Christmas Cookie Overload

It's been a baking-intensive week. I had a few friends over to make some Christmas treats early in the week, which is a nice way to make an entire day of baking more of an activity than a task. We also got to try some new recipes and I have to admit made a much smaller less than I usually do when I bake alone. The only problem with this is that you need to make a lot of cookies when you're splitting everything three ways, and you each have various friends and family to distribute the treats too. And so I ended up making subsequent batches over the rest of the week. Which actually turned out to be not such a bad thing as we had discovered a few things here and there that made the later batches turn out better than the first.

It's hard to pick a favourite here...we used three recipes from Martha Stewarts Cookies and made very few alterations to each. I think that the Chocolate Crackles are definitely worth making as a giveaway as they just look so good. Not to mention the fact that they are just so decadent and yummy. I have a weakness for shortbread-y, crumbly cookies so I've been snacking on the meltaways the most. It's a nice, light cookie and actually quite refreshing from all the citrus flavour. And I just can't resist cranberry pistachio biscotti around Christmastime - it looks so festive and impressive!

*General notes:
- These recipes says to use an electric mixer. We did, due to all the cookies we were making and since my mom actually has one. I was actually amazed at how each it made all the recipes since I have a tiny kitchen and rarely use any electronic devices when cooking or baking. Either way, you don't need a mixer, you can do all this with a wooden spoon and a willing arm!
- All cookies should be stored in airtight containers between layers of parchment, in a cool place. The Crackles keep for up to 3 days, the Meltaways and Biscotti up to 2 weeks

all recipes adapted from Martha Stewarts Cookies

Chocolate Crackles
Makes about 5 dozen cookies

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa owder
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 tsp instant coffee power
1/3 cup whole milk
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup confectioner's sugar

1. Melt chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, stirrings. Set aside and let cool. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

2. Mix instant coffee powder with just enough boiling water to dissolve grains. Let cool and add enough milk to make 1/3 cup.

3. With an electric mixer, beat butter and brown sugar on medium speed until pale and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Mix in eggs and vanilla, and then the melted chocolate. Reduce speed to low; mix in flour mixture in two batches, alternating with the milk. Divide dough into four equal pieces. Wrap each in plastic,; refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours (don't skimp on this - we waited just under 2 hours the first time and the dough was quite sticky. I actually chilled the dough overnight the second time and it was much easier to handle)

4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit (175 degrees Celsius). Divide each piece into sixteen (or whatever - my four pieces were all but equal so the number varied) 1 inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar to coat, then in confectioners' sugar to coat. Space 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

5. Bake about 14 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. (It says to bake UNTIL the surfaces crack but mine started cracking after probably 5 so this didn't help me much. I just baked for 14 minutes and assumed the cookies were done by then!) Let cool on sheets on wire racks.

Lemon Meltaways
(Martha uses lime but you can use any citrus you like)
Makes about 5 dozen, or 3 dozen if you made your logs larger like I did...

3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup confectioner's sugar
Finely grated zest of 2 lemons
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt

1. Put butter and 1/3 cup confectioners' sugar in a bowl and mix on medium speed with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Add the lime zest and juice and the vanilla, and mix until fluffy.

2. Whisk together flour, cornstarch and salt in a bowl. Add to butter mixture, and mix on low speed until just combined. (At this point I kneaded the dough a bit with my hands as it was super crumbly and we had some difficulty in the first batch with the slicing step that comes later. The kneading definitely helped it become more "dough-y" and formable)

3. Divide dough in half. Place each log on an 8x12 inch sheet of parchment. Roll in parchment to form a log 1 1/4 inches in diameter, pressing a ruler along edge of parchment at each turn to narrow log. (Umm...I just read this. Might have helped.) Refrigerate logs until cold and firm, at least 1 hour.

4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit (175 degrees Celsius). Remove parchment from logs; cut into 1/4 inch thick rounds. Space rounds 1 inch apart on baking sheets lined with parchment apper. Bake cookies until barely golden, about 13 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool slightly, 8 to 10 minutes. White still warm, toss cookies with remaining 2/3 cup sugar in a resealable plastic bag.

