Carrot Top Cake

I hope you’re not getting tired of baking recipes! I promise I’ll come up with something else soon, but in the meantime I wanted to share this cake I made to celebrate my 10 year wedding anniversary with Mr. Forager. I started with a carrot cake recipe that’s been in our family for quite a while and tweaked it so it would work with carrot tops instead. I’m always interested in recipes that help use up the parts of our food that would ordinarily be composted. Carrot tops are actually really delicious. I’ve used them as a pesto ingredient, or thrown them in when I’m making soup stock before, but this would be my first time using them in baking. I’ve seen oil cake recipes using nettles and even lettuce, so I figured this would probably work and I am happy to say it really did!

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This recipe is similar to most other veggie cakes, but you’ll need a food processor or high powered blender to get the carrot tops to a fine puree. I add the carrot tops in with the oil for the recipe and puree that all together and then you don’t need to add any other liquids to the mix. The batter comes together really easily, and you can either bake it into layers and add icing, or just pour it into loaf pans if that’s going to be something you enjoy more. I think it would also be delicious as a simple loaf cake with a lemon drizzle on top.

The icing I used for the cake in these photos is an italian meringue buttercream flavoured with lemon. It’s delicious, but a little bit on the complicated side. I made it for a cake we were decorating at work and got to take some of the extra home. I think if I was doing this for an everyday sort of snack cake I would do something more simple, but for a special occasion I think this is a fantastic icing. I’m not going to be posting the recipe for it here because there are many others already online, and the recipe I used wasn’t my own.

I’m also including a recipe for a simple syrup to brush on the cake layers to keep them moist, but if you’re not wanting to bake the cake in layers you could easily use those flavours and some icing sugar to convert it into a drizzle to dress up a layer cake. I might try that next time!

As for the carrot tops, there isn’t really too much you need to worry about. Choose two bunches of carrots that look healthy and well hydrated. The best option is to support someone at your local farmers’ market, but there are also many grocery stores that sell carrots with their tops still attached. Carrot tops are sort of an unsung hero in the kitchen, and many people ask the farmers to take the tops off for them when they are buying their carrot bunches so you could probably even score some extra bunches for free! Last time I was buying carrots I was given an extra big handful of carrot tops when I told the farmer I actually wanted to keep mine.

The other flavours in this cake are lemon, thyme, and cardamom. You can use fresh thyme or dried, but fresh is going to have the most punch so if you can find some it’s worth it. I recommend having a little of the dried thyme on hand for decorating since I think the little leaves looked beautiful sprinkled on top of the cake. I also put a few blueberries on the top because I couldn’t think of anything else we had on hand to make a good focal point, and it was actually a really great flavour to add. I’d consider even doing a layer of blueberry jam in the middle of the cake next time to add more of that in.

Carrot Top Cake

Makes four six inch round cakes

Ingredients

For the Cake:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cardamom
• 2 tbsp dried thyme, or one handful fresh thyme sprigs
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups oil
• 4 eggs
• juice and zest of one lemon
• carrot tops from two average sized bunches of carrots

For the Simple Syrup or Drizzle

• 1/4 cup sugar (if making simple syrup)
• 1 cup boiling water (if making simple syrup - if making drizzle reduce to two tablespoons)
• reserved thyme sprigs, or one tbsp dried thyme
• juice and zest of one lemon
• enough icing sugar to bring liquid to desired drizzle consistency

Instructions

To make the Cake:

1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cardamom. If you are using dried thyme you can add it to these dry ingredients as well.
2. Blend the carrot tops, fresh thyme (but reserve the stems for later), oil, and lemon juice until mixture is a very fine purée.
3. Whisk together eggs, sugar, and vanilla extract until everything has turned to one homogenous texture. At this point add the pureed carrot tops and oil, and mix well.
4. Slowly mix in the sifted dry ingredients, and mix just until there are no large lumps. There will likely still be a few small ones, but that’s ok. I like to do this part with my hands so I can feel what’s going on with the mixture, but you don’t have to if that’s not your thing.
5. When baked pour into your desired shape of cake pan. This mix made four six inch round cakes for me, but you can pour it into two loaf pans, or one large rectangle. Just make sure you’re leaving room in your chosen baking pan for the cake to rise.
6. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until a cake tester inserted comes out clean. For my six inch rounds this was about 25-30 minutes. It is a good idea to rotate the cakes in the oven at just over the halfway point so everything bakes evenly.

