Fresh Strawberry Pie

I have to admit that I'm not a berry person. I like working with them and putting them in baking, and I'll eat the baking with the berries, but I don't like to just sit and pick at a bowl of berries. I am also not a huge fan of strawberries. Unless they're dipped in a lot of dark chocolate, I can think of a few dozen things I'd rather eat. But, for some weird reason, this dessert caught my eye when I started going through the June 2008 issue of Gourmet. It seemed different to me, and it was a simpler, summery recipe that looked easy to make. I recently had the opportunity to make it for a family dinner, and it also worked out that I could get 2lbs of strawberries for $5 at my local overpriced grocery store.

Recipe here.

Regarding ice baths...I rarely have enough ice hanging around to use as an ice bath, so what I did was cool the filling down to cold in a bath of ice water, then I set the pie in the freezer as opposed to the fridge. This worked like a charm.

It was a pretty impressive pie, in the end, and my family gobbled it up. It was so refreshing, and a nice change from the traditional baked berry pies. This had a few steps to it, but over all, it was an easy recipe, and the crust was fantastic. I felt it needed more than the 5oz of cookies because it was thin and I wasn't able to make the crust go to the top of the pie plate, but this is a minor adjustment for the next time I make this. I can also see this being easily adaptable to use other berries, like blueberries or huckleberries. Definitely a recipe I'll be keeping around!

Restaurant Review: Sunshine Cafe

Back when feta cheese was exotic in these parts (no, I am not kidding), the Sunshine Cafe was Rossland's semi-fine dining mecca. A great lunch and dinner place serving fresh salads, good burgers, chef-created dinner entrees, and it had good house-made cheesecake. Their signature was a feta and dill dressing whose recipe was a closely guarded secret. I had many a meal at the Sunshine, as it is referred to by locals, and they did take-away, too. Eventually, they branched out to breakfast. I worked for two years at a business kitty corner to the cafe, and I frequently ordered lunch from there, and the chef was a regular at my workplace, too. He was a nice guy and he had the market cornered.

I left in 1994, and when I came back in 2006, feta cheese was easy to come by at the local overpriced grocery store and the Sunshine Cafe had changed hands. And according to all sources, it had gone down the toilet considerably. When the new owners took over, they got the feta dill dressing recipe as part of the deal, but the Sunshine was never the same. I never went back, and I discovered that The Flying Steamshovel does a decent feta dill dressing now anyways.

In the last few months, the Sunshine has again changed hands. It had been for sale for the two years I'd been back, and finally someone bought it. It's been renovated and repainted, the menu has been updated, there is fresh specialty baking and decent coffee on offer, and from all accounts I'd heard, it was now a great place to eat for not a whole pile of money. Shortly after it opened, I stopped in to take a look because the signs outside touted home-baked goods, many of them gluten free, sugar free, and/or dairy free. I had a brownie that was pretty darn good. Earlier this week, my brother and I went there to have lunch.

The menu is colourfully displayed on a board at the front of the cafe, and as you can see, there is nothing earth-shattering on it. There is an all-day breakfast option after 11am, and twice a week there is a dinner menu with four specials that change each time. Simple though it may seem, the lunch we had today was great - back to the fresh and well-prepared food of the Sunshine heydays. Because I love Clubhouses, that's what I had. It was your typical triple-decker, and contained sliced Black Forest ham, turkey, and swiss cheese. The soup today was butternut squash, so I opted for fries. My brother had a chicken burger (there is also a beef, veggie, and salmon option) with ham, swiss cheese, and mushrooms, also with fries (we're not a squash-loving bunch). Because the kitchen has been opened up, I could view other dishes as well, and the salads looked well-portioned and appetizing. The baking on offer included banana huckleberry muffins, a huckleberry turnover, and a gluten free cranberry brownie. For dessert, opted for the brownie. Now, it is gluten free, so I didn't quite know what to expect. It was dry. Though it was tasty, the texture left a lot to be desired, but I guess if you can't have wheat, it would be a pretty good treat.

The Club with fries was $9 and my brother's burger about $10. For not a lot of money, we had a really nice lunch, and I can say with confidence: the Sunshine Cafe is back! Woo-hoo!

