Dessert By Candy

Day Trip To Sweden

I finally run out of my stash of prepared blog post. I’m still traveling in Denmark right now but yesterday enjoyed a day trip to Sweden. Hope you’ll enjoy the photos of some of the (sometimes) strange and delicious food I had in Sweden!

I have no regrets about my race at World Masters Championship last Sunday in Damp, Germany. Although I was a little disappointed that I did not podium, I proved that I belong with the best racers until the very end of the race and I am proud of what I accomplished. There are much stories to tell and I look forward to share them with you when I return home next week!

Hoarder Of Baking Chips

I have a confession to make: I am a hoarder of baking chips. When I go to grocery stores in different cities, I make a beeline to the baking aisle to check out which baking chips are available. Obviously I have plentiful supply of everyday chocolate chips because you never know when the craving for chocolate chip cookies may strike. I also have a selection of fancy chocolate chips that I save for special occasions. But the fun begins when I go through my collection of novelty chips. White chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips, zebra chips with white and milk chocolate, butterscotch chips, peanut butter chips, mini chocolate peanut butter cups, toffee bits, Andes mint chocolate bits, cinnamon chips, the much-coveted mint green chips, and my latest find lemon chips. I love them all.

I wanted to make something special with those pretty pastel lemon chips. I’m pretty sure my search would come up short if I look for recipes specifically calling for lemon chips. My inspiration began with lemon and rosemary, a classic flavour pairing. The butterscotch undertone of a classic chocolate chip cookie dough would overwhelm the fresh taste of lemon. However, I do enjoy the soft chewy texture of a big fat cookie loaded with chips. Recalling my success with America Test Kitchen’s Chewy Sugar Cookies last year, I set to work.

For Him And For Her

I am in Germany right now at the cusp of a very important race. This time last week, I was at home preparing a bento to be hand delivered to Boyfriend for his birthday. As far as travel planning goes, this was not my brightest move. Over the course of a week, I went from Toronto—>Virginia—>Toronto—>Virginia—>Brussels—>Copenhagen—>Damp, Germany. Sometimes, a bit of legwork is necessary to be with someone I care about, to do something that means a lot to me.

It all started when I had the notion to treat Boyfriend to a homemade lunch on his birthday. My plan was that I arrive in Virginia around lunch time and he would meet me at the airport over his lunch break. I meticulously prepared a sandwich bento that appealed to his meat-and-potato appetite.

• thin-sliced roast beef in pretzel roll with grilled red onion, leaf lettuce, smoky mustard, and roasted garlic butter
• German fingerling potato salad
• cherry cheesecake in a jar
• "our favourite things" trail mix with dried sour cherries, dark chocolate chips, multigrain pretzel nuggets, almond, pumpkin seeds

Packing bento and picnics is my specialty. To create this single-serving lunch, smart shopping is key. I purchased most of the ingredients from Whole Foods including the pretzel baguette and roast beef. As for the other ingredients, a well-stocked salad bar is my ally! I bought only as many greens, cut vegetables, and roasted garlic cloves as I would need. The garlic was mashed with softened butter to create the most luxurious garlic spread. The fat coated the bread and protected it from getting soggy. The German potato salad was a simple mix of boiled fingerling potatoes, grainy mustard, white wine vinegar, shallots, smoked paprika, and a touch of mayonnaise.

The Scoop

My two-tablespoon size cookie scoop received a good workout last week. After months of hard work, I finally began tapering for World Masters Championship. I cut back on the volume of my training while keeping the intensity high. It is now time to rest so the body will be fresh on race day Sunday. Regular readers may recall that I was so tired the last few weeks that I barely had enough energy to feed myself. A side effect of tapering is that I return to my energetic self. All I wanted and all I did was bake, bake, bake!

Plenty of cookies and cakes were made last week. Drop cookies that were conveniently shaped with my cookie scoop, in particular. The scoop was that I wanted to create a beautiful assortment of cookies for Boyfriend to enjoy when I visited him in Virginia over the weekend. Mission accomplished! But let me tell you, it was a labour of love. When you see a small box of cookie assortment, never under-estimate the amount of work involved. For every different cookie in the box, there is one whole batch that you cannot see. It is just as much work to make one cookie versus twenty. These textbook-perfect Oatmeal Chocolate Cookies were part of the mix.

Legitimate Cramming

Some trends come and go while others have staying power. For me, the whole dessert in a jar trend was cute the first few times but by now it’s already a little tired. I am just as guilty for jumping onto this bandwagon with my take on Cherry Almond Cobbler (in a jar!), Rhubarb Big Crumb Coffee Cake (in a jar!), and Rice Pudding with Roasted Rhubarb (in a jar!). Well, you get the idea.

Last weekend, I finally have a legitimate reason to cram a dessert into canning jars. I treated Boyfriend to a special Birthday Bento which I lovingly prepared (more about that in coming days but here is a preview). He’s a meat-and-potato kind of guy so I created an appropriately meat-and-potato kind of bento for him. For dessert, I took inspiration from a childhood favourite. Once upon a time, KFC used to sell single-serving cheesecakes in little plastic cup containers. Cherry or blueberry? Cherry of course.

I created this no-bake cheesecake with the standard 125mL/4oz canning jars in mind (Ball and Jarden and Bernardin all makes them). It is the perfect treat size for lunch on the go. Most cheesecake recipes would yield way too many servings. My recipe is scaled down specifically to create only four servings with the least hassles. It is a dessert that I can easily whip up in between attending to other tasks in the kitchen. That’s the way a weeknight dessert ought to be.