If you are icing a layer cake and want to make simple syrup:

7. Boil one cup of water, and dissolve the 1/4 cup sugar into it. Throw in the lemon juice and zest and reserved thyme stems (or dried thyme). It is a good idea to finely chop the thyme stems before throwing them in, but if you forget it’s not necessary. Allow to infuse until cool and then strain out the solids.
8. Use this syrup to brush on your layers of cake before icing them to keep everything moist. Extra syrup can be used in mixed drinks, or however you would normally use a simple syrup.

If you want to make a drizzle to ice your cake:

9. Boil water in a teakettle, and pour a few tablespoons of it over chopped thyme stems, or dried thyme. Allow this to cool and infuse for a while as your cake bakes and cools.
10. Strain out the solids from the infusion, and combine this with lemon juice, zest, and enough icing sugar to make a drizzle in a consistency that you like. Pour over cooled cakes, allow to dry before slicing, and enjoy!

Nettle Pancakes

Springtime is almost here! Or at least here in Kamloops we’re still waiting for the last of the snow to disappear, but I know from my newsfeeds that many of you live in warmer places. Some of you are even enjoying your first nettle harvests! Since I had a few cups from last year stashed away in the freezer I thought I’d share a recipe that woulds satisfy my craving for spring flavours, and maybe give you some inspiration.

There are a few recipes that I feel are my family legacy, and pancakes is definitely one of them. Big pancakes breakfasts have such a strong association with family for me that we decided a pancake brunch was the perfect meal to serve at our wedding. This recipe is strongly based on my mother’s, but with quite a few tweaks.

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You might be wondering - why nettles? Despite their sting, nettles are a fantastic spring green to forage for, and a bonus is that no one who has them on their land really wants them. When I gathered mine I secured an invite from a perplexed farmer who was more than happy for me to come hack away at the patch of nettles invading their beautiful garden soil. When you are gathering nettles make sure you wear gloves - I used rubber kitchen gloves - and long sleeves. I also used long handled kitchen tongs while picking, and when I brought them home to process. The good news is, once nettles are either dried or cooked they lose their stinging properties, so you can handle them without so much caution after that.

I find it really useful to blanch up all your nettles, and pack them into one cup portions for the freezer. I also roughly chopped mine before freezing so that they would be super easy to use in recipes. Throw in a bag in whatever recipe you would use spinach for. They work great in smoothies, curries, soups, and baking. Nettles have such a gorgeous green colour, and they hold their colour beautifully even after cooking or baking.

For these pancakes the green comes from blending the nettles in with the milk. The result looks like something that Luke Skywalker would drink, but I find it’s the easiest way to incorporate them for baking. I wanted the green to look more like food colouring than flakes of leaves, so I threw them both in my Vitamix blender, and pulverized it until it was smoothie-textured. I would think that you could probably sub out milk for another liquid if you are wanting these to be dairy free. I’ve never tried it, but I’m guessing it would be fine if a bit less rich.

The sky is the limit for toppings, but I used unsweetened vanilla whipped cream, maple syrup macerated strawberries, and candied lilac petals. I really wanted these to taste of spring, and I felt those flavours encapsulated the season for me.

I’ve also done these pancakes twice - once using grapefruit, and once using orange. I think I like the grapefruit better because it is a sort of unexpected flavour that pairs really well with the slight vegetal taste that comes through with the nettles. I was a little worried that either the taste or the colour would stop my children from eating them, but so far the “green pancakes” have been a hit for both the one-year-old and the four-year-old.

I think these have great holiday potential - a little late for your St. Patrick’s day celebrations this year, but perfect as “Grinch Pancakes” at Christmastime! I could also see using these if you wanted to make a bunch of other colours (not totally sure what to use for the other colours though) and have rainbow pancakes for Easter or Pride celebrations. Basically they are delicious, fun, and they add two cups of greens into your pancake meal so all in all it’s a total win in my books. If you try them out let me know what you thought in the comments!

