***Not Perfect but Delicious***

My attempt at a food (mostly baked goods) blog 👩‍🍳

I love to bake. It’s a great outlet for all my worries, creativity and sometimes keep warm and cozy on a chilly day. Wouldn’t say I’m the best, but I do try! 99% perfection on the smell and taste aspect – per my guinea pigs comments…. However not always perfection in the looks department. It’s on the inside that counts. The recipe is for apple bars, but something went wrong, and I accidentally created a delicious monster 🍎🫓. Found the recipe on Google – Here’s the link https://momsdinner.net/easy-apple-pie-bars/

Halloween is a whole mood in this house 🎃 I had a special request to try to make a creepy dessert for a party. I am probably the worst at decorating my yummy creations, but I found an easy enough idea! Chocolate cupcake spiders 🕷️ You can use box or your own special chocolate cupcake recipe. Dip them in icing and brown sprinkles to add fur. Then 2 Reese’s pieces for eyes and perhaps licorice for legs and voila! I used hickory sticks which added a nice savoury kick but they did get a tad mushy…🙄 Still a big hit for the kids, and delicious!

I am definetly not the biggest fan of the Holidays 🎄🎅 but I am a huge fan of 2 things. Most importantly Nutcrackers! And very close second… Sugar Cookies!🍪 These cute cookies were made possible by the below easy recipe and the awesome cookie cutters I found at the dollar store! This recipe is my fav because you don’t need to wait while the dough chills for hours, and I prefer instant gratification😉. https://www.twosisterscrafting.com/best-sugar-cookie-recipe/

I am the farthest thing from a sushi connaisseur, but I do get cravings for it. I love the crisp fresh veggies rolled around seafood; it’s like a salad but in a bite-sized roll-up. 🍣🍤 Instead of ordering out once again, I decided to try to make my own; even though I really don’t eat rice on a regular basis so cooking that was quite stressful.🍚 The recipe in the link below is pretty easy! Sushi success all depends on the amount of pressure applied when you roll up the seaweed and filling. I added spicy mayo, which is simply mayo mixed with siracha sauce (to your hotness liking). Try it out! Good luck and enjoy! https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/99211/perfect-sushi-rice/ *Light saber Chopsticks shown in photo I found on Amazon

My daughter’s 3rd bday Minnie Mouse cakewith matching pink and black cupcakes. 🎂🧁I love to use this old Betty Crocker cook book I have from the 70s for baking delicious bday cake recipes that I tweak as I see fit. Decorating is really and truly the hardest part, and luckily for me my MIL stepped in on this occasion. The ears are chocolate covered oreos but the bow is a non-edible decoration (oops kinda cheated but needed help) The icing is also a trusty Betty Crocker cream cheese recipe and piped on with (you guessed it) Betty Crocker piping tools which can be found at Michael’s craft store. 👩‍🎨Little trick I learnt for the party cupcakes is to dip them in a bowl of sprinkles. Way less of a mess! ***Sorry I don’t have links but this was done “old school* as mentioned above 😉

I’m sure you have heard the hype over the last year’s about Air fryers. I jumped on the bandwagon last year and will never look back! I love deep-fried veggies, but I don’t love the greasy oil stink from the average fryer. Enter the Tfal XL to my life and not sure how anyone lived/lives without one! The absolute favorite snack to my are fried pickles 🥒😋 Tfal , as I’m sure other brands do, has a website full of recipes. When I make these for the kids, I remove the “heat” and add little salt and pepper for taste – the results being amazing! However, I do love spicy food, so this recipe as is is a fav of mine. Obviously, I am late to the air fry game. As I’ve mentioned before, I am far from a cook but a pretty good baker! Enjoy 👩‍🍳 https://www.t-fal.ca/en/blog/Fried-pickles

With everything going on in the world I wanted to highlight one of my absolute fav dishes/comfort food. Being of Ukranian 🇺🇦 decent my grandparents would make homemade pierogies and cabbage rolls to celebrate our heritage. Unfortunately I never did learn how to do these myself – as mentioned I hate cooking haha. I wanted to shed some light to others about these little delicacies and maybe bring awareness to the tragedies in Ukraine, however met with strength, bravery and love. There is a shop here in Montreal called Wawel where you can buy these goodies, proceeds go towards humanitarian aid in Ukraine. If you haven’t tried these suggest you do! I personally like to dip my pierogies in mustard instead of the usual sour cream 🤪

