Chewy Flax & Oatmeal Spice Cookies

This past weekend I made a trip back to Red Deer to visit my parents and some friends. Despite the iffy weather, my friend Jenna and I decided to be brave and go to the farmer's market on Saturday morning. I felt a little sorry for the vendors - violent gusts of wind threatened to blow tents away and topple displays. But we had hot coffees and lots to talk about, plus we ran into several people we knew, so it wasn't all bad.

Going to the Red Deer farmer's market always reminds me of these flax oatmeal cookies that my mom and I discovered there years ago. They were made by some women selling flax seeds and other flax products (back when flax was the "new" superfood everyone was going crazy for). Anyway, the cookies were delicious, so we bought some seeds and got their cookie recipe, which also includes oatmeal and raisins. High fibre = healthy = I can eat as many as I want, right? Yes. I like that logic.


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Spaghetti Squash Cake with Orange Glaze

Yesterday, out of the blue, I had an urge to make a very particular cake. I only had this cake once before, 10 or 15 years ago; my mom and I made it in an effort to use up extra spaghetti squash (and for the novelty of trying a squash cake). It was surprisingly delicious - and obviously, a cake that stays in your memory for years after only tasting it once... that's a good cake. When I called my mom to get the recipe, we ended up talking for almost two hours. Lots of warm, fuzzy feelings attached to this strange little dessert.


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Sweet Potato & Garlic Galettes

These galettes have become my thing. They're what I make if I'm required to make something. I love them for several reasons, not least of which being that they're the brainchild of one of my favourite people, Yotam Ottolenghi (whose cookbook I've already posted about). While some assembly is needed, they're actually really easy to make, and they tend to be crowd-pleasers: garlicy, crispy/crunchy, salty, spicy... all the important boxes are ticked. Like most people, I like making things with a high reward to effort ratio.

The amounts in this recipe are approximate and don't really matter - you can use as much or as little of each as you see fit.

...The moral of the story is, you can basically put anything on puff pastry and it will magically look/taste incredibly schmancy.


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Millenium Cafe Pumpkin Cookies

If you live in Red Deer and haven't had a pumpkin cookie from Café Millenium, you need to. They're amazing. Cushiony-soft little things topped with a magical crack-sauce icing. They're so good that a couple of summers ago, when I was working in an office in the very far north of the city, my co-workers commissioned me to go on a pumpkin cookie run (it took my whole lunch hour to get in and out of downtown, but it was worth it).


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Sex and the City Cupcakes

Fair warning: this post contains content that is all kinds of girly. A miniature cupcake with a swirl of pink frosting, named after the girliest show on television... pinning it! I could go into all the trouble with anti-feminist caricatures and how the cupcake is a symbol of everything that's wrong with society, but I won't. That's not what we're here for.


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Baklava Muffins

I don't celebrate Easter at all - I mean, I do in the sense that there are usually Mini Eggs in the house around this time of year, but that's where the festivity ends. I spent the long weekend in Red Deer catching up with my mom (and sister, on the phone) and seeing my friends. There was shopping and dog-walking and Moxie's and beer pong. Classic.


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Ode to a Hometown

For my very first post, I thought it would be fitting to make something in tribute to my first home: Red Deer, Alberta. Not really the type of place that inspires confectionary creativity; our official cookie was chosen in a mid-nineties attempt to contrive some kind of "Red Deerian" culture. New Yorkers have their black-and-white cookies, Paris has its macarons... and we have the Caramel Surprise. I know. It needs a new name.

I'm not really sure how they represent Red Deer, but they're delicious (which is all that really matters, right?): a soft, chewy chocolate cookie filled with caramel and topped with chopped pecans. Yum.


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