Nettle Pancakes

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 cups sifted or all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup oil
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 grapefruit, zest and juice only
• 2 cups stinging nettles (blanched and frozen - can sub frozen spinach if no nettles are available)
• 2 cups milk

Takes 30 minutes, serves pancakes for a family of four.

Instructions

1. Begin by heating your griddle or nonstick frypan, or heating butter/oil in a regular frying pan. You want it to be preheated well before you pour any batter.
2. Mix dry ingredients together.
3. Thaw nettles and drain of excess water. Blend milk and nettles together to a smoothie-like consistency.
4. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add eggs, oil, vanilla, grapefruit, and milk. Mix just to the point where the batter is well combined and there are no lumps.
5. Ladle out the pancake batter onto the pan to your desired size. Make sure you keep a good amount of space around them for ease of flipping and because these do tend to puff up a bit.
6. Your pancakes are ready to flip when you see bubbles popping up in the middle, and when the outside edges are less shiny with bubbles that pop there staying open.

Trail Mix Cookies featuring Bite Snacks Cricket Protein

Today I have a new recipe to share with you featuring Pure Cricket protein powder from Bite Snacks. At this point it probably looks like the only thing I ever do is make cookies, but as soon as I got my hands on the protein powder my mind instantly started thinking of some sort of trail mix or breakfast cookie type thing.

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Crickets as a food source are gaining in popularity these days. Or perhaps I should say that the countries that don’t traditionally consume insects are finally catching on to what 80% of the world already knows - insects are too nutritious to ignore! Crickets are an excellent source of protein, and many minerals that are essential to our diet. This is all the more amazing when you consider how few resources they use up when farmed for food.

I am all for supporting my local beef ranchers, but sustainable, grass-fed beef is so expensive it is best considered a luxury food item. With this in mind, crickets can help fill our need for dietary protein without being so hard on the planet. If you want some more info, I found this page that is a great source about adding insects into the human diet. Bite Snacks also has some great info on their site.

If you’re wondering what they taste like, I think you’d be pleasantly surprised! When I tasted the powder straight to see what I might want to make with it I thought of coffee, and the bitterness of dark chocolate. There was something very savoury and roasty, as well as a very sour note in there too. So unique! For these cookies I went with all of that and combined the powder with coffee, chocolate, and dried cranberries. I can’t wait to try it out in other recipes too. I’m sure it would camouflage well in a smoothie if you were interested in the health benefits of the crickets but were a bit squeamish about eating them.

Now about these cookies. You might have noticed I have posted some fairly complicated cookie recipes here (Douglas-fir Sugar Cookies, Sumac Ginger Honey Hearts). The reason for that is I’m not interested in adding to the noise of the food blogging world. I’m not a highly trained baker, so I don’t have enough technical expertise to add anything to the question of which chocolate chip cookie is the greatest, or anything like that. With that in mind I’m also not interested in sharing a mediocre recipe. What I am experienced in is working with unique flavours, so I’ve decided to stay in my own weird lane instead of adding yet another “Best _____ ever!” recipe to the internet. If that’s what interests you too, I hope you make some of my recipes! I’d love to hear from anyone who does and would absolutely welcome feedback!

These cookies have a little bit of prep required. You’ll need to make a soaker of the nuts, chia seeds, and some of the oats the day before you make your dough. The reason I wanted to soak the nuts in these was because I was hoping for the nuts to be a part of the overall texture, not a crumbly extra. I also don’t really like eating walnuts unless they are soaked, so that was another factor.

You’ll also find some discussion - especially online in paleo focused wellness blogs - about whether or not soaking nuts and seeds make them more digestible. I’m not going to pretend to have any scientific knowledge on that count. I just like the finished result in baked goods when they are soaked better than when they aren’t.

In this recipe I have some things soaked, and some not. This was an attempt to create a variety of textures in the finished cookie. You can experiment with changing the composition of what is in the soaker. In one early experiment I added quinoa, but that didn’t really work because the quinoa was too hard still after baking, and added an unpleasant bitter flavour. Feel free to adjust this recipe to your taste! I’d love to hear what great combinations you come up with!

