Ever since I purchased my new, fancy-pants 11-cup Cuisinart food processor, I’ve been on a chopping, slicing and pureeing crazy spree. In the last two weeks, I’ve made falafels, granola (3 batches), homemade veggie burgers and chopped a variety of vegetables for homemade soup. To say that this upgrade was a well-needed purchase is an understatement and I’m thrilled now to be able to make things that my previous 3-cup little baby processor couldn’t handle. A few of the items on my to-make list include hummus, homemade peanut butter for Trevor and another batch of these quinoa brownies.
Some of you may remember last summer when I made my chocolate espresso quinoa cake and if you compare the ingredients list from that cake to these brownies, they don’t appear to be that different from each other. Where I think these brownies really shine is the crazy addictive chocolate date icing. Rather than using powdered sugar, I used medjool dates, which are naturally sweet and full of potassium and fiber. Ever since I had my first medjool date, I’ve had to keep a package hidden somewhere in my fridge for when I’m craving something sweet.
Every year, without fail, I get the spring cleaning bug and nothing in our apartment is safe. The weather is only just starting to warm up now, but I’ve already completed our bedroom closets, bathroom storage, the DVD/bookshelves and our kitchen cupboards. Recently, I had tackled the fridge and freezer and uncovered about a dozen half-bags of chocolate chips, flavoured baking chips, Hershey chocolates, Skor bar bits and a variety of chopped nuts. At first, I was very tempted to just snack on what little was left in each bag, but as I gradually discovered more and more bags, I realized that I had enough to make a decent “everything” cookie recipe.
“Everything” cookies go by many names. Loaded cookies, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink cookies, and even the somewhat questionable “garbage can cookies.” But no matter what you want to call them, everything cookies are a great way to get rid of, well, everything in your pantry. I ended up saving the chopped nuts to make homemade granola (my currently breakfast addiction), but below is what I added to my cookies.
If you take a look through my recipe archive, you’ll notice that I tend to favour certain ingredients more than others. Besides fruit, some of my most common baking ingredients are chocolate, espresso and peanut butter. Baking with chocolate is obvious because chocolate anything is delicious. If chocolate is the main ingredient, I’ll add a quick dash of espresso to enhance the delicious chocolatey flavour. Peanut butter is a common baking staple because we always have some in our kitchen and Trevor is a fan of anything I make with peanut butter. Plus peanut butter and chocolate together rocks.
Speaking of peanut butter and chocolate, I’d been meaning to make this recipe for a while now, but until recently I was so convinced that I had already posted a peanut butter chocolate banana bread recipe. Does this happen to anyone else? A couple months ago, I had planned on making white chocolate cranberry cookies only to realize that I had already posted a recipe back in 2011. Since then, whenever I have a recipe in mind, I panic and search my archives to make sure I’m not accidentally repeating myself.
One of my personal goals this year is to not stress myself out over things I cannot control. This was tested at the end of February when things got a little busy and I couldn’t find the time to bake or think up something to write about. I normally maintain a pretty good routine of posting once a week, and I’m not going to lie, I did get a little twitchy. Rather than stress myself out over not having a recipe to share (or worse, throw something together in a panic), I decided to shrug it off and start fresh again this week.
Another thing that happened was that I fell in a food rut and I managed to dig myself out by purchasing one of my favourite bloggers, Angela at Oh She Glows, first cookbook. I’ve been following Angela’s vegan food blog for years, long before I started blogging, and none of her recipes have disappointed me. Normally I avoid using cookbooks for my everyday cooking and like to save them for special occasions (I know, weird), but since this book arrived in my arms, I’ve made a point to make a new recipe every few days. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably seen the photos and it’s been great trying new recipes and buying ingredients I’ve never purchased before.
A few weeks ago, Trevor and I took a walking tour of what could best be described as “the sweeter side of Kensington Market.” If you’ve ever heard of Tasty Tours, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Tasty Tours offers guided walking tours of Toronto neighbourhoods and showcase various bakeries, patisseries and shops to satisfy your ever craving sweet tooth. It may sound a little silly to take a guided tour of a city we’ve been living in for the last 3 years, but it’s a great way to discover places we would have otherwise walked right by. In fact, the first time we set foot in at least half of these places was during this very tour.
Tasty Tours has a great ongoing promotion where they will waive the ticket price if you take a tour during your birthday month and bring along someone who has paid for an adult-priced tour. This deal doesn’t apply to their special holiday tours (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, etc), but this was fine since this was our first time with Tasty Tours and we ended up deciding on the Kensington Market Sweets Tour based on the location and 2-hour length of the tour.
Tasty Tours likes to keep the locations they visit a secret, although you can check out the list on their website. If you intend to take this tour, I wouldn’t recommend reading further as the element of surprise is one of the fun things about taking their tours. If you do read ahead, please note that the order of the tour sometimes changes based on the tour guide and the availability of the locations.
Canadian food blogger, baking and eating her way through life. Musical theatre fanatic. Personal finance nerd. Sometimes runner/yogi. Green smoothies are pretty amazing.
