Baking recipes
Scroll through our posts below to try all sorts of delicious baking recipes from our instagram baking videos. New baking videos are posted the first week of each month on Instagram and Facebook.
To easily find one of our recipes type below:
Herb and Garlic Pull Apart Bread!
This loaf of bread is made up of many squares of dough layered with herb and garlic butter! The layering results in a flaky loaf you can just pull apart with your fingers! So tasty and easy to eat!
Layers of buttery goodness!
Herb and Garlic Pull Apart Bread
Yield: 1 loaf sized 9”x5”
Dough:
1.5 cups Milk, warm
1/4 cup Butter, melted
3 cups Flour
1.5 teaspoons Salt
1.5 teaspoons Instant Yeast
3 Tablespoons Sugar
1/2 teaspoon Pepper
Herb and Garlic Butter:
1/3 cup Butter, soft
2 cloves Garlic, chopped
1/2 cup chopped herbs - I used green onion, cilantro and parsley, but use what you got!
pinch of Salt
pinch of pepper
In the bowl of your mixer combine all the dry ingredients for your dough - flour, salt, instant yeast, sugar and pepper. Toss to combine, then add your warm milk and melted butter.
Mix with the dough hook about 10 minutes or until the dough is no longer sticking to the sides of your bowl and is in a nice firm ball around the dough hook.
Place the dough into a grease bowl with a lid and let sit at room temperature for about 1 hour or until doubled.
While the dough is resting, stir together the herb butter- soft butter, garlic, herbs, salt and pepper.
Once your dough is ready, roll it into a large rectangle about 12'“x16” on a lightly floured surface.
Now spread your garlic butter on top of the dough covering the entire thing.
Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough into 12 pieces 3 columns x 4 rows, don’t worry if some aren’t exactly square.
Now grab one of the 12 squares and fold it in half so the butter layer is in the inside like a herb butter taco, you will do this with each square of dough.
Place all the folded pieces of dough into a greased loaf pan, placing the folded edge on the bottom of the pan so you can see the buttery centre from the top of your loaf. I find it easiest to place my loaf pan on it’s side so I can stack all the pieces of dough on top of each other without them falling over, then I can place the pan back on it’s bottom and rearrange the pieces if needed.
Once all your dough is in the pan, cover with a piece of saran wrap and let sit at room temperature until it has expanded and filled the pan, about 1 hour.
Bake in a preheated 350*F oven for about 30-45 minutes, or until golden brown and hollow sounding when tapped.
Cool and eat!
Homemade DOUGHNUTS!
Doughnuts are AMAZING! I love doughnuts! That is my birthday treat of choice. Home made doughnuts are truly the ultimate version of doughnuts because you can’t beat a warm doughnut straight out of the fryer! It’s sooooo yummy! The dough isn’t too tricky, but you do need to deep fry them, because lets be honest, a baked doughnut should just be called a bun and we don’t want none, if you’re just a bun! Ok I would still eat a bun, but fried is the WAY TO GO! I don’t have a deep fryer, you just need a sturdy pot and ideally a thermometer.
Freshly baked doughnuts are the love of my life!
Doughnuts
Yield: 6-8 regular sized hole-y doughnuts
Dough:
2/3 cup milk, warm
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 egg
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract (optional)
3/4 teaspoon Salt
2 Tablespoons Sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons Instant yeast
2 cups Flour
In the bowl of your mixer combine the dry ingredients - flour, salt, sugar, yeast. Toss together to combine.
Pour in your liquid ingredients - milk, melted butter, egg and vanilla.
Knead the dough in your mixer until it creates a ball around your dough hook, and isn’t sticking to the sides of your bowl, about 10 minutes.
Place your dough ball into a grease bowl, cover and let rise at room temperature for about 1 hour, or until doubled.
Once double, press down your dough and take it out of the bowl. Wrap in saran wrap and place in the fridge until chilled, at least 30 minutes. You can even leave these overnight if you want to fry them off for breakfast in the morning!
Next, roll out your dough to about 1/2” thick and cut out your doughnuts, ideally use a 3-4” round cutter with a 1” cutter for the middle, but use what you got! Wine glasses work great!
Place your doughnuts onto a lined and lightly floured baking tray, then cover with a clean tea towel and let rise at room temperature for 30 minutes-1 hour, or until almost doubled.
Get your glaze and/or cinnamon sugar ready at this point, so they are ready to go once your doughnuts are fried!