Part of my motivation in creating this cookie was as a sort of trail snack. These are loaded with protein, and nutrients, with a little refined sugar to help with the finished texture (needed for crispy edges) and chocolate to make them seem like a treat (just like in my favourite trail mixes). The other unexpected bonus is that my preschooler loves eating these! He’s so picky and protein has been a major challenge to get him to eat. These are perfect!

You’ll notice that the yield for these will vary and that depends on how large you shape your logs of dough. I went small because it’s easier for my son to eat. Feel free to try a larger diameter, but remember to adjust your baking time accordingly.

Trail Mix Cookies with Cricket Protien

Ingredients

• 2 cups chopped, roasted nuts
• 1/2 cup chia seeds
• 1/2 cup oats
• coffee or juice for soaker
• 1 cup butter
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1 cup date puree
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp cardamom
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 cups flour
• 1/4 cup Bite Snacks Pure Cricket Powder
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1 cup craisins
• 1 cup oats
• Optional: up to 1 cup other mix-ins like pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, or whatever else you like in your trail mix.

Takes two days, serves several dozen cookies depending on the size you make your logs.

Instructions

1. The day before you want to make the cookies, prepare the soaker. Roast the nuts (spread out on a cookie sheet, roast at 350 degrees until you just start to smell them - don’t walk away! This will only be about 10 minutes). Chop the nuts, and combine with the chia seeds, and oats in a container such as a quart sized mason jar, and cover with coffee or juice. Soak overnight in the fridge.
2. The next day, make your date paste by blending about 40 dates with a little bit of water in a food processor or high powered blender.
3. Cream butter, sugar, molasses, and date paste until light and fluffy. You’ll want to make sure that everything is well blended, and one homogenous colour. Any sugar crystals should be dissolved. This might take a few minutes longer than you are used to with other cookies.
4. Add the egg, vanilla, and spices, and continue to beat until well emulsified.
5. Add soaker mixture from the fridge.
6. Combine your baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl with three cups of flour. Add this bit by bit, with your mixer running on the lowest setting. It is possible you will need more flour depending on how much liquid your soaker contributed to the overall mix. This will be a very wet dough. Add enough flour that it is workable, but still quite tacky. Go easy here as your oats and other dry mix-ins will absorb some of the liquid and you really don’t want to make these too dry.
7. Add in craisins, chocolate chips, oats, and any other mix-ins.
8. Scoop your dough onto wax paper, and form into logs. Freeze, or refrigerate until firm. When you are ready to bake preheat your oven to 350˚F. Slice the cookies to a thickness just over 1/4 inch.
9. Lay cookies out on a baking sheet, and bake for 15-20 minutes.

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Bite Snacks provided me with the Pure Cricket powder free of charge in exchange for this recipe and review, but all my thoughts and opinions are my own.

Sumac Ginger Honey Hearts

Hello! There used to be a whole section here with me describing the amazing Flourist sifted red spring flour I use in my baking. I was trying to add something to this and some other old articles, and I’m not sure how but it all got deleted! Continue reading for the recipe, and some more details about how to find and use sumac.

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Sumac berries infusing in cold water.

Strained and completed sumac infusion.

I have to admit, that making these cookies is a bit of an involved process. This is especially true if you are foraging the sumac, and processing it yourself as I did. Here are some instructions that are very helpful if you want to go that route. If not, you can usually find dried and ground sumac at specialty spice stores, and I even saw it at my local Bulk Barn (bonus shopping here because at some locations you can bring your own container and your purchase will be zero-waste). I’m sure there are online options as well.

Sumac is a shrub that grows native in many areas of North America. You can identify it by it’s compound leaves, and large, compact berry clusters that stick straight up from the branches. The berries aren’t juicy, and they are covered by tiny hairs, and malic acid which gives it the distinct sour, almost citrus-like flavour. In most areas you’ll want to harvest the berries in July, and before any large rainfall hits as this will wash away much of the malic acid. That said, it’s not unheard of that sumac berries are still harvestable later on in the year - just rub them with your finger, and then lick it to see if your finger tastes sour (that will be the malic acid that transferred to your finger). If they still taste sour they are still good to use! The easiest way of processing them is just to bring the berry clusters home and let them dry thoroughly. Store them somewhere they won’t get dusty (I have mine from last summer crammed in a 1/2 gallon vintage mason jar) and they are ready to use whenever you need them.

