The Baking Medic

Last night I was struck by a craving to bake. Do you know the feeling? When you just. need. to. bake. However, at 5.30pm I was reluctant to try and brave the hordes of other students buying dinner at Tescos so I was restricted to what storecupcoard ingredients I had. Luckily with me being me, there is almost always chocolate, butter, flour and sugar in the house. A few eggs generously donated by a flatmate (perhaps with a vested interest in the products of said baking…?). And finally a quick look in the fridge revealed a tub of cream cheese. Et voila! Everything you need to make these absolutely heavenly Chocolate Chip Cookies Bars right at your fingertips.

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This is post number 2 for the Interesting Food Project (IFP)! Unfortunately, I can only give you one of the recipes.  The Mediterranean Pasta was a creation of mine and I can’t quite remember the amounts of everything I threw in.  However, I can give you a vague list of ingredients and I’m sure you can concoct something tasty. :)

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My favourite way to eat oatmeal cookies is studded with chocolate covered raisins. I love the sweet fruitiness of the raisins, but I’m also a hardened chocoholic. Basically, if you want the best of both worlds then you’ll certainly find them in this Oatmeal Chocolate Covered Raisin Cookies recipe.

They have a deliciously chewy texture and buttery taste.  They’re also packed full of oats and chocolate covered raisins. The recipe originally called for 1 cup/2oog of raisins, but me being me, I decided to double the amount. :)  The result is some cookies that are more chocolate covered raisins than cookie! To me, that is perfect, but you may want to reduce the amount a wee bit if that’s not to your liking.

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Possibly my favourite cookie recipe of 2010.

I’m home for the holidays! And I’m lucky to have made it out of the UK, judging by what I hear from my friends back in Scotland.  Apparently Heathrow resembles a refugee camp and the queue for the Eurostar stretches 1km back! Eek.  Indeed I hope all of this will have calmed down before it’s time to go back to the Bubble.

As usual I have a long droughts with no posting followed by a flash flood of recipes and photos.  I do bake in between posts! Lots! It’s just hard to get a good photo and even harder for me to motivate myself to post when most people who read this probably already sampled the baked goods. Ah well. It’s the end of 2010, so I thought I’d include some pictures of my favourite cakes and other sweets from this year.  If you’d like any of the recipes, just let me know!

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Eating is without a doubt a social activity. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve met my friends at our favourite cheap eats in downtown Toronto, or for a coffee in a number of the charming cafes that St Andrews has to offer. Heck, there was one memorable evening when a friend and I picked up what must have been 15 lbs worth of curry, rice, and naan for a gut-busting, not to mention hilarious dinner with friends (even if we *did* have to drag this curry on a 20 minute walk to get there).

One the principle reasons I love to bake is because sharing food brings people together. There is a special pleasure in making people happy by giving them something tasty to pop in their mouths. Don’t you love to exclaim “ooo! Try this, it’s absolutely delicious!”? I adore this sharing of nourishment and companionship. » Read the rest of this entry «

I am one lucky girl. Every summer, with two exceptions, I have been coming to northern Manitoba with my family. We have a cottage on Clearwater Lake, about 20 minutes out from the town of The Pas.

It is so beautiful here, in more ways than one. Firstly, the natural beauty is stunning. The waters of the lake are breath taking in their clarity — you can see the bottom of the lake from the middle of the bay! At night, you can catch a glimpse of the northern lights or track the fiery journey of a shooting star against the black, black sky. It’s quiet and peaceful and once a friend from London commented on the amazing (to her) fact that you could see an uninterrupted horizon in a 360 direction, without the smear of a jet stream across the sky’s even surface. » Read the rest of this entry «

Yes, although these are “Mexican” Chocolate Chip cookies, there is nothing remotely swine flu-esque about them. (Perhaps that joke was a bit in poor taste, but when you work in a lab that deals with swine flu samples daily, the words “Does not contain swine flu extract” might be a little more appropriate. ;) )

In fact, these cookies were delicious. I baked a batch yesterday and brought at least two dozen cookies in with me this morning. When I went to see how many were left, only two lonely cookies remained. Even they found their way into my coworkers’ tummies soon after.

So, a huge resounding success. I found the original recipe whilst browsing the blog, Cookie Madness, a blog with absolutely dozens of decadent, mouthwatering cookie recipes. There is a reason the blog is called cookie madness! » Read the rest of this entry «

So, I’ve officially started my summer job! That’s exciting. ☺ Yesterday was full of safety videos, but today was definitely interesting. I’m learning how to do all sorts of testing for bacteria and other infectious diseases from samples from patients that are sent into the lab. Tomorrow, I’ll get to try one myself! (Under the watchful eye of my supervisor of course. :) )

So I’m finally back home in Canada. I was supposed to be back last Saturday, but I arrived on Monday. There’s a story in that. The long and the short of it is that the airline overbooked my flight twice so I volunteered to kick about Glasgow for a few days. Now I’ve $900 in travel vouchers, which is basically me home for Christmas paid for! Yay!