While your doughnuts are rising, heat up a deep fryer or a large pot with at least 1” of canola oil or shortening at the bottom, you want an oil with a high smoke point. We want our oil at 350F-365F. Ideally use a thermometer to keep an eye on your oil, otherwise you can toss scraps of dough in to see how the sizzle and gauge the temperature that way.
Once your dough is ready place a 2-3 doughnuts in at a time and fry for 1-2 minutes flipping halfway. Mine took about 1.5 minutes for the larger doughnuts.
Once your doughnut is golden, remove it from the oil and place onto a wire rack that is sitting on top of a baking tray to catch anything that drips.
If you want cinnamon sugar doughnuts, roll them in the cinnamon sugar while they are hot out of the fryer. If you would like to glaze them, finish frying all your doughnuts and then toss them into your glaze and place back on to the wire rack to dry for a minute before serving.
Now eat them while warm, it is the GREATEST!
Cinnamon Sugar:
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Toss together!
Vanilla Glaze:
1 cup Icing Sugar
2 Tablespoons Milk
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Stir ingredients together until smooth, if you want it thicker, add more icing sugar to get the consistency you like.
Strawberry Cheesecake Babka!
Remember that cinnamon swirl bread you would get as a treat when you were little? Well imagine that, but a million times more delicious! You can fill your babka with all sorts of different fillings, if you want to make it with a cinnamon bun filling you can get that cinnamon swirl bread flavour, the most common flavour is chocolate, but today we are making STRAWBERRY CHEESECAKE! For that we are filling a rich brioche dough with a cheesecake layer, as well as strawberry jam.
So fluffy and buttery!
Strawberry Cheesecake Babka
Yield: 1 loaf (8”x4” loaf pan or an 8” round cake pan)
Once dough is on it’s final proof in the loaf pan, Preheat the oven to 350*F
Brioche Dough:
2 1/4 cup Flour
2 teaspoons Yeast
3 Tablespoons Sugar
1 teaspoon Salt
3 Eggs, room temperature
1/3 cup Milk, warm
2/3 cup Butter, soft
Cheesecake Filling:
1/2 cup Cream Cheese (4 oz.), soft
pinch Salt
2 Tablespoons Sugar
1 Tablespoon Sour cream
1/4-1/2 cup Strawberry jam (or whatever flavour you like!)
Glaze (optional):
1 Tablespoon Apricot Jam
2 teaspoons Water
In the bowl of your mixer stir together the brioche dry ingredients - flour, yeast, salt and sugar
Add the eggs and milk to your dry ingredients, then mix with a dough hook for about 6 minutes, or until the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl, and is in a ball around the hook.
Now with the mixer running, slowly add the soft butter about 1 tablespoon at a time. toss in one small piece of butter, then let it knead into the dough before adding another piece. This will take about 10 minutes to do, to get the butter incorporated, ending with a sticky soft dough.
Plop the dough into a greased bowl and let it proof at room temperature for 1-2 hours or until doubled.
While the dough is proofing, stir together all your cheesecake filling ingredients except for the jam. Then set to the side at room temperature.
Once dough has relaxed pop it onto a floured counter and roll into a large rectangle about 10”x15”
Smear your cheesecake filling on top of the rectangle leaving about 1” of dough without filling on the top edge.
Next smear on your strawberry jam on top of the cheesecake layer.
Now roll your dough up like a cinnamon bun. Once you have rolled up the entire dough, pinch together the top edge.
Using a large sharp knife slice the log right down the middle so you end up with two long wormies of dough.
Now grab one log and lift it over the other log and then continue until you have a “rope” sort of braid looking log of dough. Try to keep the cut side of each log facing the top so we can see all the exposed layers from the top. Pinch together the ends.
Now place your dough into a greased loaf or cake pan. This is a little messy, but just do your best to get it all in there!
Cover with saran wrap and let your dough proof at room temperature for 1-2 hours or until doubled.
Preheat your oven to 350*F
Once you bread is proofed, remove the saran wrap and pop into the oven for 40-60 minutes, or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean when stabbed into it.
When your loaf comes out of the oven you can paint the top with a little bit of apricot jam thinned out with warm water. This isn’t necessary, but add a little shine!
Now enjoy!
Date Bars, some call them "Matrimonial Slice" but you know commitment issues...we're just DATING!