Some of you may have been told that Sumac is poisonous. In the plant world there are many different common names, and sometimes poisonous and non-poisonous plants even share the same one. This is the case with sumac. Poison sumac (Toxicodendron vernix) only grows in swampy areas, whereas the sumac we are looking for (Rhus glabra, Rhus typhina, or Rhus copallina, depending on the species that is local to you) prefers dry landscapes. It also has red berries, whereas poison sumac has white. There really is no chance that you will mistake the two. One thing you will want to be cautious about, is that sumac is related to mangoes, cashews, and poison ivy. If you are especially sensitive to some of these other plants please take caution if you are trying sumac. This post on identifying sumac varieties from Eat the Weeds is an excellent resource, but please make sure you consult more than one resource before eating anything you have foraged.

As always please take care when foraging, and make sure you are 100% certain of what you are gathering and eating. The best option is learning from someone who is an expert on the local plants for your area. Use more than one resource when identifying plants that are new to you like field guides, and reputable online resources - the more specific to your location the better. Spend a lot of time examining the different features of the plant you are looking for. Never be content to identify a plant by one feature alone.

Now to explain more about making the cookies themselves! They do take some time to make, but I promise you the end result is worth it! I originally made these at Christmas time (being inspired by traditional Danish Christmas cookies like Honninghjerter, and Pebernødder) and they were the first to disappear from the cookie platters! The holidays were very busy, and even though I had originally planned to post the recipe back then, but I ran out of time. I think that turned out to be a good thing in the end though, because they are also so perfect for Valentine’s Day!

You’re going to need to start the sumac infusion ideally two days before you want to have the cookies (although you could get away with the day before, but they are better if you have a bit longer for letting the dough chill). All of the colour in these cookies is completely natural - there is no food colouring at all! The lovely pink in the glaze comes from the colour of the sumac infusion itself, and that is also where the sour flavour from the sumac shines the brightest. Since lemon or other citrus is often paired with ginger in holiday baking, I thought sumac would be a delicious pairing with the ginger and I set out working on making a ginger-forward, spice cookie that blended well with the natural sour, fruity flavour of the sumac.

The day after your sumac has infused, start making your dough. This is essentially a sugar cookie with a lot of spices that gets rolled out a little thicker than normal. You’ll also want to make sure you have time to chill the dough for a day if possible. The flavours need time to mingle together in the dough before baking. if you have to speed things up at least chill the dough for a couple hours. This will also make rolling them out easier.

Make sure you leave a fair amount of room between the cookies on the sheet because they tend to puff up a bit, and spread ever so slightly. I also put in the instructions to roll them out a bit thicker than many of these are in the photos. This is because we found out after eating them all that the thicker ones were better!

When your cookies are baked, decorating them is very fun! Prepare your sumac glaze to be a little runnier than your ginger one. You’ll be dipping the cookies into this glaze. Try to let as much excess run off back into the bowl as you can. I found that I had a lot of glaze pooling under the cookies as I let them dry on parchment paper. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing because it tasted really good to have extra glaze, but it was a little less professional looking, and the glaze didn’t go as far. If this happens to you too and you run out of glaze just make a little more and keep going. No big deal!

When the cookies are all dipped let them dry before drizzling the ginger glaze over top. This will make sure that when you sprinkle the candied ginger over top it will only stick to the white icing. I did some with candied ginger, and some without, but everyone ended up liking the ones with ginger better. If you’re a little more sensitive to the heat of ginger feel free to leave that step out - they look and taste great without it too!

