Bump n Grind - South Granville Grand Opening!

I was invited to the opening party of Bump n Grind Cafe grand opening. The South Granville location is their second location. The original location on Commercial Drive is well-loved by the neigbourhood. Owners Cheryl and Kyle Wright wanted to open their new location in a community-oriented neighbourhood, and found the perfect space on Granville Street and West 15th Avenue.

Bump n Grind is a multi-roaster cafe, where the owners search high and low across Canada for the best coffee. Coffees are rotated weekly to keep the menu fresh, and exciting.

Nutella Bites: Tried and tested Pinterest recipe

I bought Nutella from Costco. This means I have A LOT of Nutella. When I need a recipe, my go-to resource these days is Pinterest (follow me!). I decided to go with this pin because I already have all the ingredients, except the powdered sugar.

The directions are so simple, I had to make it right away, even though it was 9:30pm. All you have to do is whisk all the ingredients together, spoon 2 tablespoons of the batter into a muffin tin, bake for 20 - 23 minutes at 350 degrees until a toothpick poked into the center comes out clean.

For the full recipe, head over to Vancity Buzz!

How do you eat Nutella?

xoxo
~meesh

Lemon Blueberry Loaf!

It's been a while since I've posted about my epicurean adventures here. That's because I've been contributing to Vancity Buzz. A local lifestyle blog about all things Vancouver.

I baked this Lemon Blueberry Loaf recently as part of my series "Pinterest Recipe Wins". I love this recipe because of the intense lemon flavour. If you're not a lemon fiend like I am, you can still make this recipe without the lemon extract.

For the recipe, head over to Vancity Buzz! I'll post some of my other Pinterest (follow me!) recipe experiments soon!

What's your favourite lemon recipe?

~Meesh

A Silpat Baking Dish!! OMG

If you've read some of my baking posts, you'll know that I swear by silpat liners. These are non-stick silicone liners that are easy to clean, and reusable. They are oven-safe (obviously) and microwave safe. These are honestly one of my baking must-have's.

Source

I was scrolling through my geek blogs today, and found a silpat baking dish!!! OMG!

Now I can bake my cookies without having to worry about them falling over the edge!

You can buy them at Amazon for $55.00. It's pretty expensive for a baking pan, but based on my experience with Silpats, I wouldn't hesitate buying this.

What's your favourite baking must-have?

Cranberry Buttermilk Scones!

It's been a while since my last post. I can't really tell you what I've been doing, because I don't really remember. Well, that's not true. I went dress shopping again, think I may have found "the one". There's one more place to check out, but I found the dress at Clara Couture. This time Clara helped me, and I can tell she is so passionate about what she does.

Anyway, so I haven't made scones in a couple months. The recipe I had was good, I liked the flavour, but I found the scones really dense. After watching some videos, and reading some recipes, I decided that my problem was that I didn't use dairy. I used almond milk thinking it would do the job. But alas, you can't use almond milk for all of milk's responsibilities.

So, I found a new recipe, and it turned out beautifully!! I googled a loooot of different recipes. I didn't want a recipe with a huge batch, so I looked for recipes that yielded 8 - 10 scones. I've also convinced myself that not only did I need dairy for success, but I needed buttermilk. So I've found myself a buttermilk recipe.

Cranberry Buttermilk Scones

Inspired by Canadian Living

Yield: 8 scones

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

3 tbsp  granulated sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

6 tbsp cold butter, cubed

1/2 cup dried cranberries, or other dried fruit

1 egg

1/3 cup buttermilk

Topping

1 tbsp buttermilk

2 tsp granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

I used a food processor, but you can also do this by hand. Mix (or whisk, if by hand) flour, sugar, baking powder, salt. Add in butter, and pulse until mixture looks like coarse meal. If you're doing this by hand, you can either mush (very technical) the butter with your hands, use a pastry blender, or a fork to cut in the butter. Once the butter is incorporated, add in dried fruit. Mix in egg and buttermilk. Process until the dough comes together.