Sometimes I am a 100 year old women, why? BECAUSE I LOVE DATE BARS! They are buttery, soft, crunchy, cinnamon-y, and sweet! Plus, they are made of dried fruit and oats, so as far as I’m concerned they are a breakfast food. If you aren’t into the dates, you can also replace the date filling with the apple pie filling we made for our turnovers a few days ago, just double the apple filling recipe so you use 2 apples!
Date Bars for when your not allowed to go on dates to bars.
Date Bars
Yield: one 8”x8” pan or something of a similar size
Preheat your oven to 350*F
Date Filling:
2 1/2 cups roughly chopping Dried Dates (about one pound)
1 cup Water
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Butter
1 Tablespoon Grand Marnier (optional)
Streusel:
3/4 cup Butter, soft
1 cup Brown Sugar
1 1/4 cup Flour
1 1/4 cup Oats
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
In a small pot over medium heat cook your dates, water, lemon juice, baking soda, salt and butter until it thickens and forms a puree type mixture. Remove from heat. (If your don’t want any larger date chunks you can puree this mixture in a food processor, but I like the texture so I just leave it as is!)
Add the Grand Marnier if using, then set to the side.
In a large bowl combine all the Streusel ingredients and rub them together with your hands until they are combined.
In a greased and lined 8”x8” pan pour about 2/3 of your streusel mixture and press into the bottom of the pan to form a crust.
Pour all of your date filling on top of the base crust and smooth it out evenly making sure to cover the entire base.
Now take the last 1/3 of streusel and crumble it on top of the date layer.
Bake in a preheated 350*F oven for about 25-35 minutes or until just starting to turn golden brown on the edges.
Let cool, then slice and eat! Or add to your tray of dainties if you are having a fancy team party like I wish I was having right now!
Bagels...the HOLE-iest bread in town!
Bagels…cream cheese…what better combo is out there!? It’s not very often you get to eat a bagel straight from the oven, at least not in my world, but boy are they delicious! Like most of my bread recipes, this is a whole day affair, but most of that is just waiting around. Perfect for quarantine! You can also start them the day before, then finish them the next day if you are on the ball! Imagine having your friends over for Sunday brunch, just showing off your new found bread skills with freshly made bagels! How impressive! Can’t wait until we can actually have brunch with friends again…one day!
Freshly made BAGELS!
Bagels
Yield: 6 regular sized bagels
Once you get to the boiling stage of the recipe, preheat that oven to 450*F
Sponge:
1 cup room temperature water
1 1/4 teaspoon Yeast (instant or whatever you got!)
1 1/2 cups Flour
Dough:
1 1/2 cups Flour
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon Honey (or molasses if you got it!)
Boiling Mixture:
Approximately 2.5 Litres of water
1/4 cup Brown Sugar (or Honey)
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
Egg Wash:
1 egg
pinch of sugar
pinch of salt
Toppings:
I used poppyseeds, but you can use anything! Sesame seeds, dried herbs, everything bagel spice blend!
In the bowl of your mixer, combine the sponge ingredients - 1 cup of water, 1.5 cups of flour and 1 1/4 teaspoon yeast. Then cover this with saran wrap and let it sit for at least 3 hours. This is the “sponge” which is going to grow and build flavour similar to a sourdough bread while it sits.
Your sponge mixture should now looks very bubbly and have a goopy texture, that is perfect! Now dump in the rest of the dough ingredients - 1.5 cups flour, 1.5 teaspoons salt and 1 Tablespoon honey. Mix using the dough hook of your mixer for about 6 minutes. This is a pretty thick dough, so if your mixer sounds strained just pop it out of the bowl and mix it by hand. The finished dough should be soft and not sticky to the touch.
Place your dough ball into a large greased bowl and cover with a towel or saran wrap or a lid. Let it rest at room temperature for 1 hour.
Remove your dough ball and cut it into 6 equal pieces.
Take each piece and roll it into a ball, I like to cup it in my hand and roll it on the counter top to make a nice ball shape.
Now poke your finger through the middle of your dough ball and stretch it out until you have a bagel shape with a hole in the middle that’s about 1.5” wide.
Place the formed bagels onto a parchment lined baking tray that has been lightly dusted with flour.
Once all 6 of your bagels have been formed, cover them with saran wrap and leave them to rest 20-30 minutes at room temperature. If you want the bake these the next day, you can pop these into the fridge overnight and continue with the rest of the recipe tomorrow, just let your bagels sit out at room temperature for about 30 minutes before you boil them so they aren’t super cold.