Edit @ 2:45pm: This post was actually written on Monday. Today, I once again had lunch at the Sunshine, this time with my other brother. I had a chicken burger with bacon, swiss, and sauteed mushrooms. The burger was served on a multigrain bun with spring mix, tomato, mayo, and red onion. It was excellent! Once again, the Sunshine delivered!

Carrot & Pork Dumplings

In May, I reviewed Beyond the Great Wall by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, and I did this dumpling recipe for the meal I made for my family. Out of the seven items I made, the dumplings were by far the most popular.

I'd never made Asian dumplings before, having written them off as too fiddly and not worth it. I learned, however, that they are soooooooooo worth the effort, because nothing is as comforting, warming, and nourishing as a bowl of steaming hot noodles filled with yummy stuff. For a Magazine Monday post, I made a Canadian Living dumpling recipe using shrimp, and they were awesome.

My SIL just had surgery on her right arm, so I was thinking of what I could make for a family meal that wouldn't require cutting, and, since I'm in comfort food mode these days due to my ever-fluctuating mood, the dumplings seemed to fit the bill.

Carrot and Pork Dumplings, adapted from page 150-151 of Beyond the Great Wall

1 medium carrot, grated
1/4lb ground pork (or ground lamb)
2 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp roasted sesame oil
(I also added some finely chopped green onion since I had some left over)

NB: While the recipe in the book has us making our own dumpling dough from the Kazakh Noodle dough recipe, I have chosen instead to go with the easier and lazier route of using won-ton wrappers found in my local over-priced grocery store. I also double the recipe to feed four hungry people as a main course. The original recipe also instructs the cook to parboil the carrot, but I get around that step by just grating the carrot right into the filling mixture.

Method

Mix all the ingredients together until well-combined. I used my hands, but if you want, a fork works well, too.

Place a scant 1 - 1 1/2 tsp filling in each won-ton wrapper (I have a #100 cookie scoop that works perfectly for this). Wet a pastry brush with some water and brush the edges of the won-ton wrapper. Pinch to seal and set aside on a baking sheet.

Bring a large pot of water to a vigorous boil. Ten at a time (or thereabouts), toss in the dumplings and wait for the water to come back to the boil. After about a minute, the dumplings will float to the surface and bob around. Cook them for about another half a minute or so, then, using a skimmer, spider, or slotted spoon, scoop them out of the pot and put them into a bowl. Repeat. Serve piping hot with dipping sauce.

Soy Vinegar Dipping Sauce (page 151)
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup rice vinegar (the original recipe specifies Jinjiang, a black rice vinegar, but I don't have any Asian specialty stores close by, so I just used the rice vinegar I could find)
2 tbsp shredded ginger

For this particular meal, I served the dumplings with a cabbage slaw I made using shredded cabbage, grated carrot, grated radishes, chopped cilantro, and sliced green onions, dressed with a Tamari Peanut salad dressing purchased from the "reduced for quick sale" bin at my local overpriced grocery store. My SIL made a Thai rice noodle salad with a peanut butter and lime-flavoured dressing. All in all, a totally satisfying meal.

The one thing I did learn, though, is that not all won-ton wrappers are created equal. The new ones I bought for this meal were very thin, broke easily when stuffed, and dried out very quickly. The older ones from the BtGW meal where thicker and sealed better, and were definitely easier to work with. So, I'll go back to that brand next time.

Sour Cream Polenta Bread

During a recent stint in hospital, the activities coordinator asked if I'd like to bake, and provided me with a pile of old, probably donated, but decent cookbooks. I wasn't really in the mood to bake, but this cornmeal bread caught my eye. I didn't get to bake it while in the hospital because the activities coordinator got busy with other stuff and she has to be in the kitchen with patients to supervise, but I copied down the recipe so I could make this at home.


Sour Cream Polenta Bread

1 ½ cups fine cornmeal
½ cup plain flour
4 Tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
1 ¼ cups sour cream
2 Tbsp veg. oil
½ tsp poppy seeds

• Sift together dry ingredients
• In a separate bowl, combine wet ingredients
• Combine contents of both bowls
• Sprinkle with seeds
• Bake 30 min. at 400F, then reduce temp. to 350F. Continue baking for 15 – 20 minutes, or until loaf is golden and baked through.

