Perhaps you have not read the archives, or my other blog.

Well, ever since first noticing it, I’ve been obsessed (to say it lightly) with the event that takes place amongst some bloggers. Put together by Stephanie at Dispensing Happiness. “Blogging By Mail” matches bloggers from around the globe to send a little something, in this case our most favourite things.

Away on vacation, I couldn’t help but badger our house sitter with my postal inquiries. When suddenly, it was announced. A box from… Wisconsin! I wasn’t sure if it would be it, but I was told it was a brown paper package and we all know what those contain…

Favourite things!!!

Inside there was amazing, gingered dark chocolate, genmai-cha tea, (YUM & gone), spiced cider, gummy bears, beautiful glass coasters, mini-sock monkeys, googly eyes, for all purpose use, a groovy pen and the coolest/weirdest Asian candies that made me very popular!

As I drank my most amazing, favourite tea and savoured my chocolate, I found the little note, so nicely written by Laima on fantasticly, fushia, Nepali rice paper. Using my *new* silver pen, she wrote out, all of her favourites and how they found themselves into the thoughtful box which was found on my doorstep and so carefully placed to wait for my return on my kitchen counter.

I realized then, one of my own favourite things and it’s getting packages in the mail. These packages. Knowing that they were so thoughtfully put together just for me. That a complete stranger shared with me the intimacies of their favourite things and that someone took the effort and had the patients to make it happen. Wow.

I know that Mother’s Day has come and gone, but I just had to share this perfect everyday, great with tea or Coffee Cake.

One of the many things that I’ve learned through my Nana and her baking is that men love coffee cake. It’s a crazy notion, but you can go ahead and quote me on this. So with all my motherly advice aside for now, I’d been eying this recipe handed down from my Nana. Originally called Sour Cream Coffee Cake, it’s moist and satisfying and it’ll wrangle afternoon peckishness like the dickens.

Seeing that I have a habit of buying up anything organic or that I’d want to see in stock at my local grocery store just to send a message, I was the new owner of some soy yogurt. I’m good with tofu but I won’t be eating the “soygurt” à la carte again. However, as an equal replacement for the original sour cream in this recipe, I know I’d buy it again.

Although a nice bundt pan would be pretty, my Nana is of the depression generation so you can put it in what ever pan fits. I used a square 8×8 and it worked out really well, just could have been bigger since, even with all the birthdays lately, this is about the fastest I’ve seen cake go around here in a long time.

NANA’S COFFEE CAKE

1 Cup Granulated Sugar
1/2 Cup Margarine, softened
1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
1 Cup Soy Vanilla Yogurt, plain is o.k. in a pinch, just add 1 tsp vanilla
1/2 Cup Plain Soy Milk
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 Cup All Purpose Flour
1/2 Cup Whole Wheat Flour

TOPPING
1 Cup Walnuts, broken
1/3 Cup Brown Sugar
1 teaspoon Cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
Toss the walnuts, sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and set aside.
Cream the sugar with the margarine, then add the baking powder and continue to mix until fluffy.
In a measuring cup, combine the yogurt, soy milk and baking soda.
Add half of the yogurt mixture to the creamed sugar, then half of the flour, mixing until each is combined, repeating with the remainder.
Lightly spray and dust an 8×8 cake or bundt pan with flour.
Add half of the cake batter to the pan. Add half of the walnut topping. Finish with the remaining batter, then evenly sprinkle over the last of the topping.
Bake in the center of the oven for 45 – 50 minutes.
Cool completely in the pan before turning it out to a serving plate.

In response to a quick visit from an old friend coming for tea, I naturally made for the kitchen. I’d set aside my quest for a recipe to use up the copious amounts of extra coconut I had from the Perfect Party Cake and thought that the best morning treat with tea would have to be scones.

My friend is a super baker, so as I thought for a bit about tea from porcelain and creative flavour combinations, yet still I settled on simplicity and tradition.

Scones are standard pantry fare using most ingredients typically on hand. One of those ingredients for scones and pastry alike is chilled shortening. For this, I like to keep mine in the freezer, so it’s ready and waiting to keep whatever my cold hands have in mind for it to make light and flaky.

The scones are lightly sweetened with brown sugar and maple syrup, making them slightly caramelly. Quick to put together, the batter is easy and forgiving.

BROWN SUGAR SCONES

2 Cups All Purpose Flour
1/2 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
1/4 Cup Dark Brown Sugar, loosely packed + 1 Tablespoon
1 1/2 teaspoons Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1/2 Cup Vegetable Shortening
3/4 Cup Soy Milk
1/2 Cup Maple Syrup

Preheat the oven to 400ºF.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, combine the flours, baking powder, baking soda, 1/4 cup of brown sugar and salt.
Add and cut in the shortening with either two knives or a pastry cutter to a coarse crumb texture.
Add the milk and maple syrup and stir well with a wooden spoon until the dough comes together, finishing up by hand if necessary to form a ball.
Transfer the dough ball to the parchment lined baking sheet and flatten to 3/4″.
Cut the dough into 8 wedges and sprinke with the 1 tablespoon of remaining brown sugar.
Bake for about 20 – 25 minutes or until golden.

For something a little extra, you could try a drizzling of maple glaze or for a vegetarian version, a little of my latest addictions, David Lebovitz easy recipe for Dulce de Leche.

Mmmm.

Hopefully this is the post worth waiting for. Since being whisked off for a quick French get away, I ate my way through all of Montréal’s renown food samples.