While your bagels are resting, bring about 2.5 Litres of water to a boil and add 1/4 cup brown sugar and 1 teaspoon of baking soda.
You can also preheat your oven to 450*F at this time!
Now boil your bagels in the water mixture for 20-30 seconds per side, I did mine 2 at a time so the water didn’t cool down too much.
Once boiled place the bagels back onto the parchment lined tray, trying to make sure not to bring too much water onto the tray.
Now the egg wash! Whisk together your egg with a pinch of sugar and salt, you can use a fork for this, just want to break up the egg so we can paint it onto our bagels.
Using a pastry brush if you got it, otherwise your fingers will do, brush the tops and sides of your bagels with the egg wash, then sprinkle them with your toppings, I used poppyseeds but you can also just leave them plain.
Once they are all egg washed pop them into your hot oven and bake until golden brown and hollow sounding when tapped.
Now devour them with cream cheese! Yay!
Angel Food Cake! Popular with Angels AND Devils!
Angel food cake, what a name! I just imagine the Philadelphia Cream Cheese Angel snacking on it while taking a break from her cream cheese bagels. It’s a cake as light , fluffy and white as a cloud! This baby is made without any fat, which means it can be a bit tricky, but I have faith in you! First you make a meringue, then carefully fold in flour and sugar, then once baked you flip it upside down so it doesn’t collapse on itself while it cools! Fun!
Angel Food Cake!
Angel Food Cake
Yield: 1 x 10” Angel Food Cake Tube Pan (ideally with a removable bottom, but use what you got!)
Preheat your oven to 350*F
1 1/2 cups of Egg Whites, room temperature (I had a carton of pasteurized egg whites to use up, but you can also use fresh egg whites, which would be about 12 egg whites)
1 cup Sugar
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon lemon juice (or vinegar) or if you have it 1/2 teaspoon Cream of Tartar
3/4 cup plus 2 Tablespoons All Purpose Flour
2 Tablespoons Cornstarch
1 1/4 cup Icing Sugar
1 teaspoon Lemon Extract (you can use any flavour here, traditionally it’s almond extract, but vanilla or orange are yummy too!)
Using a sieve, sift together your flour, cornstarch and icing sugar 3 times! Yes, seems excessive but we want those dry ingredients to be light and fluffy! Then set this to the side.
In the bowl of a mixer place your egg whites (make sure the bowl and whisk attachment are super clean and there isn’t any oily residue or else your whites aren’t going to whip). Whip the egg whites with the whisk attachment on medium high speed until they are white, fluffy and starting to look thick.
Now add your lemon juice (or cream of tartar) and salt, and while the machine is whisking on a medium speed very slowly add your 1 cup of regular sugar, don’t dump it in all at once or else it will deflate your egg whites. Basically you want to add a spoonful or two and then once you can’t see it on top of the whites, add another few spoonfuls until it’s all gone.
Once all the sugar is in the whites turn it up to high speed and whisk until you get stiff peaks. You should be able to hold the bowl upside down and the mixture won’t fall out. This is a meringue! Meringue is one of my favourite words.
Remove the bowl from the mixer and add your lemon (or other flavour) extract, and now we are going to add in the flour/icing sugar mixture to the whites by carefully folding it in, in 3-4 additions.
Dump about 1/3 of your flour mixture on top of the meringue and using a rubber spatula,scoop the meringue from the base of the bowl on top of the flour mixture, then continue doing this until it is mostly mixed in, some flour bits will still be showing. Then continue this with the rest of the flour mixture until it has all been incorporated.
At this point your mixture should still be thick and fluffy looking.
Now scoop the batter into your angel food cake tube pan. DO NOT GREASE YOUR PAN! We want a nice, dry, greaseless pan because the batter is going to cling to the sides while it bakes making it nice and light!
Using a butter knife run it through the batter in the pan a few times to knock out any large air bubbles.
Pop your cake into the oven for about 40 minutes or until golden brown and dry looking on top. It should spring back if you touch it with your fingers.
Right when it comes out of the oven FLIP it upside down to cool! Most angel food cake pans have little feet, or a hole in the middle so you can rest it on something and not touch the top edge of the cake.
Once it is cooled, run a knife around the edges, then using the removable bottom from your pan your should be able to push it out and your lovely angel food cake is all ready to be eaten!
