A fancy snack to impress your friends

At one point or another in your life you'll be bound to have guests over and you'll want to impress them with a show of your savvy cooking skills. Well this is the perfect snack for hungry guests to show them that you can be both health conscious as well as culturally diverse.


Roasted Tomato Hummus & Pita Chips
Adapted from Cook's Companion and other various courses

Garlic Pita Chips
1 package pita bread
1/2 cup olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed

Take each pita bread and slice it into eights so they look like mini pizza slices.

In a separate bowl combine olive oil and garlic cloves, let sit for 10 to 15 minutes and preheat oven to 375F.

Place pita bread slices onto baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Drizzle garlic oil with crushed garlic over pita bread and bake for 15 - 20 minutes until slightly browned and crispy.

Roasted Tomato Hummus
5 plum tomatoes, halved lengthwise
sea salt, optional
pepper, optional
540mL can chick peas (garbanzo beans)
3 -4 tbsp lemon juice
4 garlic cloves, crushed
olive oil

Preheat oven to 400F. (I usually just leave the oven on and turn it up after baking the chips)

Place tomato halves cut side up onto baking sheet and season with sea salt and pepper then drizzle with olive oil. Bake at 400F for 15 - 20 mins until tomatoes show signs of browning and become wilted.

Remove slices from oven and set to cool.

In a food processor combine chick peas a few tablespoons olive oil, lemon juice and crushed garlic, blend until smooth. Add the roasted tomatoes and continue processing until you reach your desired consistency. If you want a smoother hummus you can add a little more olive oil and continue processing.

Serve with garlic pita chips.

Easy Peasy Cheesies

I love cheese, I have always loved cheese and I'm pretty sure I will always love cheese. Something about the savoury flavour that you just can't get anywhere else.

I stumbled upon this little gem of a recipe that is simple and fairly quick to make. Which is tops on my boyfriend's list since he's not as into cooking as I am. It's called Cheesy Vegetarian Slice, and I found the original idea in a recipe book that I was pouring over one day.



Cheesy Vegetarian Slice
Adapted from Cook's Companion

3 cups water
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp cornmeal or polenta
1 egg
3/4 cups Cheddar cheese, grated
1 tbsp butter or margarine

Preheat oven to 350F and grease a 9x13 in. baking dish.

Put water into a saucepan and bring to a boil. Whisk in cornmeal until thickened.

In a small bowl, beat the egg lightly. Add a large spoonful of the cooked cornmeal and stir well to mix. This is very important! If you add the egg directly to the hot cornmeal mixture you'll end up with scrambled eggs instead of a binding agent. Next add two-thirds of the cheese, all of the butter and stir until the cheese melts.

Transfer the mixture into the baking dish sprinkling the remaining cheese on top then bake for 35 - 40 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes before cutting and serving.

Makes for a tasty side dish or snack.

Lemon goodness

Nothing is more satisfying than eating a big stack of pancakes on a Saturday morning. And in the case of these pancakes, I've added a bit of a twist, making them Lemon Soufflé pancakes. Light, fluffy, lemony like puffy mouthfuls of sunshine in your mouth.

Lemon Souffle Pancakes
Adapted from Better Homes & Gardens

1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
3 - 4 tsp lemon zest, finely shredded
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg yolk
1/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup milk
3 egg whites
1 tsp cream of tartar

n a medium mixing bowl stir together flour, baking powder, lemon peel, and salt. Make a well in the center of flour mixture; set aside. In a small mixing bowl beat egg yolk slightly. Stir in melted butter and milk. Add egg yolk mixture all at once to the flour mixture. Stir just until moistened (batter should be lumpy).

In another medium mixing bowl, beat egg whites with an electric mixer at medium speed until soft peaks form, then add the cream of tartar and beat until stiff peaks form. Gently fold egg whites into flour mixture, leaving a few fluffs of egg white. Do not over-mix.

For standard-size pancakes, pour 1/4 cup batter onto hot, lightly greased griddle or heavy skillet. Cook over medium heat 2 minutes per side or until pancakes are golden brown. Turn to second side when pancakes have bubbly surfaces and edges are slightly dry. Repeat with remaining batter.

I'm not usually the type of person who uses a lot of pre-made ingredients in my cooking. Vegetables generally go in fresh especially with foods that such as garlic that once cut quickly lose their ACSO (alkyl-L-cysteine-sulfoxide) which gives it that garlicky flavour that you want. Which is why don't buy the pre-chopped kind in the little glass jar on the shelf.

Until this crazy twist of fate came down upon me. There I was, in the grocery store looking for a nice fresh bulb of garlic but of the 10 bulbs that were on the shelf all I could find were bulbs that were already blooming or not worthy of consumption (at least not in my books). So, I decided to try Toppits Garlic Cubes. They're these little frozen cubes of chopped garlic that you can easily plunk into just about anything you like. As the little cubes heat up they disperse their garlicky flavour throughout the dish and unlike the jar variety they still have most of their flavour in tact.

Getting back into the groove of things

From the minute I saw these biscuits in my copy of Kraft: What's Cooking magazine I knew I'd just have to make them. But at the time I was still in school and didn't have the time to make these beautiful biscuits without sacrificing precious study/work time. So the first moment that I could I rushed for the flour, shortening and cheese to make these tasty treats.


Cheesy Buttermilk Biscuits
Adapted from Food Network: Better Buttermilk Biscuits and Kraft What's Cooking Magazine

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 - 3 cups shredded cheese (depends on how cheesy you want your biscuits)
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup vegetable shortening, chilled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted
parsley, optional

Preheat oven to 400F.

In a mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients and shredded cheese together with a fork or your hands. Cut in the shortening using 2 butter knives moving each in an opposite direction from each other until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Make a well in the center and add buttermilk. Quickly fold dry ingredients into buttermilk with your hands until a sticky dough forms.

Turn dough out onto floured surface. Gently fold the dough over itself 3 or 4 times to create layers.

Roll dough out to 3/4-inch thick. Cut with a 3-inch biscuit cutter or you can use the rim of a glass. Transfer dough rounds to a sheet pan. Gather scraps and repeat.

Brush with butter and top each with a parsley leaf, brush with more butter.

Bake for 15 minutes until golden brown.