Squeaking a flight through a crazy snowstorm, even for Québec standards, safe at home I brought out my sack of goodness from a small approvisionnement de cuisine shop, still wet from the cookie sized snowflakes that were tumbling down around me. In it, my newly treasured Madeleine pan…

Madeleines are one of my most favourite things. Yes, Proust would be proud. I love these delightful tea cakes so much I named my first born after them. Really.

I couldn’t have been more excited while tredging my better half through this snowstorm to make it back to a little shop I’d originally peered through the window of as this recipe serendipitously came together.

You see, most of Northeastern Canada and U.S.A produces everyone’s supply of maple syrup, and it’s at this time of year, when the temperatures are at their crazy best that the maple sap begins flowing. Thankfully for where I’m at, Québec is one of the number one producers of the stuff – so imagine my pure delight, as I was picking up a few morning groceries, to discover Maple Flakes, even being Canadian I haven’t seen this stuff in the flesh and it hits me that these are where the French Petite Madeleine meets French Canadian. I have certainly found what I have been trying my hand at veganizing these “invasions of the senses” for.

MAPLE MADELIENES

1/4 Cup butter (or to make it vegan, lactose free margarine), melted
1/2 Frozen banana, thawed and pushed through a sieve to puree.
1/3 Cup Soy milk
3 Tablespoons Orange Juice
1 Tablespoon Orange Zest
1 Cup All Purpose Flour, sifted
1/4 Cup cornstarch, sifted
1/4 Cup Sugar,
1/3 Cup Maple Syrup
1/4 teaspoon Salt

Sift dry ingredients together.
Add juice to the soy milk and let rest.
Melt butter/margarine and let cool.
Beat banana and sugar together until very smooth.
Add the soy milk and maple syrup and zest to the banana mixture and combine well.
Whisk in the melted butter then, gradually whisk in dry ingredients with the wet until combined.
Allow the batter to set for about an 1/2 hour in the fridge while you
evenly grease and lightly flour your Madeleine pan.
While the oven preheats to 375ºF, fill each shell 3/4 full with batter and let the batter rest in the pan, popping any bubbles that rise to the surface.
Bake until centers have puffed and the edges are crisp and browned; about 15 minutes.
Cool completely before drizzling over the glaze and sprinkling with maple flakes.

MAPLE GLAZE

1 Tablespoon Margarine
1/4 Cup Maple Syrup
1/2 Cup Confectioners Sugar

Melt the margarine in a medium saucepan.
Add the maple syrup and continue to heat until bubbling.
Whisk in the confectioners sugar until smooth.
Reduce heat but continue to simmer until thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon.
Remove from heat and dip, dunk or drizzle, since the glaze will begin to harden and crystallize as it cools.

Not that I’m the authority but I think that it’s safe to say that Holiday baking is may “officially” begin, now that it’s actually December.

Be it that we took our kids to the community Santa Claus parade or that was today was the first of December, Holidays get me to hum classic carols and remember highlights of Christmas Past. With my brain swirling of roasting chestnuts and the clementine I almost mistook as a lump of coal down in the depths of my stocking toe, I decided the first cookie of the year should be able to last as long as that heart wrenching childhood memory.

Memory aside, it’s always a thrill to bring home the first box of “Christmas Oranges”, as my daughter refers to them. Cracking into them fills a room with a special kind of happiness only little orange packages can bring.

With clementines and cookies on my mind, it wasn’t too tough a decision to get that this biscotti would be the first cookie of the season.

Biscotti is a double baked, super crunchy cookie, perfect for packing in just about any flavour combination and, of course, dipping into mulled wine, coffee or nog.

CHOCOLATE CHESTNUT BISCOTTI WITH CANDIED CLEMENTINE

1/4 Cup Margarine
1 Cup Sugar
1 Banana, mashed well
1/2 Cup Cocoa Powder
2 Cups Unbleached All Purpose Flour
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
10 Chestnuts, roasted

1 Tablespoon Candied Clementine Peel, finely chopped
1/2 Cup Sugar
1/4 Cup Water

Preheat the the oven to 400ºF.
Peel four clementines removing as much of the white pith from the rind as possible.
In a medium saucepan, dissolve the 1/2 Cup of the sugar in the 1/4 Cup water and bring to a low simmer over a medium heat setting.
Simmer for about 20 minutes or until the peels have soaked up much of the syrup, leaving them translucent.
Place a cooling rack over a baking sheet or parchment. Remove the candied peels with a slotted spoon and lay them on the rack to cool and dry.
Meanwhile, score the bottom of each chestnut with an “x”.
Lay the nuts “x” up in a baking pan and roast for 15 – 20 minutes, until the chestnuts open and are fragrant.
Reduce the oven temperature to 350ºF.
With a hand or stand mixer, blend the margarine and banana until very smooth.
Add the sugar and continue to mix until creamy, scraping the sides as necessary.
Peel and chop the chestnuts.
Chop enough of the prepared peel to equal 1 tablespoon (or slightly more if your tastebuds can’t deny it.)
Add the nuts and peel to the batter.
Sift the cocoa, flour, salt and baking soda.
Slowly add the dry ingredients to form a firm dough.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment and remove the biscotti dough from the mixer bowl.
With dampened hands, shape the dough into a wide, shallow log about 9″x4″.
Bake for about 25 minutes, remove and reduce the oven again, to 300ºF.
Once the biscotti is cool enough to handle, use a serrated bread knife to slice the biscotti on a slight angle, about 3/4″ widthwise.
Lay the biscotti cut side down and bake for an additional 8 minutes. Flip and bake the other side for another 8 minutes or until the biscotti is very crisp and dry.

View this and other great shots this month in the Click contest. The theme is nuts. Do you think there will be other chestnuts?? It is the Holidays after all….