Flavour Explosion

Whenever I bite into a tart dessert, I feel happy. Lemon, lime and rhubarb are pretty much heaven to me. I just love the feeling of wanting more and light, bright, tart, fresh flavours always seem to make me want more.

This summer I've made a lot of rhubarb desserts, but this time I wanted something a little extra rhubarby. I wanted a rhubarb cake with a rhubarb sauce. I wanted it all. And since I had plenty of rhubarb, I could it all to myself as a little treat.

Ready for flavour explosion? Read on and discover a cake and sauce recipe that unlocks my heart.

Rhubarb Makes Life Delicious

Could anything in life be more delicious than coming home from work to a homemade Rhubarb Custard Tart? Creamy custard with chunks of tart rhubarb hidden beneath a buttery crumble is about the best thing I can of think right now, especially if it's made by someone with just me in mind.

Serving dessert at a dinner party is lovely. And I have to admit that I spend quite a few minutes deliberating which dessert to make every time friends come over. But serving dessert to your family just because you can, well that's just plain delicious. 

This Rhubarb Custard Tart is from Life Made Delicious truly makes me happy - both to eat and to share with you. 

Vanilla and Butter

The words "vanilla" and "butter" are two of my favourite words of all time, especially when I know that I'm going to be eating them in the near future. It's interesting to me that neither of those two ingredients are tasty if served to you on a spoon on their own, but both taste like magic when put into a dessert.

Last weekend I was baking a pie for Easter dessert and realized, after I returned from the grocery store, that I didn't have enough shortening to make my pastry. I had always used all vegetable shortening in my pastry so was immediately disappointed that I'd have to go back to the store. Then I remembered that my mom uses part shortening and part butter in her pastry and her pies always taste much better than mine. I tried a new recipe of part shortening and part butter pastry, and I'll never be going back to my old ways. 

The pastry paired perfectly with Chatelaine's Vanilla Rhubarb Pie. I changed up the presentation and filling a little, but the basic idea is the same.

Flavour Bombs

I have a favourite recipe for banana muffins so I am always unsure about trying something new. So even though when I heard that Janet and Greta Podleski's Bananaberry Bombs were too good to pass up, I almost passed them up. 

After just one bite, I was happy I tried out the recipe. They're now my favourite banana muffin recipe and these flavour bombs really shouldn't be missed! 

If you don't like bananas, or don't have any super ripe ones, I would suggest trying these muffins with apple sauce in the banana's place. I often substitute mashed banana and apple sauce and have always gotten great results. 

Read on for my version of Bananaberry Bombs (AKA Applebarb Bombs) or visit the Looneyspoon's website for their original delicious version. 

Stop and Smell the Roses

Today was my Nana's birthday and I wanted to make something special in her memory. She loved flowers and I had some lovely fresh strawberries in my fridge so I knew right away that I wanted to make some pretty strawberry rose tartlets. 

The question I had was what to fill my tarts with. When I went out to my garden and saw that I still had some rhubarb, I knew I would make a strawberry-rhubarb curd. I had a recipe for it that I had been meaning to try and I knew that this curd and strawberry tartlets would make a perfect pairing. 

I think I was right. Read on for my recipe to decide if you agree or not! 

Call to the Bar

I love oatmeal in the morning, especially when it's paired with fruit. So when I saw that this recipe had both fruit and oatmeal in it, I got really excited. I had found my next breakfast! 

At first I meant that as a joke, but after a bite, I caved. These Oatmeal Rhubarb Bars make take a while to bake but every second is worth it because they taste that good. 

After one bite I felt qualified to argue my opinion of eating them for breakfast. But, funny enough, no one argued with me. Everyone was happy to enjoy one along with their morning coffee!

Upside Down

Eggs are important for baking for three main reasons. Eggs help all the other ingredients in baked goods stick together. Eggs help to make baking moist. And eggs help baking to rise. 

I understand how eggs bind baking and make baking moist, but I had to think (and also research) about how eggs help baking to rise. I learned that it's because when you beat eggs, you're adding air into them and the air gets trapped inside your wet batter. Then, when your baking is in the oven, the air warms and expands and your baking rises.

Now that we're all learned why eggs are important for baking, I'm going to share a recipe I made when I was rushing about in the kitchen and talking on the phone. I was feeling so upside down and preoccupied that I completely forgot to add the eggs to my batter! 

I thought forgetting the eggs was going to make my cake a huge flop, but somehow my dessert worked incredibly well and I will never feel the need to eggs to it again! 

So, is this is one of the rare times when baking isn't a science? Read below my recipe to see my scientific conclusion :)

Gobbler Up This Cobbler

I love researching how different things got their name, but it's even more fun for me to come up a great reason why all by myself. 

I don't love tattoos, but I will always remember the reason why I think that tattoos were named tattoos. I came up with my reason when I was at a drum show in Halifax called Tattoo. The beat of drum sticks repeatedly hitting the drums made a tattoo sound, much the same as the beat of raindrops on a window. This is the same sound or action as when a tattoo is created on a person- thus the name tattoo was given. 

I don't know if that's true or not, I've never bothered to look it up. But I do think that it should be the reason!

Now Luke and I came up why we think a fruit cobbler was named a fruit cobbler. And I'm so pleased with our reason why, I know I will never look up the real reason. Looking at the top of a beautiful cobbler you see parcels of dough that resemble walking stones on a street, or you could call them cobble stones! 

But these cobble stones are much more delicious than their namesake. They're soft and sweet and cover an amazing array of roasted fruit. I know you'll want to try this one!

Weird Science

There are a lot of weird Asian foods.

Nope, I'm not touching that. There are so many things I won't even discuss because they're too weird to think about.

But if you've ever thought about it, how many Asian desserts can you spout off the top of your head?

Of course there are things like deep fried green tea ice cream and maybe coconut or mango rice creations. But that's about it.

Really Asian desserts don't exist.

So today I am exploring the lesser known area of Asian desserts with gloves off.  Hopefully you like what I make, even if only for the creative factor. :)

Sweet Tarts

I just got back from a weekend of camping and I can't count the number of the bug bites, aches, and bits of dirts on me.

Not to mention the facts that it was a long drive, it was cold, we forgot my sleeping bag and part of the stove. So... let's just say that I've had better camping trips.

So when I crawled out of our tent both mornings (yes, we did remember the tent) I longingly thought of the delicious pancakes I had created the weekend before.

They were sweet, tart, and oh so warm and comforting. But thinking of them made me a little sad, since I was stuck with cold cereal.

I'll be enjoying these yummy creations of mine soon enough though. And, luckily, not all of the weekend was bad. Some of it was pretty fun.

Preserving the love

Do you have a favourite sound?

Some people love birds chirping, others relish the chance to sleep listening to the ocean waves, and some people want nothing else than to hear their family's laughter.

Laughter is definitely up there for me, but my favourite sound is the short and sweet high pitched pop of a jar of jam sealing.

I know that sound is probably not something that came to your mind when you were thinking about all the amazing sounds in the world, but nothing brings a smile to my face like it. A grin slides across my cheeks and I laugh every single time I hear it. And for that brief moment, I can't think of anything wrong in my life.

Every time I make jam I hope that my jars of sweetened fruit will gel and I'll be able to enjoy the taste of the sugary goodness spread across toast the next day. And every time I hear that pop, I know that I will get to share my homemade yumminess with friends the next time they come for brunch too.

And jam and jellies are so versatile so how can you not get excited?