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Sumac Ginger Honey Hearts

Ingredients

For the Cookies

• 3 cups flour
• 1 cup butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup light honey
• 1 large egg
• 2 tbsp sumac infusion (prepared ahead of time)
• 2 tbsp dried sumac powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp fresh ginger (grated, or very finely minced)
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp white pepper

For the Glaze and Decoration

• 3 cups icing sugar (approximate)
• 2 tbsp sumac infusion
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbsp milk/water
• 2 tbsp corn syrup (divided)
• 1 cup candied ginger (to be finely minced)

Takes two days, serves several dozen cookies depending on the size of the cookie cutter used.

Instructions

1. Two days before you want the finished cookies, prepare you sumac infusion. If you are using fresh/dried sumac berries, add a couple drupes worth of berries to a pint jar, and combine with 1 cup cold water. Leave in the fridge overnight. If using sumac powder you either purchased or prepared yourself, add 3 tbsp powder to one cup of cold water and leave in the fridge overnight.
2. The day before you want to bake the cookies prepare the dough. This dough really needs to be chilled overnight to let the flavours come into their own more fully before baking. If you don’t have time for this, at least chill the dough for a couple hours, but overnight will be better.
3. Cream butter, sugar, and honey together until well emulsified. You shouldn’t be able to see any sugar crystals, and the resulting mixture should be light and fluffy.
4. Add the egg, vanilla, sumac powder, 2 tbsp sumac infusion, and continue to cream the mixture until well emulsified. It should all look like one cohesive mixture with no visible clumps.
5. Add the salt, baking soda, and spices. Mix well.
6. Last of all, add the flour slowly, mixing on low. Depending on the humidity levels of the flour and your kitchen you might need to add a little more or less, so keep an eye on the dough as you add the flour and stop early, or add a little extra depending on how it looks and feels. Don’t let the dough get too dry, though. It will firm up and be easier to work with after it spends some time in the fridge, and you don’t want your finished cookies to be too floury. Aim for your dough to be fairly sticky at this point, but not overly runny.
7. Transfer to an airtight container and leave in the fridge overnight, or at a bare minimum a couple hours.
8. At this point preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Roll out the cookies to a 1 cm (or just under 1/2 inch) thickness, using a little more flour on your work surface and rolling pin to keep the dough from sticking. Cut into hearts, and continue this process until all your dough is used up. I don’t find too big of a difference after re-rolling the excess dough a few times. I also feel that ingredients - especially foraged ones - are precious, so I like to make sure I use as much of my dough as possible. The yield here will depend on the size of cookie cutter you use, but you should end up with a couple dozen cookies either way.
9. Leave some space between the cookies on the baking trays, because they do tend to puff up and spread just a little bit, but they will definitely still maintain their heart shape after all of this.
10. Bake the cookies until they are just barely beginning to brown on the edges. This will be about 15 minutes per tray, depending on how your oven runs. Mine seems to run a bit cooler than most, so I often end up needing to leave things in a little longer. You can also usually tell when the cookies are almost done because you’ll start to smell them as they bake.
11. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to completely cool before you start decorating them.
12. While waiting for the cookies to cool this is a good time to start preparing your glazes. You’ll do one in a larger amount with the sumac infusion, and one with ginger powder and vanilla.
13. Combine 2 cups icing sugar, 1 tbsp corn syrup, and sumac infusion to make your first glaze. Add the infusion slowly so that you get the right consistency. You want it to be thick enough to coat whatever is dipped in it, but runny enough that the excess will still drip off when you dip the cookies. If you overdo it, you can always add more icing sugar to thicken.
14. For your second glaze, add the remaining cup of icing sugar and corn syrup, as well as the ginger powder, vanilla extract, and milk/water (go slowly as you add this - you may not need it all). You want this glaze to be slightly thicker than the other since it will be used as a drizzle over the finished cookies.
15. Dip all the cookies in the sumac glaze first, allowing the excess to drip back into the bowl as much as possible rather than just leaving them to drip on the parchment paper or whatever you’re going to let them dry on (this just makes a tidier looking end result - if you don’t get it all don’t worry you’ll just have some of the glaze pooling underneath the cookie). I started having problems with pooling, so I started leaving the freshly dipped cookies on a cooling rack for a few minutes before transferring to parchment to continue drying.
16. Drizzle cookies with the ginger glaze, and while this is still wet sprinkle with the very finely chopped candied ginger. Allow this to dry completely before you handle the cookies.

