A compendium of the easiest, quickest, most delicious recipes we could find.
EASY & DELISH | In the annals of dinner party desserts that look so impressive everyone assumes they must be horribly complicated to make, the chocolate soufflé is right up there. To begin with, it’s a soufflé for gawd sakes, and everyone knows that making any sort of soufflé can be a recipe for disaster. Read more
QUICK & DELISH | Though no one seems to know exactly where the American phrase “easy as pie” originated, it appears to have nothing to do with actually making pie—unless you’re making a rustic pie like the one pictured here, which, with minimal practice, really can be oven ready in minutes. Read more
EASY + GOOD | Puff pastry is a flaky, crispy ingredient found in a surprising array of show- stopping appetizers, entrées and sweets. Of course you can make it from scratch if you want—à la Julia, perhaps?—but quality premade products found in the freezer section of grocery stores work fine, too.
Author Martha Holmberg used mostly frozen puff pastry for the 50 interesting and original recipes featured in her cookbook Puff—mains like the pizza alternative she shares with Frugalbits readers here. Read more
EASY & DELISH | If you’re addicted to Internet food and home décor porn like I am, you already know who Todd Selby is and can scroll straight down to the bottom of this intro for an awesomely easy nougat noir recipe. It was part of a recent photo essay he did for the New York Times on an out-of-the-way French bakery in Vermont. Read more
WASTE NOT | My favourite way to enjoy extra overripe fruit happens to be the most fun and easy: a quick whirr in the blender, and I’ve got the makings for nutritious fruit popsicles. All-fruit popsicles look (they’re typically textured) and taste nothing like the coloured sugar-water popsicles most of us are familiar with, and they are certainly healthier. You can buy expensive all-fruit popsicles at the grocery store, but why would you want to when they are so simple to make from scratch? Read more
EASY & DELISH | Making authentic French puff pastry is no small accomplishment, even for the likes of Martha Stewart who confessed in her cookbook Martha Stewart Pies & Tarts that producing a classic puff takes time, “skill and practice,” and that she’s had her share of difficulties making one “because there are so many variables.”
While “quick-from-scratch puff pastry” is definitely easier and less time-consuming to make than the true classic version, it can still be a disaster as I learned not long ago when I tried to replicate THIS AWESOME RECIPE from the Los Angeles Times. Read more
EASY & DELISH | I’m a complete potato chip queen, though most people who know me don’t know it. I seldom buy this yummy could-there-be-anything-unhealthier-with-more-empty-calories snack because I have a tendency to overindulge. Now, thankfully, with my new TopChips chips maker I never have to think about the quantity of crisps I consume or whether or not they’re good for me because chips made using this inexpensive, inventive microwave tray are 100 percent fat free—really. Read more
EASY & DELISH | Talk about fingers in pies. Celebrity chef Caren McSherry is one of the hardest-working (and most upbeat) women in the food business in Vancouver. Not only is she hands-on at her cooking school, the longest-running private school of its type in the country, but she also runs the Gourmet Warehouse, her large specialty store on East Hastings Street that sells thousands of competitively priced gourmet food items and housewares to appreciative local foodies. Then there are her media gigs: weekly columnist for TV Guide magazine, twice monthly appearances on Global TV’s Saturday morning news and once a month on Bill Good’s radio talkfest. Oh, and there are the cookbooks. Read more
EASY & DELISH | Made-from-scratch marshmallows are having a moment. That’s the headline that jumped out at me last month in T, the New York Times style magazine. This may be what T’s editors think, but actually, among foodies, fresh-made marshmallows have been enjoying a moment since 2008, which is around the time Vancouver’s Butter Baked Goods began making and marketing its delectable gourmet marshmallows ($7.99 for 10) to an appreciative audience—and famous food bloggers like Deb Perelman of smittenkitchen.com could be found whipping up marshmallows and visually documenting the process on their websites. Read more
EASY BAKE | I’m not an accomplished cook. I can produce a nice meal and make complicated dishes when I need to, though I prefer to leave the culinary wizardry to my friends born with chef’s knifes in their mouths. Quick and easy are my things (along with tasty and attractive), so I was shocked when a good friend suggested I make my own bread. I’d been going on about how my family was plowing through Terra Breads’ pain de campagne to the tune of $10 to $15 dollars a week when she popped the suggestion.
“You’ve got to be joking,” I said. “Making bread is an art that takes years to perfect. I thought you knew me.” Read more