Yeah, it came out looking like a brick! But, I guess I shouldn't be surprised because there isn't much flour in this recipe. It tasted great however, and had a nice, corny crunch. It could have been a bit sweeter, but some jam would fit the bill very well. It's dense enough that it can be toasted for breakfast, too!

Enjoy!

Garden Bounty: Beans and Dill

This year I planted a garden. I haven't done this since childhood, but in the spirit of the 100 Mile Diet and general greening, I decided to plant a small veggie patch this year. It's been quite the adventure, and I'm not sure I'm enjoying it as much as I thought I would.

My garden has seen its share of adversity. First, we had a really late spring and summer, so our already short growing season was made even shorter. We had snow on June 10, necessitating my scrambling to cover up my little seedlings - only planted two short weeks previously. The plants I started indoors didn't all survive the transplanting process, which was frustrating and unfortunate. I also had a seriously nasty, bitch of a weed that has caused me nothing but strife! And, let's not forget the neighbourhood cats that were digging around in the garden shortly after I planted it. We also had huge hail twice and a very damaging wind storm.

But, I am glad to say that some things have survived all the adversity! I have an actual bean crop. At first, it didn't look like I'd get many beans, and I jokingly said to my family that I had a whole four beans, but I guess I should have been more patient, because then I had nine beans, and then enough to actually count as a decent serving. And there are still more popping up on the plants! The other night, I harvested the wax beans to have with a meal. I also have healthy dill, which I'm very pleased about. Sockeye salmon is fresh in the stores now, so I made a dinner of wax beans, rice, and salmon with my dill and some lemon.

The beans were good. I mean, they're beans, right? They tasted beany. The dill was dilly - no surprise. The salmon was baked to perfection if I do say so myself. It was quite a lovely meal, actually, and for a few moments I was able to forget all the annoyances I'd experienced in bringing this dinner to my own table. For a few moments, it was all worth it.


Next up: I have a bumper crop of basil and a whack of lettuce I need to do something with.

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

I cannot say enough about my Cuisinart ice cream maker: it's easy to use, makes wicked ice cream and frozen yogurt, and it's just plain cool.

During our recent run of really ridiculously hot weather, it seemed only natural to get out my little machine and make myself some ice cream - even though my favourite flavour was on sale at my local overpriced grocery store.

I decided to make mint chocolate chip, my perennial favourite.

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

2 cups whipping cream
1 cup whole milk
2/3 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp pure mint extract (or to taste)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 (100g) bar of your favourite chocolate (I used a bar of Ghirardelli baking chocolate I had on hand), chopped up
green food colouring, optional

I have a large (1L) glass liquid measuring cup that I mix the cream, milk and sugar in to begin with. Then I add the flavouring, tasting and adjusting as necessary. I start the machine up and pour it all in, adding the chocolate chunks closer to the end of the process because you just need to mix them in. Easy peasy!

Some other frozen desserts I've made with this machine:

lemon ice cream
grapefruit sorbet
lemon-ginger frozen yogurt

Restaurant Review: The Preserved Seed

The small city of Nelson is about an hour away from here, and it's our local mecca for...well, what I'll refer to as "alternative lifestyle" stuff. It's also where some of the best restaurants in the area are located. If you ever visit this city, which is perched on the mountainside overlooking a beautiful, glacier-fed lake, you can be assured you'll eat very well.

The Preserved Seed is run by the Twelve Tribes living and farming in the Nelson area. The food is locally grown or farmed, mostly organic, fresh, well-prepared, and many dishes on the menu have vegan and vegetarian-friendly versions. Some of the food is even grown and harvested from their own farm, located 15km outside of Nelson. They also specialize in yerba mate teas. Additionally, you can purchase their organic salad mixes for a reasonable price at the cafe.

The restaurant is located in a converted house, and you can, weather permitting, sit outside under the shade of some giant maple trees, or if you want, go in and enjoy your meal in a mellow atmosphere. The staff are extremely friendly and the service, though not traditional table service, is excellent.

The food at the Preserved Seed is simple. The menu consists of a few sandwiches made with high quality ingredients and home-baked bread, wraps, fresh salads in a house-made vinagrette, some rice dishes, and homemade soups served with sourdough bread. The specials are listed on the huge chalkboard near the bar, where you order from. I almost always get the Deli Rose sandwich, which is organic, hormone-free roast beef served on a spelt bun with spicy ketchup, onion, tomato, mozzarella and mustard (which I always request to have omitted). They also have a chicken reuben I've never tried as I'm not a huge fan of sourkrout. The rice medley dishes can be served with meat or tofu and are totally yummy.

