Bananas, Ice Cream and Mariokart

During my second year of university, I lived in a house that was full of primarily varsity basketball players, (of which, I was one).  I lived in the basement with two other girls from the women’s team and on the first floor there were three guys from the men’s team.  We each had separate entrances so you had to go outside to enter each other’s apartment and talk to each other in person.  There were many times, however, that instead of going outside and around the house to communicate with the guys, we’d just yell through the vents.  The house wasn’t very soundproof so we could easily have entire conversations without leaving the comfort of our own apartments, (this was especially useful during the winter).  There was one thing that would make me go upstairs though and that was Mariokart.

In my younger days I was a pro at Mariokart on Super Nintendo.  I was confident that no one could beat me, whether it be on Rainbow Road or in Battle Mode, I dominated.  But my expertise was limited to Super Nintendo.  I never advanced past that gaming system.  When Nintendo 64 came out, I didn’t jump on the bandwagon and left my game playing days behind me.  Or so I thought.  Enter Kenny.  Kenny was one of the guys who lived upstairs and he had a Nintendo 64 and Mariokart.  We were hanging out one day and somehow Mariokart worked it’s way into our conversation, (as it does…) and I started shooting my mouth off about how good I was at it.  Well Kenny immediately challenged me to prove it and so we wandered upstairs to have a match.

I wrongly assumed that since I was an expert at Mariokart on SNES, I would also be an expert on N64.  I wasn’t ready for a controller with a dozen extra buttons and a rumble pack and all sorts of new things.  On our first round, Kenny destroyed me with bananas.  He would litter the track with them and shout “There are ‘nanners all over the track!” and I would steer my way into most of them, spinning out and ultimately losing race after race.  Gradually I got somewhat better, but Kenny and his bananas continued to get the best of me.  We had many rematches after that, usually sparked by Kenny yelling down the vent “Bri! Nanners! Briiiiiii!” and me bounding up the steps.  Ever since those days, I can’t help but think of Kenny and ‘nanners all over the track whenever I start to bake with bananas.


Banana Sour Cream Cake, (from Mindfood)

125g butter, softened
¾ cup castor sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs, room temperature
¾ cup sour cream
¼ cup milk
1 cup mashed bananas
2 ¼ cups self raising flour
¼ tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly grease and line a 20cm round cake pan with baking paper. Using an electric mixer, beat butter, sugar and vanilla until pale and creamy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Using a large metal spoon, gently fold in cream, milk and banana. Sift flour and baking of soda over batter and gently fold through.

Spoon batter into cake pan and smooth.  Bake 50-60 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.  Stand for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.

*****Mindfood suggests a sour cream and white chocolate icing which I should have made, but I used a sour cream, icing sugar and butter recipe instead.  It turned out ok, but not amazing so I’m not going to post that.  To make the cake look pretty I sprinkled it with dried edible flowers and served it with a Brown Sugar Balsamic Swirl ice cream from Bon Appetit, which was pretty awesome and deserving of a post all to itself. 

PFB Voting and A Story About Pavlova

It’s time to vote for your favourite contestant to advance to the next round of Foodbuzz’s Project Food Blog. Hopefully that’s me! You’ve got until September 23rd to make your vote count and can do so right here.

And for you, I’ve got a little story about food and travel! Back in university, I did a semester abroad at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. A lot of my memories from those 6 months revolve around trying new foods and seeing new places. One of my favourites finds was the New Farm Farmer’s Marke. It was there that I tried Greek yogurt for the first time, sampled wine on Saturday mornings and learned to actually enjoy eating olives. Aside from my market finds, one of my many food discoveries in Australia was the pavlova. A wonderful dessert that every Aussie I met, fiercely defended as being Australian in origin. I had no reason to doubt them at this point although I thought it a bit odd that they were so adamant that pavlova came from Australia.



Fast forward 5 years and I found myself in New Zealand, once again eating and traveling around and enjoying myself immensely. That is, until one night when I was cooking with friends and the topic of what to make for dessert came up. Someone asked me if I’d had a pavlova since being in New Zealand. I foolishly replied “That’s the Australian meringue dessert, right?” Uh oh. Now Kiwi’s are generally pretty laid back people, they don’t tend to get angry very often but there’s a limit to every Kiwi’s patience and apparently I crossed the line when I dared to suggest that pavlova might come from Australia. Clearly, according to the kiwi’s I was with, it’s a Kiwi invention. Only Kiwi’s could come up with something as delicious as pavlova, not bloody Australians!


