A little taste of the orient.

I know that usually my blog posts are sweet treats or breads, but today I thought I'd go for something savoury.  Tonight's dinner menu called for teriyaki salmon with grilled pineapple rings.  When I was making up the meal plan and preparing my grocery list, I apparently forgot to check to make sure I had teriyaki sauce.  Which I didn't.  So when I went to start marinating the salmon, and realized that I had no sauce, the quick fix solution was to head over to Pinterest in search of one!  I had to make some slight modifications as I do not buy organic ginger or garlic, and neither do I have raw honey, liquid whey (optional), or unpasteurized, naturally fermented soy sauce (?).  So the resultant sauce, and further more, dinner, looked a little something like this!

Homemade Teriyaki Sauce

Ingredients:

2 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp crushed garlic (2 cloves)

2 tbsp sesame oil

2 tbsp rice vinegar

3 tbsp honey 

1 cup lite soya sauce

2 tsp cornstarch (to thicken)

Directions:

1.  Combine first 6 ingredients in a sauce pan and bring to a slow boil.

2.  Simmer for 2 minutes then add cornstarch and allow to thicken slightly.

3.  Cool and then proceed to marinate salmon filets!

Teriyaki Salmon with Grilled Pineapple

Ingredients:

4-4oz salmon filets (skin removed)

teriyaki sauce marinade

4 pineapple rings

Directions:

1.  Pour homemade teriyaki sauce over salmon filets and allow to marinate at least 1 hour, even better over night (I did mine for about 2 hours).

2.  Preheat barbeque grill on high, then reduce to medium.

3.  Grill salmon for 5 minutes on each side, basting with extra sauce.

4.  Add pineapple rings to grill and sear for 2 minutes on each side.

5.  Serve salmon with pineapple rings on top.

I can honestly say this was one of the best salmon dishes I have ever made!  Grilling the pineapple really brings out the sweetness, not that it isn't sweet enough to begin with that's for sure!  And my salmon was cooked to perfection!  Both kids gobbled it right up!  Wish I could have said the same for Mark (he's not a seafood fan at all).  Eric ate his piece!

Happy, happy birthday!

My kids' birthdays are one day apart (2 years difference) so I had decided a few months ago to theme their joint birthday party with the Candy Land theme.  I figured it was a good unisex theme, and would be easy enough to center around candy.  What kid does not like candy right?  So I searched all over the internet to come up with a cake idea, and games and activities to partake in.  The cake I modeled after the one from "Taste of Home" magazine.  I decided to make the inside as a rainbow cake, which was interesting, and turned out pretty good!  So here is the directions on how I made the rainbow Candy Land cake!  This cake was an 11"x15" sheet cake, which is why the cake ingredients are so huge!  You can easily do it as a 9" round cake also, or 9"x11" rectangle cake, scaling down the cake batter.

Rainbow Candy Land Cake

 

Ingredients:

3 boxes of store-bought white cake mix

Food colourings (liquid or gel) or your choice, colour and number.

Vanilla frosting (2 batches of butter-cream is what I used)

Icing scribblers/gels

Candies: Starburst for the squares, candy canes (or in my case, candy cane Hershey kisses), peppermint candies, jujubes, lollipops, Reese's peanut butter cups (mini and large), licorice, ice cream cones (filled with marshmallow), etc.

Directions for Rainbow Cake:

1. Spray 11x15 sheet pan and dust with flour.

2. Prepare cake batter as per box directions and divide equally among 4-6 bowls. 

3. Using food colourings, tint each bowl with your desired colours.

 

4. Starting with the colour of your choice, pour batter into various areas of the sheet pan.  Repeat with remaining colours, layering all over the pan until all batter is gone.

5. Bake according to package directions, and in the end you should end up with something that looks like the picture below.

  

6. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then remove (carefully!) to a wire rack to cool completely.

7. Once cooled, ice with vanilla frosting and then decorate as desired following the Candy Land game board as a guide.

Here is a view of the inside, once cut.  Looks pretty neat!