But the reason I love the Preserved Seed so much is the coconut cream pie. OH.MY.GOD. It is excellent! Obviously, the coconuts are not local, but it doesn't matter. This is the most exceptionally amazing coconut cream pie I've ever had. It's just perfect in every way a coconut cream pie can be perfect. The filling is creamy and rich and full of shredded coconut, and the graham cracker crust is always ample (I hate thin graham crusts!). It's served with real whipped cream, and as you can see, simply plated with a slice of orange. They also do a totally awesome key lime square that I have tasted and thought was wicked. These two desserts go for $4 each, and I know that in the case of the coconut cream pie you can buy a slice at the Kootenay Co-op market for $4.

For local, organic, high-quality food, this is a very affordably-priced eatery. The Deli Rose sandwich is $9, as is the reuben. You'll have to forgive me for not including a picture of the sandwich; I tucked in before remembering to photograph it!

Real Gingerbread

I know it's summer, but... I just had this craving for something autumnal, something warm and spicy. Since Magazine Monday is on hold until Ivonne gets back from holiday next month, I'll post this magazine recipe today instead.

I was recently gifted with a bunch of baking supplies from my brother and SIL, who are moving across the country at the end of this month. I took what I would normally use, and they had a lot of molasses they wanted to unload. While molasses isn't necessarily that expensive, these things add up, and I do like gingery-molassesy things. This recipe, from the March 2007 issue of Gourmet, uses fresh ginger, not the powdered kind. And it's great. The texture of this cake is wonderfully moist, and that is in part attributable to the hot water you add to the batter, so don't get all lazy and add cold water instead.

You could totally dress this up with some creme anglaise or some other reasonable immitation of a vanilla custard, or serve it warm with vanilla frozen yogurt or ice cream.

I have gobbled down two chunks of this already today, before it was even cooled. Um...I'm going to gift the rest of it, I think, to a convalescing family member.

The recipe can be found here.

Homemade Pizza

According to my brother, I make the best pizza. He'd even rather have mine than the stuff from the local, gourmet-ish pizza place two blocks away at Idgie's. Well, who am I to argue? This week, he requested pizza and yesterday I made two for a family dinner.

It was a bit of a team effort. I made the dough, caramelized the onions (recipes and method for these two items are here), and did the baking and assembly. My dad provided ground buffalo (he has a ton and wanted to get rid of some to free up room in his freezer), buffalo pepperoni from a local butcher, campari tomatoes for his portion of the pizzas (my brother and I hate tomatoes), and some sharp cheddar cheese to blend with the low-fat mozzarella I bought.

It's always advisable to saute down your veggies when making pizza because otherwise, they'll lose their liquid in the pizza-baking process, making for a watery pizza. Taking the time to caramelize the onions creates a great flavour contrast for your pizza: sweet with savoury. It's worth the work!

I love buffalo meat: it's lower in fat that regular beef, is more humanely kept, isn't full of hormones and other iffy chemicals, and it has a great, rich flavour. The buffalo pepperoni was wonderful, too, and not too spicey.

We finished off the meal with ice cream my dad brought. What could possibly be better, for someone like me, whose two favourite foods are pizza and ice cream? My brother was also in heaven - and both of us came home with left-over pizza; he'll take his for lunch today, and I plan on eating mine for breakfast.

Magazine Monday #7: Reprise

I'm cheating a bit today because I haven't baked anything and don't plan to. Tomorrow or the next day, perhaps. Instead, I thought I'd repost something from the archives of this blog, which is now over three years old!

I first posted this recipe for Two Grain Cranberry Bread back in May 2005, here.

The recipe came from - where else? - Canadian Living, and can be viewed in its original form here.

Restaurant Review: Chopsticks

So, this week was my birthday. On Tuesday evening, I celebrated with my family, and I chose to go to a place in Castlegar, BC, that does the most amazing sushi around. Now, here in the boonies, good sushi is hard to come by. My local overpriced grocery store used to do a decent line, but they stopped making it on site and instead started to bring it in from elsewhere. I tried the new brand once and it was terrible. Other grocery stores in the area have average, grocery store sushi, that will do in a pinch but is nothing special at all.