Upon my return home I decided to test out my pav making skills with a bit of seasonal Canadian flavour. I topped my pavlova with a maple syrup infused whipped cream and some fresh peaches and blueberries. Maybe I can now start claiming that Canadians invented the pavlova?

Pavlova, (from the very Kiwi, Edmonds Cookery Book)

3 egg whites
1 teaspoon vinegar
3 tablespoons cold water
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup caster sugar
3 teaspoons cornflour

Preheat oven to 150 C. Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites until stiff. Add water and beat again. Add sugar very gradually while still beating. Slow beater and add vinegar, vanilla and cornflour. Line an oven try with baking paper. Draw a 22 cm circle on the baking paper. Spread the pavlova to within 2 cm of the edge of the circle, keeping the shape as round and even as possible. Smooth top surface over. Bake pavlova for 45 mins, then leave to cool in oven (Do not open the oven while it is baking! It may deflate!). Carefully life the pavlova onto a serving plate. Decorate with whipped cream and fresh fruit.

Serves 6.

Silent Sunday: Waffles with Blueberries, Peaches and Maple Syrup

Project Food Blog: Challenge #1

I Love to Bake and Blog: Peanut Butter Banana Cupcake with Chocolate Frosting

Ready, Set, Blog Post! That’s the title of the first round of Foodbuzz’s Project Food Blog, a riff on the popular cooking elimination programs that are currently dominating reality TV. This is the beginning of 12 weeks of challenges which will ultimately lead to one food blogger being crowned the next food blog star and winning a cool hard $10000 and a special feature on Foodbuzz for a year. That’s a big deal. And here’s why I think that food blogger should be me:

Pumpkin Gnocchi: I wish I could go to Italy to learn to make it authentically!

I was never one of those kids who knew what they wanted to be when they grew up. While other youngsters had dreams of being ballerinas, fire fighters, astronauts or famous singers, my stock standard answer of what I wanted to be when I grew up was “I don’t know.” As I progressed through elementary school, that answer didn’t change. In high school when others were picking out university programs, I selected six schools at random and applied, without any idea where it would lead. In university when others were applying for jobs or further education I still didn’t know what I wanted to do next and so I decided to take some time off.

Me at The French Laundry: The happiest place on earth, (forget Disneyworld...)

It was during that time that I began to truly identify my love of food and also when I began blogging. For a period of time I thought maybe I could earn a living cooking, but with a university degree in Physical Health and Education, I decided that I had better head to culinary school first. After a year long chef training program I started my first job in a restaurant kitchen, ready to begin a culinary career. Things were finally starting to take shape, except I hated it and wanted to quit after my first week. It improved following the rough start and I managed to stick it out for 14 months, but I knew that restaurant work wasn’t for me. Back to square one.

Culinary School: I learned a lot, but the restaurant business is not for me

Once again, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, I took off and traveled for a year. The one thing that remained constant throughout my travels was my love of food and desire to taste as much of each country as I could. Looking back through my travel pictures, there’s an inordinate amount of food photos to prove it. Since returning home I’ve been looking for a job and applying to a variety of positions but as always, without knowing what it is I really want to do.

Pad Thai in Thailand: Street food is awesome

For anyone who’s been in this situation before, you’ll be familiar with the line of questions you get from others who are trying to help you out. One of the most popular questions is “If money/time/obstacles weren’t an issue, what would you most want to be doing with your time, what would make you happy?” This is not an easy question. I started by answering with my old favourite response of “I don’t know.” But then I started to think about it and the beginnings of a new, better answer began to form.

Skydiving in New Zealand: Not as big a rush as eating at The French Laundry

What would make me happy? I’d ultimately like to spend my days cooking, baking, eating, photographing, traveling and writing about it all. Essentially, I would like to be a professional food blogger. But how do I make that happen? Foodbuzz has provided me with a good way to start on the path to food blogging success with Project Food Blog. Not only would the exposure be good, but just think what I could do with $10000! I could take the Ice Cream Technology course offered by the University of Guelph, the only one in Canada of its kind. I could plan a trip to Italy and learn pasta making from the masters. I could outfit my kitchen with all sorts of new gadgets. And throughout it all, I’d be blogging and sharing my cooking experiences with the world. Sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?