The kids loved their cake!  Happy birthday to my little monsters!

 

If you give a pig a pancake...

"If you give a pig a pancake, she'll want some syrup to go with it. You'll give her some of your favourite maple syrup, and she'll probably get all sticky,..." Laura Numeroff

Pancakes are an all-time favourite around our house.  Ask my son what he wants for breakfast on any given day, and the first thing out of his mouth will probably be "pancakes!"  Or waffles, but they are pretty much the same thing right? I usually like to make my own pancakes, but on a week day they can be a bit time consuming, especially with a soon to be 5 year old and 3 year old running around asking you "Are they ready yet?".  So I decided to make my own dry pancake mix to keep in the pantry for those mornings when the kids just have to have them!  All I have to do is add an egg and some milk and presto, pancakes!  Well, once they are cooked anyway.  Feel free to substitute for the eggs with whatever your favourite egg substitute is (I like to use flaxseed meal occasionally).

Dry Pancake Mix

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour
3 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 tablespoon baking soda

ADDITIONAL INGREDIENTS:

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

Directions:

1.  Combine first five ingredients (I like to sift all together) and store in an air tight container in a cool dry place for up to 6 months.

2.  When ready to use, whisk together 1 cup of dry pancake mix with 1 egg and 3/4 cup of milk. 

3.  Pour by 1/4 cup-ful onto a hot greased griddle, flipping when tiny bubbles appear on the top.

4.  Makes about 6 pancakes per batch, for a total of 36 pancakes per container of dry mix.

Poor Man's Pudding

According to Wikipedia, Pouding chômeur is a traditional Québécois dessert.  It started back during the depression using ingredients that were affordable at the time; hence the name "Poor Man's Pudding".  So I figured, since I had successfully produced a traditional Quebec meal at Christmas time (my tourtière), I figured that for Easter I would attempt another Quebec recipe and make this tasty sounding, and easy dessert.  And since spring is also "le temp de sucre", this dessert goes well with the sugar season!  I adapted my recipe from the one found at Canadianliving.com.

Pouding Chômeur 

Ingredients:

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup skim milk

1 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2 cups hot water

1/2 cup pure maple syrup

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp cornstarch

Directions:

1.  Preheat the oven to 350F.

2. Combine, with a wooden spoon, the first 6 ingredients in a deep casserole dish (such as Corningware French White 2 qt casserole) to make the batter.

3.  Whisk together the hot water, maple syrup, brown sugar and cornstarch in a separate bowl and then pour over the batter in the casserole dish.

4.  Bake for 40 mins. until golden in colour and firm to touch.

Best served warm with a dollop of vanilla ice cream (or in our case, maple sugar crunch ice cream!).  Feel free to drizzle with more pure maple syrup over the top.

Easter time fun!

So apparently I'm not blogging fast enough for my sister.   This one is going to be a quick one for you Heather!  And I expect you to make them this weekend with your kids!  I promise, I will get my next post up quicker!  Thinking of trying a new dessert recipe this weekend, in celebration of Easter and a Quebec tradition, so I'll post once it's complete. 

It's Easter time!  And with that come Easter craft and activities for the kids.  Last year, Eric's birthday fell over the Easter weekend, and actually Emma's was right on Easter, so I decided to make Easter bunny cupcakes for his preschool class to have to celebrate his birthday.  They were really easy and super cute!  So this year, when my friend Nicola mentioned that she was going to make something for the boys' preschool class for Easter, I suggested we do the cupcakes together!  There really isn't a recipe for the cupcakes, you just make your favourite cupcake recipe and then decorate from there.  I don't really have a creative bone in my body, so the tutorial for making the super cute bunnies is from the Disney Family Fun website.  Follow this link for the video tutorial of the  Easter Bunny Cupcakes!  In the end you will end up with something looking just like these beauties below!  We did change up the colour of the coloured sugar ears and whiskers, for what I had on hand and what I could find at the grocery store.  Thank you Nicola for the idea and great team work!  This would be a great activity to do with older children with more dexterity than 2 to 5 year olds!