Tourtière has been a dish I have avoided for years. When I think tourtière, I think mince meat pie 🫓🤢 In fact traditional Québécois tourtière is nothing like that! It’s actually one of my fav dishes any time of year (usually it’s eaten as fall/winter comfort food) The ingredients are not mince meat and pie crust; it could be either wild game (moose,hare) or beef and pork, with tiny little breakfast potatoes. I like to add a lil Frank’s hotsauce to mine for some kick. A lot of people I know also add ketchup on top. I love this meal so much I’ll even eat it with eggs for breakfast! I do not have a recipe (I wouldn’t dare try), but this traditional Québécois “dish can be found at many grocers and specialty stores in the province. So if you’re ever around, I highly recommend having a taste! Enjoy! 🤤

I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM, WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM!🍦 My new favorite summer recipe is for homemade peanut butter ice cream. It is so simple to make this at home. I had no clue! I had a request to find peanut butter ice cream and couldn’t, so I thought, why not try to make it? Added bonus. It’s a fun little activity. The recipe provided in the link says you need an ice cream maker. However, I just used my kitchen aid stand mixer on the lowest setting, and it worked perfectly! I also used a glass pyrex and froze the ice cream for 24hrs before eating. Next time I get around to making a batch, I will try to swap the peanut butter for chocolate and add mint extract. Hopefully, I will keep you posted on my “junior mint experiment.” For now, please enjoy the below recipe – I know my family does 😜🍨 https://lmld.org/peanut-butter-ice-cream/

1 layer (oops) Strawberry Shortcake🍰 I wanted to try something a little more fancy and out of my wheelhouse. Ricardo is a popular Canadian chef whose recipes look daunting but are easy to follow. I finally learned what folding un ingredients mean! ( see merengue portion) I followed this recipe to a T, except I did get lazy and used aerosol whip cream. 😅 To be honest, I think next time, I will try to make my own in hopes it stays fluffy longer. The reason for only one layer is that the bottom for aome reason is stuck to my parchment paper! The horror! Per the picture, I was able to salvage most of it. As usual, it may not look perfect, but it’s freaking delicious! https://www.ricardocuisine.com/en/recipes/5714-strawberry-shortcake-the-best

Apple Pie and Crisp 🍎 “Nuns Farts” 3 Family recipes were mixed and mashed together to create all these delicacies. The pie crust is an old family recipe from a grandma who loves her crisco. A pound and a half of it to be exact! 🥧 I used the leftover dough to make what we call “pète de soeurs” that roughly translate to Nuns Farts. Its dough smeared with cinnamon, sugar all rolled together. The apple filling and crumble topping is a mix of my mother and my MILS recipes, which they both ditated to me over FaceTime! All recipes for the components of these sweets can easily be found on Pintrest or Google. I am sure there are way healthy options in regards to baking than I was given! At least our apple picking/baking was a success. 😁

Screaming Ghost Cupcakes 👻🧁 the ultimate sugar rush! This was more of a family fun project than serious baking. Since ghost as white the recipe asked for vanilla cupcakes. I thought that was boring and since my kids were helping, I decided to use funfetti box mix and store bought whipped icing 😖 I usually make all from scratch but this was more about decorating. 👻 Pretty easy, even for me! Use the icing as a glue to stick the marshmallow and then pipe extra icing around the marshmallow to cover the top of the cupcake. I used Winston brand “writing icing” in black to draw on the faces. Voila!

Sugar Cookies and Candy Cane Cupcakes 🍬🍭 Bring on the sugar rush! With Christmas concerts underway, there comes holiday bake sales! If you, like me, are in need of a quick recipe to make hundreds of goodies – voila! The sugar cookie recipe is from my MIL 🍪 However, a freeze free recipe is easily available online. Our Xmas cookies cutters come from the dollar store. They are fragile but do the job! As for the chocolate cupcakes, I leave it up to you to pick your favorite recipe or box in a pinch. 🧁 To add the candy canes, I dipped each cupcake in vanilla icing and then dipped again in a bowl of crushed candy canes. The easiest way I found to crush candy canes into bits is to use a coffee grinder. Smaller candy canes work quick and best! Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla and mint are a perfectly delicious flavor palette for the holidays 🤗