Cranberry-Pistachio Cornmeal Biscotti
makes about 2 dozen cookies

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup baking powder
1/2 tsp coarse salt
6 tbsp unsalted butter, room temp
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tbsp finely grated lemon zest
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup chopped pistachios

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit (175 degrees Celsius). Whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt.

2. Put butter in the bowl and mix with an electric mixer on medium speed until smooth. Add sugar and mix until pale and fluffy. Mix in eggs one at a time, until well combined. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture all at once; mix until just combined. Add lemon zest, cranberries, and pistachios and mix until combined (I did this last step by hand).

3. Transfer dough to a baking sheet lined iwth parchment paper. Pat into a log that is roughly 14 by 3 1/2 inches. Bake until firm, lightly browned, and slightly cracked on top, 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool on sheet on a wire rack, about 15 minutes.

4. Transfer log to a cutting board. Using a serrated knife, cut on the diagonal into 1/2 inch thick slices. Arrange slices on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Bake cookies, rotating sheet halfway through, until they begin to brown at edges, 15 to 18 minutes. Let cool on sheet on a wire rack.

Crowd Pleaser

So, I did a lot of baking today. Three different types of cookies, all new recipes (from Martha's Cookie book). All three turned out amazing and I'm planning to make more of each in the next couple of days. But I also made something else which has pretty much become my go-to Christmas standby year after year so we're going to talk about that first.

Like the Taco Dip, this Saltine Cracker Toffee is something that I just can't seem to avoid every Christmas. It's also not exactly an original recipe (you can find hundreds of versions online) but I suppose I can be credited with having discovered it before the rest of my friends and family years ago so it's become sort of "mine"; and as much as I love trying out new recipes each Christmas, I know that even if every other batch is a flop the Toffee will be there as my backup, and regardless will be the clear favourite in everyone's Christmas baskets. It's easy, insanely addicting and has a whole lot of butter. Plus, it's an interesting point of conversation as no one will believe there are CRACKERS in this stuff. There really are - and they are the key to what makes the Toffee soooo good. Salty and sweet never tasted so good.


Saltine Cracker Toffee
1 cup butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1 sleeve saltine crackers*
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips**
3/4 cups chopped almonds, pecans or whatever other nut/topping you desire


* (SALTED. Do not, under any circumstances use unsalted crackers. It will seriously ruin the Toffee)

** Now, I know there is a lot of fancy chocolate out there these days. But I really find with standbys like this they really just taste best with good old Chipits or Hershey chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit, or 175 degrees Celsius

1. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat. You can also be a risk-taker and try using aluminum foil or heavily greasing the pan, but don't call me when you're trying to chip toffee out of the pan or eating foil. The first time I tried this on a Silpat I almost cried I was so happy about how the toffee practically came off the pan in one piece. I actually tried parchment paper for the first time this year and it was even better. Line cookie sheet with crackers in one layer, making sure none overlap and edges are as close together as possible. This may involve cutting some crackers in half to make it fit.

2. Bring butter and brown sugar to a boil in a small pot or saucepan over medium-high heat. Boil for about three minutes (it should have turned a light caramel colour and will be bubbling up quite a bit)

3. Pour butter/sugar mixture over crackers and spread evenly with a spoon. Don't worry about getting it perfectly smooth or over every cracker bit, the mixture will continue to spread and even out in the oven. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until bubbly.

4. Place cookie sheet on a cooling rack and add chocolate chips. Wait about 5 minutes, and then spread the now-melted chocolate chips over the toffee layer. Sprinkle evenly with chopped almonds or nuts.

5. Cool until solid in the fridge, freezer or garage (assuming it is winter and you live somewhere with four seasons). Probably about a half hour. Break into pieces and enjoy!

Worth the Effort

Back when I was still in school and subletting in Toronto for co-op terms, my roomate and I enjoyed Pancake Sundays. I think it actually came from watching an episode of How I Met your Mother where they indulged in this ritual and we just thought it seemed like a good idea. They were never exactly fancy (for some reason the concept of making pancakes from scratch never occured to me in those days and we generally used Bisquick) but it was something to look forward to and a nice change from the usual toast or cereal for breakfast during the week.

