A pudding pop, rolled in pop rocks on a circuit board stick with a Cadbury chocolate crown. Recipe inspiration from this hilarious bit of street art seen on 4th Avenue in Vancouver.
Elain Evans
I am a food writer and recipe developer for magazines. Although I sell my recipes for print the inspiration behind the food can be found here.
I am going to try to be better at posting here in 2013. Inspired by a recipe found in a Jamie magazine I whipped up these sweet potato maple frosting candied bacon cupcakes but added my own touch with Skor bits and chunky almonds. Delish.
Another set of Christmas boxes handed out. My full time staff numbers are now at 15, plus friends and participating in a cookie exchange meant I did a lot of baking. I just got back from London on Monday morning where I was doing research for my magazine writing so it was a jet lagged baking session.
Christmas is in full swing at our house. We are having our tradition Christmas Eve meal of fondue tonight and then the bird with all the trimmings tomorrow.
Sophie's Lemonade · Better Together BC
It has been three year running now that Sophie and I have made a cooking video. We had a lot of fun making lemonade this year. I didn’t do my usual plea for votes as we have won the past two years, and the reward was watching my daughter become an entrepreneur and cook!
The themed birthday cake has become a tradition for my daughter’s celebrations. This year she went for Disney’s Rapunzel story Tangled for her theme. I made Rapunzel’s tower from fondant and a flower filled meadow over the triple chocolate cake. It went down a hit. And even though the cake took a while to decorate I am grateful for the creative outlet.
I saw this bowing doll in Japan a few years ago, and loved it. It wasn’t for sale as it was holding items for sample tasting, but I would have bought it if I could have. It was fabulous.
Doll Bow (by Christine Ting Wei Wang)
I saw a photo of Shirley Temple today that reminded me a lot of a picture I took of Sophie a few years back on Halloween. We hear it a lot from people that there is a resemblance, this photo makes me think they are right.
I had a Watermelon Shirley Temple drink at Suika restaurant on Broadway in Vancouver last week. It was light, not too sweet and the perfect match to mochi rice cakes. I am going to be making them for my own little Shirley Temple all summer long.
With all due respect to the Cordon Bleu cooking school but you can learn more about cooking sitting in a circle with these Thai ladies than you could ever hope to learn in the same amount of time at the renown cooking school. Chances are you can probably learn a lot of gossip and the plot line to the popular Thai soap opera too. This photo was taken by my friend Pixy, the amazing photographer and restauranteur http://bit.ly/AnjPXb when he volunteered his time to help Thai flood victims. The sight of amazing Thai cooks sitting in a circle and doing kitchen prep work together just took me back to a time when I was welcomed into this inner sanctum. I wish I still lived in a culture where we all taught each other how to cook, and a place where repetitive kitchen tasks are looked forward to as they allow friends to catch up, gossip and have a laugh in the kitchen. I can’t think of anything more inspirational to make me want to cook.
If you are ever in Koh Tao, Thailand please make sure you stop in and share a gimlet with Pixy at Whitening, he’s a saint.
This time two years ago I was writing recipes for an immunity diet feature in a magazine. I now wish I had that writing assignment every year as last January I had pneumonia and this January I have a sick little kid. She has had a 40 C degree fever and a sore throat so I devised this recipe with Gatorade (which I believe can make almost everything better), ginger ale, raspberry jelly and a vitamin gummy bear garnish. Very popular on the four-year-old palate.
My name is Elain and I have a problem…a serious cookbook addiction. I moved my cookbook cupboard yesterday and I had to take stock of just how many cookbooks I have. This very full table doesn’t show it all either, I have two other cupboards stacked with cookbooks. I can’t move a book without flipping through it (which makes moving them a very time consuming process). All those glorious recipes can’t help but inspire the recipe writing portion of my brain and I fell asleep thinking up peanut shell candy, and sweet noodle apple recipes.
The Christmas baking boxes were handed out today.
More inspiration for the holiday baking box. I am going to have to develop a pop rock cookie.
Angels are going to be represented in the holiday baking box this year thanks to the inspiration from this fantastic sofa spied in Montreal.
Every year I make boxes of holiday baking for my staff, co-workers, friends and family. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what I should put in the boxes this year, and am going to capture the inspiration for the recipes that make the cut and in the box here.
