This hot apple cider is the perfect beverage for a cold winter night. I was served this drink at a cooking class and thought it would be great after a holiday meal. It is rich, delicious, and has a slight spiciness and aroma from the cinnamon and vanilla.
I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas and enjoying their time with family and close friends. Merry Christmas!
Making your own apple sauce is simple and takes no time at all. The flavour is so much better than the store-bought stuff that it is really worth the extra effort.
At the beginning of December my mom and I flew to New York City to close down my apartment and to take a week long Artisanal Bread Course at the French Culinary Institute. During the week we learned how to properly mix, ferment, shape, proof, score, and bake breads. We also learned the critical importance of dough temperatures and techniques for accurate calculation. We made a variety of breads during the week, including baguettes, bagels and flatbread, brioche and challah, viennoiseries and croissants, traditional loaf breads, pizza, focaccia, and ciabatta.
This past week for Chanukah I wanted to recreate one of my favourite breads that I learned in the class, “Challah.” It is rich, slightly sweet, and looks beautiful because of the braids that it is baked in. The braids symbolize the interviewing of the heaven, earth, and mankind with God. It is the perfect bread to serve at a holiday meal and would even be great to eat with honey or jam in the morning.
When I woke up today and saw that it was gloomy out I decided that it was just the kind of day to make soup. Since I had plenty of vegetables in the fridge I though I would try out a recipe for Vegetable Chowder that I have been planning on making for a while. The recipe was fairly easy to make, however I would prepare all the vegetables before you start. This chowder has the three key ingredients needed in a chowder recipe: bacon, milk and potatoes. It turned out creamy but still tasted fresh because of the addition of the vegetables and herbs.
This is an amazing vegetarian burger recipe. Not only is it delicious, but it looks like a real hamburger because of the beets in the patty. The first time I made this recipe was during culinary school. In level 5 I worked in the school’s restaurant “L’ Ecole.” While in this level each student is required to make a signature sandwich that will be on the menu for a day. My head chef suggested that I make these burger patties because he knew that I was not a huge meat eater. They are truly the best vegetarian burger I have ever tasted; even the meat eaters in my class thought that they were great!
This is one of my all time favourite cake recipes. It always turns out and everyone that tries it loves it!
One of my favourite food blogs is What Katie Ate I am always so impressed by her gorgeous food styling and photography. I was feeling inspired by her today so I decided to make a pear crisp. I love how Katie puts the name of the dish she is photographing right on the image. I wanted to give it a try myself and see what everyone thought.
When I am looking at her blog I can see that I still have a lot to learn about food photography; which only makes me want to work even harder at it!
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All photos by Virginia Drader unless otherwise stated. ©Virginia Drader. Please include a credit if used on a blog. Contact me to inquire about purchasing work for commercial purposes.
