

And why shouldn't oats be the star of a dessert bar? They have so much more flavor than flour, a soft chewy texture, and when baked with brown sugar and butter they show us that maybe they have been waiting all this time to be turned into a decadent treat. These tasty morsels deserve a place alongside our rice krispie squares and lemon bars.

Homemade Gruyere {Cheesepalooza) - Part 1

This month's Cheesepalooza challenge was to make Gruyere at home. We hadn't even started making the cheese and I already knew it would be hard to refrain from cutting open the finished cheese to see if it was forming the signature holes inside it yet. 

Breakfast Themed Birthday Cake

Another year, another birthday. I'm lucky in that I share the same birthday as my lovely friend Rachele which means we get double the celebration and have an excuse to throw a birthday party with double the guests, food, and (most importantly) cake.

Last year we made a big batch of cupcakes but this year I wanted to take the time to design and decorate us a themed cake.


During our party planning session we came up with a couple of party themes and ultimately decided that we wanted to have a breakfast themed party.

Not a party during breakfast time, nor a breakfast-for-dinner party, but a party with breakfast themed appetizers, mimosas, and a caesar bar. While we were brainstorming the snack bar I doodled these happy breakfast food characters to use for the cake. I wanted them to be dancing around the outside of the cake holding hands.

 Sorry for all of the poorly lit cell phone photos to follow, all of the cake work was done in the late evening. (Fact: it's important to do decorating work late at night while watching Mystery Diagnosis or Hoarders  on YouTube for maximum creative inspiration).

Turnip Cake {Lo Bok Cake}

One of my all-time favorite things to do is go out for dim sum. Nothing like rounding people up (the more the merrier!) and ordering dish after dish of dumplings, buns, egg tarts, and other dim sum treats. This turnip cake makes a regular appearance at dim sum and I'd never given much thought to how it was made or even what it was made out of. Pan-fried and served up in slices, it's crispy on the outside and smooth on the inside studded with bits of pork belly and chinese sausage. So I knew that turnips were somehow involved, and bits of meat, but beyond that I was usually too busy eating it to really contemplate if this was something I could make at home.

When my friend Vincci invited me over to her house with her sister to make turnip cake for Chinese New Year I jumped at the offer. Free baking lesson!

 

 

If you want try making this at home (which I highly recommend) then you'll need to head to an Asian grocery store for most of the ingredients. First up are these long white turnips that make up the base of the cake.

 

Soft Peanut Butter Banana Oat Bars

I can't stand products at the grocery store that are obviously cashing in on the misconception that certain types of food are inhently healthy. Things like granola, granola bars, and yogurt loaded with so much sugar and filler that they end up being no better for you than a box of oreos. The products are always given super-healthy names and have little badges saying things like "all natural".

The opposite of these products are the super healthy recipes on the internet that have ultra decadent names they can never live up to. It's just a silly pet peeve of mine, and I know that it isn't doing anyone any harm (unlike when companies create unhealthy 'health' food) but I feel like we all know deep down inside that the 'cookies' made only from plain oats and mashed bananas wouldn't be welcome at most cookie swaps. The thing is, I'll make and eat those 'cookies' but I refuse to call them cookies. Because they aren't. 

It's like there's one group of people eating dessert and pretending its health food, and another group of people eating health food and pretending its dessert.

So these bars are healthy, and they are tasty. But I stubbornly refuse to give them a dessert-sounding name (but feel free to rename them for yourself as 'soft cookie bars' or 'peanut butter banana bread granola bars' or whatever entices those around you to try them). To me, they will always be peanut butter banana oat bars. 

 

They're a cross between a granola bar and baked oatmeal; soft and slightly chewy and studded with whatever add-ins strike your fancy. This version uses Peanut butter, cashews, coconut, chopped up walnuts, and banana to bind it and add some sweetness.  The riper the bananas, the better your bars will taste. It's the perfect opportunity to dig up those old, black bananas from the back of your freezer.

Using a Planner for Blogging (and Everything Else)

It's probably not a surprise to anyone that I read a lot of baking blogs, pin a lot of recipes to pinterest, and read a lot of cookbooks. However, what you might not know is that I read as many stationary/organizer/planner blogs as I do baking blogs and own as many pens and notebooks (or more) as I do cookbooks. Obviously this blog isn't the place to nerd out about my filofax and plannerisms planner system so I wrote a guest post for plannerisms.com on how I use two planners to manage my blog (and the rest of my life). 

 

If you love paper planners, to-do lists, and organization systems then head over to Laurie's blog to check out the post. Using these planners has helped me get ahead in my blog posts, at work, and keep up with household stuff. 

If you don't love planners and can't understand why I don't just use the calendar on my phone then just hang tight and a baking related post will be up soon!

 Plannerisms Post