Pour dough out on to a silpat, or parchment paper. Form into a 1-inch thick round disk. Brush dough with buttermilk and sprinkle with sugar. Cut into 8 slices, but DO NOT separate!

Bake for 16 minutes.

When it comes out of the oven, it'll look like this.

Here's what it looks like on the inside:

It's so light and fluffy! I ate mine with Devonshire Creme and strawberry jam. Sooo goood.

The whole process took about 30 minutes. I was done making the dough just as the oven was done pre-heating. While it baked, I cleaned up the kitchen.

I love this recipe!!!

What's your favourite scone?

xoxo

~meesh

Pinterest Strikes Again!!...Peanut Butter Banana Drop Cookies

When I went to the grocery store a few days ago, I had a few things I wanted to make. One of them was the Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal Cookies:

(Source - via Pinterest)

I didn't make too many tweaks to this recipe, but as usual, I substituted what I had in the pantry instead of buying more product.

Peanut Butter Banana Drop Cookies

Inspired By lux hippie

3 ripe bananas

1 tablespoon vanilla extract (you could substitute any other extract you think might go well with bananas)

1/2 - 1 cup of peanut butter (I had natural smooth PB, use whatever is in your pantry)

2 1/2 tablespoons of blue agave syrup (could substitute honey, maple syrup, brown rice syrup etc...)

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 cups rolled oats

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup chocolate chips (I love dark chocolate, so I used dark chips. You could use white chocolate, semi-sweet, you get the idea)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine bananas, vanilla, peanut butter, and blue agave syrup. I bought mine from Home Sense, you can also buy it at health food stores, and also Costco!!

Once the banana mixture is a smooth consistency:

Add the dry ingredients. I didn't combine the dry ingredients in another bowl because I didn't want to wash another bowl. But you can if you wanted to, of course.

Once all the ingredients are combine, add in chocolate chips, and I also added 3 tablespoons of chia seeds since I had some in the house. 

The batter will be sticky, I recommend using two tablespoons to help you drop them on the cookie sheet instead of trying to wrangle the batter off with your fingers.

Bake for 15 minutes. I used a silpat mat (the best investment EVER!! You can also find these at Home Sense once in a while). If you don't have a silpat, use grease the cookie sheet, or use parchment paper. The cookies don't spread, so you can put them pretty close together.

Here's the finished product!

Let me know what you think!

xoxo

~meesh

Pinterest and Nutella

I've been addicted to Pinterest (FOLLOW ME!!!) for a while now. I use it to browse wedding ideas, and also for food ideas. I noticed an influx of pins about nutella the last little while (turns out it was National Nutella Day on Feb. 5), so of course, I had to go and buy myself some nutella. My original inspiration/push to buy nutella was this:

(Source)

While that looks mighty delicious, I was also in the mood for some cookies. So pin searching I went for a good nutella cookie recipe. There were some "serious" cookie recipes with butter, sugar and eggs. But there were also some super simple 3 - 4 ingredient recipes. I ended up googling for a recipe and came across this:

(Source)

I liked this recipe because there was no added sugar. I'm pretty sure nutella was sweet enough as it is. Plus, this recipe was super simple. I had all the ingredients, so why not?

I decided to "health" it up a little, and added a cup of oats to the recipe too. I also added baking powder and soda, and vanilla cuz those seem to be in all cookie recipes I've made before.

Nutella Oatmeal Cookies

Inspired by Kirbie Cravings

1 cup flour

1 cup nutella

1 cup oats

1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Throw everything together in the mixer with the paddle attachment, and mix until it looks well mixed. The batter comes out crumbly, but it will come together when you roll the it together to form small balls. I made my batter into about 1" balls, and flattened them a little on the cookie sheet. I used a silpat, if you don't have one, I recommend using parchment paper, or grease the cookie sheet with some butter or canola oil.

Bake for 8 minutes.

Here's what they look like!

They are chewy, and dense, and fudgey! Nutella heaven!! They are definitely sweet enough without any added sugar, and the oats help give it a little bit of texture.

Try it out and let me know how it works out for you!!

xoxo
~meesh