I don't eat a whole lot of pancakes nowadays...most of the time I find the savoury camp wins out and we usually dine on some variation of eggs and bacon on weekends, but once in awhile pancake Sundays come back!

To be perfectly honest, the main reason for my motivation was that I had some leftover ricotta in the fridge from the Lasagna-style Rotini earlier in the week and I recalled flagging this recipe a few weeks ago. Either they, they seemed a little different, looked good and I had all the necessary ingredients. Why not try it out?

The recipe did seen like a little more work than your typical pancake recipe. The ricotta was simply added to the wet mix, but the eggs needed to be separated and the white whisked until stiff, then folded into the batter. This also resulted in the fluffiest pancake batter I've ever seen, and frankly I was a little concerned these were going to be weirdly puffy and uncooked in the middle.

But anyway...despite the egg white situation and the fact that my arm will probably be aching tomorrow* these were SO WORTH IT. I can't even explain in words why these are so good. Light, fluffy and just a bit of tang from the ricotta give these pancakes such a good flavour you would be happy to just eat them with a bit of butter. The ricotta also keeps the pancakes extremely moist and delicious. Please, please try this recipe. I promise you won't regret it.

*Side story: I've never actually whipped egg whites before until stiff. I knew this wasn't exactly easy and had a tendency to be a bit tricky, but figured with some patience I should at least TRY it by hand before resorting to the whisk attachment on the immersion blender.

I think I went at it for probably a good 10-15 minutes before finally giving up. It also probably wasn't the smartest idea to use a regular small bowl to do this in, and by the time the egg whites started to expand I had started to make a bit of a mess. Thankfully, once I got the hand blender in there it took probably another two minutes until they were stiff and fluffy. So for next time...don't bother attempting to do this by hand. Just go with whatever electronic mixer you have and be thankful for technology!

Ricotta Pancakes

Adapted from Serious Eats

(This recipe made about 16 small pancakes. I'd say enough for three or four people)

200 g (about a cup) ricotta cheese
3/4 cup milk
4 eggs, separated
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar Butter

1. Beat ricotta with milk, egg yolks and vanilla until smooth. In another bowl, sift or whisk together the dry ingredients. Add the ricotta mixture to the dry ingredients and stir very lightly.

2. Beat the egg whites until they are stiff and carefully fold them into the batter.

3. Cook over low to medium heat in a bit of butter, until the pancakes are lightly golden underneath. The recipe stated (correctly) that these are somewhat harder to tell when they are ready to flip as the typical bubbles don't come up quite so readily. So check on the colour of the pancakes after a couple minutes. When the time is right, turn and cook for about another minute, until the cakes are cooked through.

Quick tip: I discovered this summer that the MICROWAVE is a great place to keep pancakes warm while the rest of the batch is being cooked. The insulation keeps the heat in without having to use any energy so the heat from each round maintains a nice warm temperature. Also beats keeping them warm in the oven as you don't have the risk of drying out your pancakes this way!

4. Serve hot with a butter and maple syrup, or some sort of fruit topping. Devour.

Quick and Dirty

When I first started to really get into cooking and becoming a "foodie", I tended to stay away from recipes with the words "quick" or "easy". I've always been the type to enjoy a challenge, and these meals just didn't seem to be worth taking the time to try. Call me a snob, but that's just the way I felt.

However, this resulted in certain "extremes" when cooking weeknight dinners. I'd go through a phase where it was no problem to get home from work and whip up some homemade pasta with bolognese sauce or pot pies with crust made from scratch. And then there will be a few busy weeks where dinner consisted almost entirely on variations of Kraft Dinner or soup and garlic bread. It's not exactly a balanced diet.

Unfortunately things have been pretty hectic lately and I've been in the latter group for far too long. So when I saw this "Easy Weeknight Dinner" recipe for Lasagna-style Baked Ziti it seemed like a good idea. And you know what? It's not exactly pretty but it was SO good and what do you know...tasted like lasagna! But for much less time and effort. And all the spinach in the recipe made it seem much lighter and healthier than all the cheese might suggest (don't worry I am under no illusions of this actually being all that healthy). Definitely worth trying out and making again!