Adventuring and Eating Around the World: Something I'd like to do more of

So when voting opens for the first challenge on September 20th, help make my food blogging dreams a reality by voting me into the next round of Project Food Blog. Need any more proof that I’m serious about food? Here are three reasons:

Balsamic Roasted Strawberry Ice Cream: One of my favourite homemade flavours

-I started blogging in 2006, over four years ago, I’m serious about this!
-When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I think about is what’s for dinner.
-I got a bigger rush out of eating at The French Laundry than I did from skydiving.

Vanilla Bean Mousse Cheesecake

How do you like your cheesecake? Thin graham crust with a dense cream cheese top, baked in a water bath? Shortbread crust, light cream cheese and sour cream top, baked long and slow? No crust, no-bake, gelatin set? Cottony Japanese cheesecake? The variations are endless and I haven’t even touched on flavour possibilities. When I think of cheesecake my ideal is something dense and richly full of cream cheese, preferably baked and usually with fruit and booze incorporated somehow. It’s funny how people’s interpretations of the same thing can be so very different. What one person finds perfectly accepted, can turn another off completely.


I’m generally not a fan of no-bake cheesecakes but that’s probably because they were on the menu when I worked at the restaurant and I had to make a whole lot of them. When my friend V requested that I make her a no-bake cheesecake, quite honestly, I wasn’t overly enthused, but after looking around a few blogs I settled upon a recipe from Dessert First that was appealing and I simply tweaked it to match the ingredients I had on hand. Much to my surprise, I quite like how it turned out too. It’s not at all like the cheesecakes I usually enjoy, the texture is on the verge of being a mousse, but it’s pretty awesome nonetheless. I especially like the gingersnap crust instead of the typical graham and really, you can never go wrong with using real vanilla beans.

I was in Tonga a few months ago and I acquired a bunch of vanilla beans so I’ve been using them in everything I bake. I love the telltale black flecks that identify that a real vanilla bean has been used instead of extract.


Vanilla Bean Mousse Cheesecake (Adapted from Green Tea Cheesecake from Dessert First)

1 cup gingersnap crumbs
4 teaspoons sugar
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
10 ounces whipping cream
12 ounces cream cheese
2/3 cup sugar
7 ounces milk
1 vanilla bean
2 teaspoons powdered gelatin

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Line a 9x9 square pan with parchment paper and butter lightly.
Combine gingersnap crumbs, sugar, and melted butter in a medium bowl until well combined and crumbly. Press firmly into the bottom of the pan with your fingers.
Bake in oven for about 10 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack while you make the filling.
Whip the cream in a stand mixer with the whisk attachment until soft peaks form. Set cream aside.
In a clean mixer bowl, beat cream cheese until soft and creamy (do not overbeat and liquefy it). Add the sugar and beat to combine.
Heat the milk in a small saucepan until almost boiling. Split vanilla bean and scrape the seeds into the pot, add the bean. Remove from heat and let steep 15 minutes. Return and heat until almost boiling, remove from heat and remove the vanilla bean.
Bloom gelatin in about 3 tablespoons of water.
Add in the milk to the cream cheese and mix until combined.
Fold in the whipped cream gently with a rubber spatula until combined.
If the gelatin is solid, heat in microwave for 10 seconds at a time until liquid. Make sure it is liquid or it will not blend smoothly with the cheesecake.
Add the gelatin to the cheesecake mixture and fold until combined.
Pour the cheesecake mixture into prepared pan.
Refrigerate for at least an hour until set.

Mysterious Vietnam

'Cyclo' ice cream sundae at Fanny

In the past 10 months I’ve set foot in 10 different countries. I’ve noticed that when I’m telling people about the different places I’ve been, one country seems to get more attention than the others. Everyone seems to be intrigued by Vietnam, there’s something mysterious and exotic about it that piques curiosities. For me, it was all about the food. I’d had a craving for Vietnamese Spring Rolls since the day I knew I was going to Vietnam. They were one of the first things I ate as soon as I could find a market. I wandered to the food section, (past 19 vendors selling knock off tshirts and knick knacks) and plunked myself down in front of the first stall that I saw with a woman rolling up fresh spring rolls. I pointed and the next spring rolls came to me. That’s pretty much how I did most of my ordering in Vietnam. I saw something I liked, I pointed at it and a few minutes later a similar plate would be put down in front of me. It was a good system.