Enter Chopsticks (no actual web site, unfortunately). Apart from my dad, I come from a sushi-crazy family. I'd had take out from Chopsticks a few times and it was always very good, but I'd never actually been there and had a meal, and I was the only member of my family who hadn't. Everyone I've known who's eaten at Chopsticks has raved about it, and along with the fact that I've been craving a good sushi feast, it was a natural choice for my birthday dinner.

Previously, I'd had the Dynamite Roll, made with prawn tempura, and the California Roll. The Dynamite Roll is my favourite, and Chopsticks does an excellent one. This was what I was particularly looking forward to. But, I had a take-out menu at my disposal before the dinner, so I was able to plot out in greater detail the sushi I wanted to order for my birthday. The one that struck my fancy was the Dragon Roll, because it has BBQ eel in it, which seems quite exotic to me. Also, the Caterpillar Roll has BBQ eel, along with avocado.

My sister-in-law ordered the sushi - and she ordered a ton of it. My dad wanted just Chinese food, as did my youngest brother, and I fancied chow mein for some reason. The result was an enormous feast. My other brother ordered Wor Won Ton but was shocked at the size of the "small" serving, so we split it. We all ate very well.

The food was excellent. The Chinese food (lemon chicken, chicken & mushroom chow mein, sweet & sour pork, and beef with ginger and green onions) was not greasy or overly salty, and it was hot and the veggies were fresh.

Our sushi feast was incredible. Some of it came in a gigantic wooden boat, beautifully presented. Some of it was elegantly plated on large platters. The most stunning presentation was the Caterpillar Roll that actually looked quite caterpillar-like. As for the BBQ eel - it was amazing. I was expecting it to be chewy, like calamari, but it had a texture more reminiscent of mussels or oysters. The sauce was perfect. The Dynamite Roll was up to it's usual high standard, and we also had a grilled salmon roll which was excellent.

The restaurant was extremely busy for a Tuesday night, and the table we had was too small for our many dishes. But those are small matters; it was a brilliant meal all 'round. If you're ever in BC's southern interior, Chopsticks is highly recommended by this coyote.

Magazine Monday #6: Tomato Jam

I come from a condiment-crazy family. My brother has more condiments in his fridge than anything else. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to make a meal out of anything in his fridge, but you know you'll have a great selection of sauces and chutneys to accompany that meal. My dad has more than one cupboard in his tiny kitchen devoted to condiments.

I'm not condiment-crazy like the rest of my family, but I do like the basics: ketchup, mayo, a nice home-made relish. My ketchup ran out this week, and I thought this recipe for tomato jam would be a good replacement. From the August 2008 issue of Bon Appetit magazine, this tomato jam recipe was simple to make and was great on a bison burger. But...I do need ketchup for oven fries, so I did replace the bottle of ketchup after all.

The full recipe is here.

Getting All Philosophical...

You may have noticed that I have added some advertising to this blog. Foodbuzz is a foodie social networking site along similar lines to Facebook. The ads, thank God, are far more elegant and easy on the eye than AdSense, but I have yet to figure out exactly how much money this is going to make. I wasn't lured by money, though; I was lured by the potential for more traffic. One of my New Year's resolutions was to update this site more frequently than I had in the past, and build up my readership. I am toying with finding a new template, too. This one is starting to bug me.

Foodbuzz seems to have great folks working for it. The communication has been very good and the people I've dealt with have always been friendly and answered any questions I've had in a timely manner. I've also gotten some cute loot: an organic cotton shopping bag and some mini business cards with pretty pictures on them. I have no idea to whom I'd give business cards, but they are very cool, and there is something "grown up" about having them. I've never had business cards before; never had the need. But I have them now, and they even came in a nice little box!

In other news, I made something the other night that I really don't like. This doesn't happen very often, and it rarely happens with ice cream, of all things. Yet, I made an ice cream I don't anticipate eating. It's maple pecan, a flavour combination I'd normally enjoy. In this case, it made a mediocre ice cream I have no motivation to consume. This is a shame because I used up the rest of my pecans in the recipe, a signifcant amount of maple syrup, and whipping cream I could have put to more fruitful use. Alas, I might have to foist this on my family, who might be less picky. I didn't follow a recipe, but rather was inspired by one I saw in a magazine. I winged it, and it didn't work out. Not mapley enough, not as creamy as most ice creams I've made (probably because the addition of an adequate amount of maple syrup changed the liquid composition of the mixture, and so it froze differently), and a kind of crumbly texture. I'm really disappointed.