Lasagna-style Baked Rotini (I know, it doesn't quite have the same ring as Ziti but it's all I had)
Adapted from Real Simple, via TheKitchn

12 oz. rotini (about 4 cups)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 pound lean ground beef
salt and pepper
1 jar tomato or pasta sauce
1 bunch spinach, thick stems removed (about 4 cups)
1/2 cup ricotta
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup grated mozzarella

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Cook the pasta according to the package directions. Drain the pasta and return it to the pot.

2. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until they begin to soften, 4 to 5 minutes. Add the beef, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper and cook, breaking up the meat with a spoon until it’s no longer pink, 5 to 6 minutes.

3. Toss the pasta with the meat mixture, tomato sauce, spinach, ricotta, and 1/4 cup of the Parmesan. Don't worry if it seems like there's way too spinach, it will start to wilt quickly and shrink up. You can add it in batches if you're not convinced.

4. Transfer to a 9-by-13-inch baking dish or 4 large ramekins. Sprinkle with the mozzarella and the remaining 1/4 cup of Parmesan and bake until the cheese melts, 12 to 15 minutes.

I'm Freezing

So...it's officially fall. And not that period following summer of semi chilly but pleasantly cool weather. It is COLD. Like break out the fall coats and scarves cold. And the heat in our apartment does not seem to be working. Fan-tastic.

I am just not a cold weather person. I really don't enjoy anything to do with the cold or being outside in cold weather. Aside from the one week (ish) of snow that is nice (but often does not appear anyway) around Christmas, I have almost no use for the cooler seasons. Almost. The one and pretty much sole saving grace is all-important: the food. Mmmm. Comfort food is really my specialty and absolute favourite to cook. Baked pastas, casseroles, stocks and soups...you name it. I love spending a cold Sunday with a roast-something in the oven and a pot of stock on the stove. And with the somewhat abrupt arrival of cool weather this fall, I've already made some dishes that could be new favourites in the comfort food rotation: chili, chicken corn chowder (there's the corn again), skillet mac and cheese...YUM.

But the best was actually the first of the season, and was somewhat premature. On what was probably the last really warm weekend in September, my friend Laura and I decided to try out some pulled pork shoulder up at an adorable stuffed moose-laden cottage (Like the dolls, not the beheaded kind) in Haliburton, Ontario. And man was it GOOD. So good that we ate the entire four pound shoulder between five people in less than 24 hours. We ate some on buns for dinner, in crepes for breakfast and stuffed in pitas for lunch. And you know what? It just made us crave MORE pulled pork. I made it again the following weekend.

And ate all of that too.

I think I'm in love.

(I realize this isn't exactly the best picture ever. But it's the only one I have, and from a Facebook page so it's the best I could do)

Pulled Pork Shoulder
adapted from theKitchn

4 to 5 pound pork shoulder, bone-in
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 teaspoons cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
1/2 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 medium yellow onions (or one VERY large one, as I did) peeled and cut into wedges
6 cloves of garlic, peeled
8 medium-sized tomatoes
1 bottle of beer (any kind...I used Keith's the first time, Guiness the second. Both were amazing)

1. Trim the pork shoulder of any thick layers of fat. Combine the brown sugar, cumin, paprika, salt, and pepper. Rub pork with the spice mixture, making sure to rub into all the nooks and crannies. Allow the pork to sit for at least 30 minutes, or up to 24 hours in the fridge (we did the rub the day before going up north and cooked the next day)

2. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

3. Heat the olive oil in a large dutch oven over medium-high heat. Brown the pork on all sides, about 3 minutes per side. Remove from the pot. Add the onions, garlic, tomatoes, and beer. Bring to a simmer, scraping the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon to bring up any browned bits.

*Note: We didn't want to bring a dutch oven to the cottage, so we used a pan for the sear and then cooked about half the veggies and a bit of beer in the same pan just to pick up some of the crust, then moved the entire thing to a small roasting pan. The second time I made this at home, I used the dutch oven and both methods worked perfectly fine.