Fresh Vietnamese Spring Rolls

Ice cream might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Vietnam but Fanny ice cream parlour came recommended by Dorie Greenspan and I’d have been foolish to ignore any advice given by such a smart and wonderful woman. Fanny has a few locations around Vietnam and I managed to get to two of them, (in Ho Chi Min City and Hanoi) and am so glad that I did. When I arrived in Ho Chi Min City, (HCMC) it was approximately a million degrees outside, humid and I was sick for the first time in South East Asia. As I lay on my hotel bed, feeling like death warmed over, all I wanted was something cold and delicious to make me feel better. When I managed to muster enough strength to drag myself out of bed, I headed out for ice cream.

Rice Paper Drying in the Sun

I didn’t realize what an adventure it would be to get there. I had been in large South East Asian cities previous to HCMC, I’d been to Kuala Lumpur and to Bangkok but for some reason, HCMC overwhelmed me. It was the scooters. HCMC has an insane amount of scooters that dominate the roads, the sidewalk, everywhere and don’t abide by any sort of laws or regulations. One local joked to me that in the morning scooters drive on the right side of the road and in the afternoon they drive on the left. I’m still not entirely sure that was a joke. Crossing the road should be an Olympic event in HCMC. Traffic lights mean nothing.

Chicken For Sale at the Market in Hoi An

The best way to cross a street is to look in the direction you want to go and to walk there without hesitation. The scooters will swerve around you. It’s true, they will. It’s also true that I saw three scooter crashes in one day. Anyways, after crossing multiple streets and being sure I was going to die each time, I arrived at Fanny and it was worth it. Besides all of the amazing homemade ice cream flavours to chose from they also had the most interesting sundae options. I chose a ‘Cyclo’ which is pictured here and is composed of a scoop of strawberry, mango and coconut ice cream, orange slices, whipped cream, waffle cone and a grape and it was as fun to eat as it was to look at.

Boating in the Mekong Delta

After the insanity that was HCMC I headed south to the Mekong Delta, a land of floating markets, long boats and some amazing scenery. The floating markets were an experience unto themselves. Some of the boats remained stationary, others brought their goods to you. Some specialized in one item, (like watermelon) others offered a few different items. And how do you tell what each boat is selling? They hang a pole from the bow or the stern and tie on one of each item they have on offer so you can see from a distance if you want to travel to that boat. It was really interesting to see. On the way back from the floating markets we stopped at a small restaurant for lunch.

Fried Elephant Ear Fish for Lunch

The menu was limited, but one of the offerings was fried elephant ear fish. I jumped at the chance to give it a try and when they brought out a whole fish I was certainly glad I did. Along with the fish came all the fixings to make my own cold rolls, complete with fresh herbs to customize it the way I wanted to. My dining companions, (who had all opted for safer options that they recognized) eyed my dish with curiosity but seemed wary of having to disassemble a fish on their own so I started doing up cold rolls for them to try as well. I’m always surprised by how little some travelers are willing to try. The way I look at it, if I’ve come all the way to Vietnam I want to experience everything it has to offer. Some people just want a sandwich. It baffles me.

Fresh Herbs and Greens at the Hoi An Market

Since Dorie’s recommendation of Fanny had been so great, I decided to follow her advice once again after leaving the Mekong Delta and heading north to Hoi An. She had attended a cooking class there and I was determined to do the same so it was off to the Red Bridge Cooking School. Dorie has a wonderful account of the experience there and I’d have to say that mine was quite similar. Our menus were the same and as she mentions, one of the most interesting parts was seeing how rice paper is made. I had actually had a previous demonstration of this while traveling along the Mekong Delta. There they made mass quantities of rice paper wrappers and showed us how they dried them in the sun, (along with their laundry) before packaging them up to sell.

Seafood Pancakes Made at the Red Bridge Cooking School

As with my cooking class in Thailand, this one included a market tour. The only bad thing about markets in foreign countries is that I can’t bring them home with me and there’s always so much that I don’t get to try. And then there’s the things that I try and love but then can never find again. I think that’s what spurs me on to travel more because there are so many things out there that I never see at home.

Outdoor Food Stalls

If it’s food you’re looking for, Vietnam delivers. As with most of the places I visited, I felt like my time there was too short. There were lots of places I still wanted to explore and wasn’t able to. That probably means I just need to start planning another trip…