QUICK & DELISH | Looking for a new spin on potato salad that can’t possibly spoil the way egg-and-mayonnaise-based ones can? This potato salad is so flavour-rich that you’ll want to make it all year round and gobble it up while it’s fresh and still warm in the bowl. Read more
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
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
EASY & DELISH | We are forever on the lookout for spectacular made-in-minutes desserts. Our quest has lead us to ambrosial treats such as Donna Hey’s five-minute clafloutis, Dorie Greenspan’s five-minute apple cake and Teresa Syrnyk’s quick bacon candy. Every one these sweets is two yums up in our book—and so is chocolate bark, the perfect basket-ready candy to share at Easter.
Nothing is easier to make than chocolate bark is, and few desserts have the potential for personalizing that this drop-dead gorgeous confection has.
Here are our top four chocolate bark recipes.
Chocolate bark is basically melted chocolate that has been poured out into a pan and then garnished with candies, fruits, flowers, nuts, whatever. That’s all there is to it. You can use whatever type of chocolate you like and whatever toppings in whatever combinations you want, which is what can make each batch of bark so interesting.
Contrary to what some recipes say, it really is best to melt your chocolate on the stove, in a double boiler (not in the microwave). If you don’t have an official pan, improvise by using a stainless steel mixing bowl over a pot of boiling water.
I like to make bark in bread baking pans. They are the prefect size to turn out slabs of bark that look like supersize candy bars. Be sure to line the pan you use with greased parchment paper so the candy will pop out of it easily.
We love Specialty Cake Creations’s white chocolate bark made with freeze-dried strawberries (find them at outdoor stores or Trader Joe’s) and salted pistachios. CLICK HERE for the recipe.
We love Murray Bancroft’s Nowruz-inspired chocolate bark. We made ours with rose petals (find them at Persian markets or specialty food shops), salted pistachios and dried sour cherries. CLICK HERE for the recipe.
We love Healthy-Delicious.com’s ginger coconut dark chocolate bark. CLICK HERE for the recipe.
We love Martha Stewart’s lime and macadamia nut bark. CLICK HERE for the recipe. — eds
THIS STUFF WORKS | Until recently, I have polished my wee cache of silver—both sterling and plate, everything from jewellery to flatware—with pricey silver polish from a local jewellery store. “Why do you use that stuff?” my friend and Frugalbits contributor Brendan Power asked one evening after I complained about the bits of pink paste that had become lodged in the nooks of my newly cleaned Tiffany bracelet. I could avoid this residue, and polish up everything nicely, he explained, “using tin foil, soda and salt.” Read more
SNEAK PEEK | Our daughter Alexis got married last spring, and now she and her husband Dave (pictured here on their wedding day) are expecting a baby. Last week, they went for their 20-week ultrasound. This imaging technique is used five months into a pregnancy to determine whether a fetus is developing normally. At 20 weeks, it can also detect whether the baby is a boy or a girl—if the gender is visible, of course.
Lexi and Dave wanted to know the sex of their baby. And they wanted to share the experience of finding out what it is with members of their immediate family, so this past weekend we had what’s called a gender reveal party at our house.
Here’s what Lexi and Dave did to ensure the baby’s gender was kept under wraps (and unknown even to them) until the appropriate moment.
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.
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
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
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