Easy + Quick = Delicious Archives

Slushies For The Grownups

June 3, 2015/0 Comments/in Easy + Quick = Delicious, Entertaining, FOOD, Recipes, THE LATEST, View All Food Stories /by Editor

This summer we plan to spend long, languid evenings on the patio indulging in our favourite semi-frozen dessert.

EASY & AWESOME | While the soul-satisfying creaminess of ice cream makes it a great comfort treat any time of the year, coarse and crystalline granita is the more refreshing, energizing ice dessert for long, hot summer days.

Granita, a granulated ice dish with Italian and Middle Eastern roots (click here for The Atlantic backgrounder), is concocted from just three ingredients: fresh fruit, sugar and water. It could not be simpler to make. Read more

German Oven-Puffed Pancake, Cooking Light- Becky Luigart-Stayner; Lydia DeGaris-Pursell

Easy As Sin: Make Glorious Puff Pancakes

February 28, 2015/0 Comments/in Easy + Quick = Delicious, FOOD, Food & Drink, THE LATEST, View All Food Stories /by Editor

As a breakfast treat for sleepover guests (or for anyone any time for that matter), nothing is more spectacular than classic German puff pancakes.

FROM THE VAULT | “Easy as sin” is how Deb Perelman at the famous food blog Smitten Kitchen describes her generic recipe for sweet German pancakes, which involve precisely two and a half minutes of prep time. “A delicious no-brainer” is the way I describe the most scrumptious dessert pancakes on the planet. Read more

5 irresistible recipes for popcorn toppings

February 20, 2015/0 Comments/in Easy + Quick = Delicious, FOOD, Food & Drink, Recipes, THE LATEST, View All Food Stories /by Editor

Here are 5 top recipes for popcorn toppings your guests will not be able to resist.

FROM THE VAULT | Although I wasn’t able to get everything organized in time for the Emmy Awards this year, I will be hosting a popcorn party for friends and family when the Oscars roll around on Sunday. Movies and popcorn are a winning combo, and in the past few weeks I’ve been scouring the Internet for recipes, whipping up toppings and popping up a storm on my stovetop. Read more

Appetite For Easy: One Minute Guacamole

August 31, 2014/0 Comments/in Easy + Quick = Delicious, Entertaining, FOOD, Food & Drink, SAVE TIME, View All Food Stories /by Editor

Here’s a recipe for the best guacamole you’ll ever scoop on a chip: it’s fresh, seriously delicious and you can make it in a minute.

ONE-MINUTE WONDER | It’s a holiday today in British Columbia and we are having friends over for a dinner, which means I’m going to need appies: lots of them. I can get away with serving strictly store-bought stuff—cerignola olives, edemame in the shell, gourmet potato chips—if I serve it in small, one-of-a-kind containers that give it an air of exclusivity. But store-bought alone feels ungracious to me so I like to mix in a few homemade or half-scratch appies I can turn around on a dime. One of my all-time half-scratch favourites is cheater guacamole. I’m always surprised by how many people ask me for the recipe. Read more

Technique: Make Dulce de Leche In The Microwave

January 13, 2014/0 Comments/in Easy + Quick = Delicious, FOOD, Food & Drink, Recipes, Tools & Techniques, View All Food Stories /by Editor

Most recipes for making dulce de leche require slaving over a stovetop. Here’s how to beat that heat and whip it up quick.

EASY LIKE THIS | When friends of ours returned from a holiday in Argentina a while back, they brought us a jar of the country’s finest dulce de leche. Dulce de leche is a traditional Argentinean dessert made by caramelizing sugar in milk. It is not to be confused with North American caramel sauce, which made by caramelizing sugar in water. Dulce de leche is more subtly sweet than ordinary caramel sauce is; it’s also infinitely creamier, making it perfect on top of ice cream or inside treats like brownies and cheesecake. Read more

Technique: Make Perfect, Crisp Bacon In The Oven

December 12, 2013/0 Comments/in Easy + Quick = Delicious, FOOD, Food & Drink, Recipes, Tools & Techniques, View All Food Stories /by Editor

Nothing says lovin’ like bacon from the oven; it’s no fuss, no mess and quick.

EASY & DELISH | The holidays are all about group meals like big breakfast spreads and brunches. Both of these multiplate affairs are always improved when sizzling strips of bacon are on the menu, though slaving over a sputtering frying pan to cook up a temperamental batch is a task fewer and fewer of us choose to tackle. But what if you could cook perfect bacon for a crowd while sitting in the living room balancing a Buck’s fizz in one hand and a cheesy blintz in the other? You can if you bake your bacon instead of frying it.

An Appetite for Easy: Sweet Ice Cream Sliders

November 18, 2013/0 Comments/in Easy + Quick = Delicious, FOOD, Food & Drink, Recipes, Tools & Techniques, View All Food Stories /by Editor

Could there be anything easier than making tiny ice cream sandwiches for dessert?

EASY & DELISH | Most of us have snacked on hamburger sliders before, those meat filled mini burgers on tiny buns that are gone in two bites flat, but have you ever had an ice cream slider? I have. At a dinner party recently, our hostess brought out bowls filled with different flavours of ice cream and a sampler of cookies and invited us to build our own ice cream sliders for dessert. What a great idea! Read more

How To Make Perfect Caramels In The Microwave

November 1, 2013/0 Comments/in Easy + Quick = Delicious, FOOD, Food & Drink, Recipes, Tools & Techniques, View All Food Stories /by Editor

Yes, it really is possible to make super yummy sea salt caramels in the microwave.

EASY & DELISH | When my daughter got married last May, she asked her aunt and me to make chocolate bark and fleur de sel caramels for the wedding reception. The bark was no problem; I’d made it before, and nothing could be easier (CLICK HERE for our recipes). The caramels made me nervous. There’s kitchen science involved in producing caramels that are both soft and chewy.

So we put off making these paper-wrapped sweets until a few days before the wedding—then muddled through using a recipe we found on Epicurious.com (CLICK HERE to get it). Only after the big day did I learn that we could have saved ourselves both time and concern by making our candy in the microwave. Read more

October 17, 2013/0 Comments/in Easy + Quick = Delicious, FOOD, Food & Drink, Recipes, Tools & Techniques, View All Food Stories /by Editor

TECHNIQUE: Deseed A Pomegranate Lightening Quick

SAVE TIME | Pomegranates are everywhere in supermarkets right now, and maybe you’ve been eyeing them with reluctance because you hate the thought of picking and plucking at the hundreds of juice-wrapped kernels (anywhere from 200 to 1,400 per pomegranate) nestled inside the fruit’s fleshy membrane housed in a rosy-red case.

Fret not. Here’s a little tip on how to deseed a pomegranate in fewer than two minutes. We picked up it from a friend who picked it up from a chef at Rambagh Palace, “the jewel of Jaipur,” in western India—how exotic is that! Read more

Bake The Best Gluten Free Chocolate Cake

October 15, 2013/9 Comments/in Easy + Quick = Delicious, FOOD, Food & Drink, Recipes, View All Food Stories /by Editor

This simple-to-make chocolate dessert topped with whipped cream is so rich you’ll be shocked to learn it’s gluten free.

EASY & ICONIC | Just when I’d thought there couldn’t possibly be another dessert recipe out there that was both dead easy—as in taking no time to make—and iconic—as in representing the absolute apex of a particular type of sweet—I run into Richard Sax’s indulgent chocolate cloud cake, a flourless treat so rich and satisfying that serious chocoholics will have little trouble choosing between it and sex. Read more