I love to eat my angel food cake with whipped cream and berries, but honestly it’s delicious just on it’s own, or if your feeling wild, take a slice, butter both sides, and fry it! Yes, it’s SO good!
Cinnamon Streusel Banana Bread because we all have ugly bananas in our freezer!
I love bananas! Not just as a fruit, but I think they are SO cute! I literally have a banana change purse, banana leaf wallpaper and my phone screen is bananas, they are happy, yellow and adorable! One might say I’m BANANAS for bananas! Anyways, last week was pi day, which meant making mucho banana cream pies but now I am left with lots of bananas that didn’t get used up, so what better use than banana bread! If you don’t have a pile of blackening bananas on your counter like me, you probably have a few in the freezer, where all bananas go to die, so lets use them up!
Cinnamon Streusel Banana Bread - a gift from the baking gods!
Cinnamon Streusel Banana Bread
Yield: 1 loaf pan 9”x4” or whatever pan you want to use!
Preheat your oven to 350*F
4 Bananas (or 3 if they are big boys!) - ideally blackening ones or ones from the freezer as they are full of flavour!
3/4 cup Sugar
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Vegetable Oil - I used canola but anything light on flavour should be good
2 Eggs
1/2 cup Buttermilk (or sour cream or yogurt or 1/2 cup milk plus 1/2 teaspoon vinegar)
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract (optional)
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
3/4 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
2 cups Flour
Streusel Topping:
1/4 cup Butter, softened
1 cup Brown Sugar
1 Tablespoon Cinnamon
1/4 cup Oats
in a large bowl smash your bananas until they are liquidy, I use a fork, but you can also use a potato masher if that’s easier for ya!
To the bananas add both the regular and brown sugar, you can also add the cinnamon, salt, and baking soda at this point. Stir to combine.
Now pour in your liquid ingredients, buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla. Stir to combine.
Now add all your flour and stir together. Don’t overmix the batter here, it’s ok if there are a few lumpy bits.
In a separate bowl place all the ingredients for your streusel topping - butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and oats.
Using your hands smoosh together the streusel ingredients until the butter has been incorporated into the sugar.
In a greased and lined loaf pan place about 1/3 of the batter and spread to cover the base of the pan, now grab a handful of the streusel topping and spread it over top, then repeat this two more times until you use up all the batter and streusel topping, making sure to have a nice layer of streusel topping to place on top of the loaf.
Bake in a preheated 350F oven for about 45-60 minutes, or until a toothpick stabbed into it comes out clean. If your banana bread seems to be browning too quickly, turn the heat down to 325*F. If you don’t use a loaf pan be sure to adjust your baking time, the thinner your batter is, the less time it’s going to take.
Let cool then you are ready to slice and eat! Yay!!!!
Granola Bars - dreaming about when we need quick breakfasts again!
Granola bars are my go to breakfast when I am not stuck in my house avoiding the general public and daily life…oh the days before social distancing, seems like so long ago…it was only 4 days…just a few more to go, right! These babies are easy to prepare and then once cooled you can wrap them up individually and pop them in the freezer, all ready to go for easy snacking!
Granola Bars!
Granola Bars
Yield: 9”x13” pan
Preheat your oven to 350*F
1/3 cup Butter
1/3 cup Brown Sugar
3/4 teaspoon Salt
1 cup Honey or Maple Syrup (if you don’t have enough of either you can supplement with corn syrup, it just doesn’t have as much flavour)
4 cups Oats- ideally old fashioned rolled oats, but use what you have, we’re in quarantine!
2 cups almonds or other nut, toasted lightly in the oven
2 cups shredded Coconut
1 1/3 cup Dried Fruit - I used a mix of dried cranberries and raisins, with a little bit of chocolate chips!
In a saucepan place the butter, brown sugar, salt and honey. Bring to a boil.
While that is heating, mix together the oats, almonds, coconut and dried fruit to combine.
Pour the honey butter mixture on top of the oat mixture and stir to combine.
Grease a 9”x13” pan, then place a piece of parchment on the bottom and grease that as well.
Pour granola bar mixture into the pan and with damp or greased hands just press it into the pan until it feels firm.
Bake for about 20 minutes or until lightly golden.
Let cool (ideally overnight or for a few hours) and slice into bar sized pieces - I like to wrap them individually in saran wrap and pop them in the freezer, but you can also just crumble up the granola and put it into a jar for eating on top of yogurt or fruit. Yum!