Blogging is interesting on a lot of fronts, and when you blog about specific things, like food, or mental health (as I do here), you get a certain kind of audience, and you gravitate towards certain things. Recent events in my life have punctuated the fact that we as bloggers are more than the sum of our parts, and that although we may blog prolifically, the blog is never an entire picture of who we are as individuals. We may blog about food, but we are each far more than our foodblogs. It may seem obvious here, but on my other blogs, it's more complicated.

Forgive my philosophical mood tonight! I have no recipe to offer today, but I am curious about this:

What life lessons have you learned through failures and/or disappointments in the kitchen?

Russian Lasagne

This is a regular hot special entree where I work, and I have to say it's pretty popular.

What is it, you ask? I like to call it Death on a Plate. But, a less sarcastic response would be that it is layers of lasagne noodles, mashed potato, bacon, onion, and cottage cheese, topped with more cheese. And it probably has lots of butter in it, too.

I say "probably", because I cannot share the recipe with you. I might not be so appreciated at work anymore (similarly, I cannot share with you the recipe for the best ever borsht, which I make on a regular basis - sorry!). I have never actually made this myself, but, if you've read my previous posts on lasagne-making (here and here) you'll see that lasagne is actually a simple meal to prepare, and that this Russian version, which we describe to customers as "a perogie in lasagne form," is a good example of thinking outside of the box. (And speaking of boxes...Hint, hint: you can't use oven-ready lasagne noodles, OK?)

We divide a 9x13 pan into 12 portions. Trust me, you don't need a big helping of this stuff because it is very, very rich. The picture is of the piece I brought home for my dinner, and I could barely finish it. Usually, I'm not a fan of anything with mashed potatoes in it, but this is an instance in which the addition of bacon will make me eat just about anything.

Please - try this at home, and let me know how it goes.

Magazine Monday #5: Blueberry Corn Bread

This recipe from Canadian Living's August 2008 issue caught my eye because it seemed a little different from your ordinary corn bread. I love corn bread, but don't make it that often to be honest. It's often associated with chili, which I can understand, but as I'm not the hugest chili fan in the world, I guess that's why I don't have a lot of corn bread. Since I just bought blueberries on a recent shopping trip, I was happy to see Canadian Living feature them in this month's issue. Combine that with an inexplicable hankering for corn bread in general, I decided to make this recipe for this week's Magazine Monday post.

Sweet Corn & Blueberry Corn Bread (courtesy Canadian Living, Aug. 2008)

1 1/4 cups cornmeal
1 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup cooked, thawed, or canned corn kernels
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 1/4 cups blueberries
2 tsp granulated sugar

1. Whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking soda, baking powder, salt.

2. In a food processor or blender, puree the corn kernels with brown sugar until lumpy. Add buttermilk and eggs. Puree to combine.

3. Make a well in the flour mixture. Pour in corn mixture and stir until just combined. Fold in butter. Fold in blueberries.

4. Pour into a greased 9" glass pie plate, smoothing the top. Sprinkle with sugar.

5. Bake at 375F until deep golden and cake tester inserted comes out clean - about 30 - 35 minutes. Cool on rack.

Coyote's Version:

I skipped the puree step. I admit, I was lazy about it and didn't feel like dirtying the food processor. I put the brown sugar in with the dry ingredients, combined the buttermilk & eggs, and folded that into the flour mixture. Then I folded in the corn, butter, and blueberries. I also used raw turbinado sugar for the topping instead of regular white granulated. And, as you can see by the picture, I didn't bake this in a pie plate, either. I wanted something easy to freeze since that's where the bulk of these are going. So, I made muffins, and I got exactly 12 from this recipe. They weren't too sweet, they smelled nice and corny, and the sugar on the top added a nice crunch and extra bit of flavour.

The result: just fine and dandy, thank you very much. All in all, an excellent recipe - as usual coming from the fine folks over at Canadian Living!