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While the prize for the giveaway on my Instagram feed was sponsored by GRAIN, this post is not. I have been their customer for the past few months and wholeheartedly endorse their product based on my own experience. All thoughts and opinions expressed are completely my own.

Sumac Curd and Frangipane Galette des Rois for Epiphany

This year our Epiphany celebrations were pretty low-key, although I did spend a couple days making a really gorgeous galette des rois for our dessert. Even though we didn’t have a big event or anything to write that much about both the glaze for the ham and the dessert featured locally foraged sumac that I gathered in the summer it seemed appropriate to write something up about them. This is “A Forager’s Home”, after all! I am also super happy with how the galette turned out, so even though you wouldn’t be able to make it in time for Epiphany this year, I highly recommend that you try it out sometime for some different event!

My home processed sumac powder.

Sumac grows everywhere in my neighbourhood. It is native to North America, and loves a dry environment, so a lot of people here have used it in the landscaping. If you can’t find some wild, you might see some in a neighbour’s yard and they probably won’t mind sharing a few of the bright red cones with you. Just make sure you ask permission for any foraging you’re doing on private property! There are lots of tutorials online for how to process your own sumac, but I’ve found the easiest way is to dry the drupes, and then pulse them in a blender (this removes the berries from the large, very hard seeds), and then sift the red powder out from the larger pieces leftover. For this recipe you can just use the whole berry clusters submerged in water rather than going through the trouble of grinding them, or you can do what I did - pulse the water and drupes together so they will infuse to their fullest potential.

Epiphany dinner this year was ham, mashed potatoes, roasted veggies (roasted in the pan underneath the ham for maximum deliciousness), and Brussels sprouts (roasted with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and dried cranberries).

The dinner was delicious, although the cut of ham we had was a little difficult to work with. I love the quality of the pork we received from our friends’ farm, but the butcher seemed to do some interesting things to it. There was a lot of connective tissue in the middle of what was labelled a “bone in ham” (note the conspicuous lack of a bone). I’m not sure if this was just because one large ham was portioned into smaller roasts, or because it was actually boned, and that this was the result. Either way I was disappointed not to have the bone to do a split pea soup with afterward, but sometimes that’s how things go.

I am happy to report that the honey glaze I wrote about a few days ago worked perfectly on this ham. I used Jaime Oliver’s method of poaching the ham first, and then finishing it in the oven. I think it turned out fairly nicely although I’m not sure if the poaching was necessary or not. I may have left it in the oven too long afterward because some of it was a bit on the dry side. However, I am planning on using the poaching liquid to use as soup stock now since I don’t have a bone in this ham to make any with.

Sumac drupes infusing in water. Such a beautiful colour!

The main thing I wanted to share in this post was the recipe for the galette. You can use store-bought or make your own puff pastry. I recently did a workshop at Blue Bunch Farm on making laminated pastry, so I thought I’d give it a go making my own. I am really pleased with the result, although I am sure it doesn’t look terribly professional. I have to say that now that I understand the process of making puff pastry it isn’t as intimidating as it seemed, and if you’re interested in giving it a shot I’d say go for it! My pastry has a really rich colour and flavour because I used GRAIN Red Spring Wheat Sifted flour.

I started it all by infusing some sumac drupes in water overnight in the fridge (you can also use ground sumac you purchased for this infusion - just try googling a recipe for “sumac tea”, or do a bit of experimenting to get the right ratio of sumac to water). The resulting liquid was such a gorgeous colour I was immediately excited to make it into a curd for the galette. Sumac has a tangy, fruity flavour reminiscent in some ways of citrus. To turn the sumac liquid into a curd, you follow the basic process for making a lemon curd. Combine the sugar and eggs, add them into the sumac liquid in a double boiler, and cook it gently - stirring constantly - until thick. Add a few pats of unsalted butter at the very end (optional if you need to be dairy free - this is just for looks and a bit of texture, but it will still be delicious without) and you’re done! The only downside was that If found once the sumac infusion was heated it lost it’s brilliant red colour and turned sort of brownish. Because I knew I was going to be layering this with frangipane I decided to add some food colouring to make it a bit more visually appealing. I don’t love using artificial colour in my recipes, but we really do eat with our eyes first, and I wanted the two layers to be visually distinct in the finished tart, so I felt it was necessary. If you have strong feelings about it feel free to omit it. It will still taste delicious!