4. Return the pork to the pot. Cover and cook for 3 1/2 to 4 hours, flipping over the pork every hour or so to make sure the whole thing stays moist. When it's ready the meat will be extremely tender and pull away from the bone easily. Shred the pork in separate bowls, using tongs to pull large chunks of meat off the bone and then two forks to pull apart the meat. You can separate the meat from the fatty bits while you're doing this (or leave the fat in - it's tasty!). You can also do this in one large bowl, but I found that once there was too much meat in a bowl it got harder to pull apart. Also using smaller bowls will allow you to have different levels of sauciness. Discard the bone or set aside for another use.

5. Now...you can decide what to do with your pork. We made three bowls:

• Plain pork (which was a terrible idea, unless you want to use this for some other use later. We ended up mising this in with the other bowls later)
• Pork with the beer braise sauce and vegetables
• Pork with a beer braise/BBQ sauce mix, heavier on the BBQ sauce. We cooked this one in a separate, small pot for a few minutes so that the BBQ flavour wasn't so stark

Eat on buns, crepes, pitas or just out of the bowl. It's all delicious.

Pasta: check!

Now...that pasta. It had been something I'd been toying with for months and months now. It's not that it seemed all that difficult, or that I was worried it wouldn't turn out. I just always felt it would take so long. All that rolling and cutting...especially without a pasta maker. Which I think is still a valid point after my first attempt.

But anyway, it was delicious. I had a friend comment that homemade pasta didn't really seem to be worth the effort (without a pasta maker anyway) compared to storebought fresh pasta. I would disagree, but this could be mainly because I rarely buy the stuff. Most of the time I feel fresh pasta is ridiculously expensive when in THEORY I could make it myself for a mere fraction of the cost. I really only buy fresh ravioli or tortellini - basically only stuffed pastas that I reason would take a lot MORE work to make at home. So I'm not sure how this compares to say, storebought linguine. But still...it was good. Soft, chewy, and delicious even just eaten plain, coated with some butter, salt and pepper (I did this before adding the sauce and couldn't stop picking out strands after dinner) I would admit that it wasn't exactly an immediate revelation, but it tasted better with each bite. YUM.

To be fair, it was quite a bit of work without a pasta machine. It took awhile to roll the dough out thin enough (especially considering my limited counter space) and cutting it into thin strips felt like AGES. But really, it was probably only twenty minutes. And I remembered after the first batch that you can roll the dough into a flattened log (floured) and cut that into strips instead. The strands from the first batch did look nicer but the second process took considerably less time, so I'll do this in the future.

Also...the recipe below makes enough pasta for two, with some leftovers. Being relentlessly gluttonous, I doubled it even though there WERE only two of us because I wanted to be sure there would be enough leftovers. So it was a LOT of pasta. We were eating it for a few days...not that I was exactly complaining! Just saying...you probably don't need to unless you really want a LOT of leftovers.

Homemade Pasta
adapted from Pastor Ryan's Homemade Pasta, which is basically the 3:2 Pasta ratio

1 cup flour
2 eggs
dash of salt

1. Measure out flour into a medium-sized bowl and mix in salt. Make a well in the centre and add eggs (as you can see from the pictures above, the eggs didn't exactly stay in the well but it didn't seem to make a huge difference)

2. Slow swirl eggs with your fingers and incorporate the flour. Make sure you don't do this too quickly or else you'll get clumps. Continue until all the flour has been blended in and you have a shaggy looking dough.

3. Dump out onto a slightly floured countertop and knead for about 10 minutes, until the dough is smooth and pliable. Let it rest now for a few minutes; this will make it easier to roll out.

4. Roll out the dough on a floured surface as thinly as you can get it. The pasta will plump up as it cooks, so get it as thin as you can. Then using a sharp knife or pizza cutter, cut pasta into thin strips (again as thin as you can get it). Alternatively, you can also flour the pasta and fold into a flat "log" and cut the roll into thin strips, then unroll.

5. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, and cook for about two or three minutes. I actually probably cooked it about four to five minutes, but I tend to like my pasta somewhat overcooked and not a lot of people seem to share my opinion. Serve with Ryan's Bolognese sauce, or just some butter and parmesan. De-lish!

Just Peachy

Note: this post is from a few weeks ago and is photo-less...I wouldn't normally point this out but some circumstantial events have prevented me from posting for a few weeks and I just wanted you all to know that I realize the arrival of peach season isn't exactly "new" news.

So. It's peach season. Finally. Last summer was my first living in Toronto with easy access to the St. Lawrence Market. For some reason, I didn't realize it was peach season (or that I liked peaches? I'm not really sure what happened here) until it was practically over. So I spent the last couple weeks of August buying baskets of those gorgeous, juicy peaches and baking a couple of cobblers here and there, but mostly just using them obsessively for smoothies. I really didn't get the chance to use the glorious little suckers in the way that they deserved. And I've been waiting patiently for peaches to arrive in Ontario since the beginning of summer.

Well, last weekend I finally went to the market and saw baskets of peaches for sale. YES! They were still a few days from being fully ripe so I left them in the paper bag and planned out my first baking experiment.

The obvious choice was pie, and I'd seen a few fantastic looking recipes on the net in the last couple of weeks. But I was alone at the apartment for a few days, so I thought I would bake something that would be a little easier to take into work the next day for my co-workers to enjoy. I'd been re-reading some of the Anne of Green Gables series lately (I know, I'm a huge dork) and those PEI folk sure talk a lot about plum cake. I've never HAD plum cake before, but it seemed tasty enough and something that couuld be easily substituted with peaches, so that seemed like a good way to go.

The recipe I used is a plum cake recipe from Patent and the Pantry, which got the recipe from Dinner with Julie. I love butter, and browned butter always seems SO good but I've never actually tried or used it in a recipe before. Perfect! Plus, the pictures were so pretty and basically made me start drooling.

I tried really hard not to adapt this recipe too much - pretty much all I changed was the fruit (obviously) and added vanilla, because vanilla is SO good with everything. And I left out the nutmeg because I didn't have any.

Anyway...the only real problem I had here was that it was more of a cobbler-cake, as I used probably too many peaches. But that wasn't really a problem unless you're concerned about making a bit of a mess while you eat it. And it shouldn't be, because this was GOOD. Not too sweet, but delicious from all the fresh fruit and a bit nutty from the browned butter. I'm sad that I don't have photo documentation but if you go to the source blogs their photos are much prettier than mine anyway. But if you have some extra peaches lying around, try this recipe. Please!

Brown Butter Peach Cake
adapted from various sources, noted above

6 peaches
1/2 lemon
3/4 cups + 3 tbsp sugar, divided
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup butter
2 large eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit - butter a pie plate or cake pan

1. Peel peaches - bring a medium sized pot of water to a boil. Remove from heat and add peaches. Let sit for 45 seconds, then remove with a slotted spoon and immediately immerse in a water bath. The skins should just slip right off - it's like magic! I know this is probably a pretty basic concept but I've never peel peaches like this before so I was pretty amazed.

2. Cut peaches into large slices and toss with a squeeze of lemon juice, 2 tbsp sugar and cinnamon. You can do this directly in the cake pan/pie plate. Set aside.

3. Brown butter - in a small saucepan (make sure it's doesn't have a black bottom so that you can tell when the butter is brown!) melt butter and cook for about 5 minutes until it's a golden brown colour. Immedidately take the pan off hte stove and if you can, dip the bottom in a bowl of water (I just used the same bowl I had the peaches in, to save a bowl). I don't think you NEED to do this step but apparently the butter keeps cooking a bit after you take it off the heat, so be careful if you don't. I actually have a feeling that I didn't let my butter brown enough, but again this was a first try at this so I was super paranoid about burning it.

4. Pour butter into a medium sized bowl. Add 3/4 cup of sugar, eggs, vanilla and flour and stir to combine. Pour over fruit and sprinkle with remaining sugar (I didn't use a whole tablespoon here...probably more like a teaspoon).

5. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until top is golden brown and juices are bubbling up the sides.