Sumac infusion.

Finished sumac curd.

For the frangipane, I’m sure my methods weren’t exactly orthodox, but they were effective! I just threw everything together in my Vitamix blender and pureed until it was all smooth. This may not be typical frangipane, but it was delicious, and very smooth. I was happy with the result in the end, so either copy my method, or follow something more traditional. Either will be just perfect.

For the puff pastry, I used the recipe I learned from Monika at Blue Bunch Farm during my workshop (I’ll be reviewing my experience with the workshops there in a future post, so if you want more information “watch this space”). I really like making it, and the most difficult part is just the amount of time it takes to put it together. Feel free to use store-bough if you like, but this will taste a whole lot more delicious if you try to find some that uses real butter in their recipe. I also found I had very little problem with the filling escaping my pastry this year. In my previous post about Epiphany you can see the frangipane seeping out the sides of my tart. My finished tart dough was flavourful, and very flaky. I think it has a bit more personality than one made with conventional flour as well since the GRAIN flour I used is sifted, but nothing at all like your standard bleached all purpose flour. It’s not exactly whole wheat, but there is a lot more of the whole grain in the finished product which leads to more flavour. This flour is also milled so freshly that you need to keep it in the fridge or freezer, because it will go rancid at room temperature. It’s beautiful flour and I love working with it.

Once you have your pastry and your fillings, cut in a circular shape, spread a layer of frangipane, and then cover that with a layer of sumac curd. Put the top layer of pastry over everything and crimp the edges tightly so that none of your filling escapes. Make surface level slits in a pattern you like on top, and brush with an egg wash. I also sprinkled some sugar over the top just to make it all a little more special and delicious.

Galette des rois! Put one whole almond in the filling if you want to be really traditional. Whoever finds it in their piece wins a special prize!

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Sumac Curd Frangipane Galette des Rois

Ingredients

Sumac Curd

• 1 cup sumac infused water (pulse 3-5 sumac drupes in 1 cup water in a blender and leave in the fridge overnight to infuse)
• 5 Egg Yolks
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 5 tbsp unsalted butter

Frangipane

• 1/2 cup freshly ground blanched almonds
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla

Finished Tart

• 1 recipe puff pastry
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp cream
• sugar for dusting

Takes Several Hours, serves 1 tart.

Instructions

1. To make the curd, whisk the egg yolks into the sugar, and then combine with the sumac infused water. Cook in a double boiler until mixture is thick and coats the back of a spoon. You should be able to see trace lines when you draw your spoon/whisk through while stirring. Remove from heat and stir in butter. Push through a fine mesh sieve just in case some of the egg didn’t cook perfectly.
2. Combine all the frangipane ingredients in a high powered blender or food processor, and blend on high until smooth. Alternatively whip the butter and sugar together in a mixer until thick and creamy and you can see no sugar crystals. Add the egg and emulsify, and then stir in the vanilla and ground almonds. Beat the mixture until thick, creamy, and homogenous.
3. Roll out your puff pastry according to your recipe’s instructions and cut two circles. I used an 8 inch cake tin as a pattern to trace. Spread a thick layer of frangipane, leaving a little bit uncovered around the edges. Cover that layer with a layer of sumac curd, and then cover with the other circle of pastry. Crimp edges so that no filling will escape.
4. Using a sharp knife cut some steam vents on top of the pastry, but don’t cut all the way through to the filling. Whisk the egg and tbsp of cream together and brush on top of pastry. To get a really burnished crust do this in several layers, allowing each coat to dry before adding the next. Sprinkle with sugar
5. Bake in a 425 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 5-10 minutes until the pastry has started to colour. At this point turn the temperature down to 375 degrees, and continue baking for roughly 20 more minutes, or until your pastry is obviously puffed, golden, and fully cooked.