We need to talk seriously about pumpkins, and more specifically canned vs homemade pumpkin purée. This recipe and the next (coming soon) were made with pumpkin purée that I prepared myself. It's not hard to make pumpkin purée: I just roasted a pumpkin to cook it, then puréed the flesh in a food processor. The resulting light orange purée had a very fresh and light pumpkin taste.

In a side-by-side taste test of canned vs homemade pumpkin purée, homemade won, hands down. The canned stuff tasted canned, and possibly a little metalic. Shocking, isn't it? Not really when you think about canned green beans, for example. They will always hold a special place in my heart, but let's be honest: they taste nothing like a freshly cooked bean (even if you overcook the life out of that bean, it won't taste like it came from a can). Well, I guess the same goes for pumpkin.

The trouble with a fresher tasting purée is that when you add it into a recipe, the flavor gets a little lost. I think this is why most prefer to bake with the canned stuff. I'm thinking in the future, I might cook down my homemade purée to concentrate the flavor before baking with it.

All this to say that this recipe and the next (to be posted in the coming week) were made with homemade pumpkin purée, and therefore have a much milder pumpkin flavor and color. If you make it with the canned stuff, expect a different result. You'll end up with doughnuts that have a deeper pumpkin flavor and color.

The mini doughnut pan I used is available here. I'd recommend buying two if you can so that you can bake more doughnuts at once.

Pumpkin cardamom baked doughnuts

Published: October 30th, 2012, Cook time: 12–14 minutes
    Makes about 30 mini doughnuts

• 120 grams (~1 cup) all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• 125 mL (1/2 cup) pumpkin purée
• 100 grams (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
• 60 mL (1/4 cup) canola oil (or any neutral-tasting oil)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 large egg
• 115 grams (1 cup) powdered sugar
• 1 tbsp milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• Lots of sprinkles

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease your mini doughnut pan with melted butter. Set aside
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients, i.e. the flour, baking powder, salt, and cardamom. Set aside.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the pumpkin purée, sugar, oil, vanilla, and the egg. Now add in the dry ingredients and whisk to combine.
4. Fill a piping bag with the batter, and pipe it into each of the molds to fill it about half-way.
5. Bake them until a cake tester inserted into one comes out clean (about 12–14 minutes).
6. Cool 5 minutes before inverting them onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
7. When doughnuts are cool, prepare the glaze by whisking together the powdered sugar, milk and vanilla. Adjust the consistency with more milk or sugar. Glaze should be on the thicker side, and not too liquid or it will dribble down dipped doughnuts.
8. Dip one side of doughnuts in glaze, then in sprinkles and set on a rack to dry slightly before serving.

An apple galette and my nameless bakery

Sometimes, I get lost in the details, trying to make something perfect.


Take this apple galette. I spent what felt like an eternity arranging the thinly sliced apples, trying to make them cooperate and look like what I pictured in my mind's eye. Of course, that's next to impossible. I am actually not a fan of neatly arranging fruit in a tart or pie. It never looks the way I want it to and, I am slightly ashamed (but willing to admit) that, more often then not, I end up a little frustrated at the end of it all. It's really quite childish of me, but that's it. That's me.

 I often get lost in the details, dwelling on a step instead of moving forward. I have been seeing a business coach for a month now, and he has finally said that it's about time that I "piss or get off the pot". Of course, he is willing to go through the steps at my own pace, but I think my "dwelling" has him a little worried. Actually, it worries him and me both!

Right now, I am focused on a bakery name and a lot of little details such as the color of the walls in my nameless bakery. Yet, I haven't even gotten a concept together. What's a name if you don't know what your end goal is? I boldly declare I want to open a bakery, but when I sit down and stare at an empty computer screen or a blank piece of paper, I haven't the faintest idea what that bakery will be.

It's all very scary as I start to make lists of likes and dislikes from visiting a few of the bakeries around town. At the end of the day, I can jot down an interminable list, but the questions remain the same. What does my nameless bakery look like? What will I bake every day? Will my nameless bakery be open during the morning and afternoon, or will I push my hours later to serve an evening crowd that longs for a comforting slice of cake? Do I even want to have a sit-down place, or is my nameless bakery more of a made-to-order/take-out place?

I pondered, dwelled and made lists, and then I stopped to bake this apple galette. I decided on this recipe because, as I worry myself into a frenzy, fall is passing me by. It was about time that I paused for a moment and put some of those local apples to good use. And, as I got lost while arranging the apples, at least my mind took a break from the growing dream that is my nameless bakery.

This galette is all about the apple. It's flavors are as simple as can be. It has no cinnamon, or any other spices, but instead a touch of sugar and some apple jelly brushed onto the crust before layering in the apples. Shockingly, there's no flour in the filling, and that made me a little nervous, but it turned out perfectly. The crust can be described with all the right words: crispy, tender, flaky.

Maybe there are apple galettes in my nameless bakery's future...

Apple galette

Published: October 14th, 2012, Cook time: 55 minutes
    Makes 1 galette

• 245 grams (1 3/4 cup) all purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 170 grams (3/4 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into little cubes
• 4–6 tbsp cold water
• 3–5baking apples (I used lobo), amount depends on how much you fit into the galette
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar, plus a little more for dusting over the assembled tart
• 1/4 cup apple jelly
• 1–2 tbsp milk (I used skim)
• A little coarse sugar, for sprinkling over the crust before baking

1. Begin by making the crust: in a large bowl, mix together the flour and salt, then drop in the butter cubes and work it in with your finger tips and/or rubbing it into the flour with your palms. Work quickly to not melt/warm the butter too much. When your mixture is coarse, drop in a few tablespoons water, work it in with a fork (or your fingers), and continue adding water til the dough comes together when pressed. Give the dough a quick knead to gather all the dry bits, flatten into a disk and wrap with cling wrap. Refrigerate for about an hour.
2. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Roll out the chilled dough to 1/8 inch between two large pieces of parchment. Transfer the parchment to your baking sheet and chill.
3. Meanwhile, peel core and slice apples to 1/8 inch. Toss with 2 tbsp granulated sugar. Set aside.
4. Take the rolled dough out of the fridge, and remove the top sheet of parchment. Brush the apple jelly over the crust leaving 1–1.5 inches of crust bare.
5. Top the jelly with the sliced apples arranging them in concentric circles to make it pretty and still keeping the 1–1.5-inch edge bare.
6. Gently fold over the bare crust over towards the middle to make a rustic edge. With your palms, press and push the fold towards the middle a little to "tighten" the galette.
7. Brush the crust with milk and sprinkle with the crust coarse sugar. Sprinkle a little more granulated sugar over the apples.
8. Bake for 20 minutes then lower the oven to 375°F and bake for another 30 minutes until the crust is golden brown delicious and the apples are soft.
9. Let cool about 20 minutes before serving

In life, there are blue cheese lovers, and there are blue cheese haters. I happen to be a blue cheese lover. When I was in grad school, I found out the hard way that there are serious blue cheese haters out there who have zero tolerance for the stuff.

In the last few years of my thesis work, I pretty much ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the lab at school. I always brought a variety of snack options with me everyday along with my three meals, and I always had a snack drawer filled to the brim just in case I didn't pack enough. I went through a phase when my snack every day was a sliced apple with pieces of blue cheese. So, I brought a hunk of blue cheese to work to store in our fridge, and every day, I took in an apple to enjoy with it. Yum.

What I didn't realize was just how much a large hunk of blue cheese could stink up the itty-bitty fridge I was storing it in at school. In my defense, I don't mind the smell of blue cheese and, at home, I regularly store blue cheese without even noticing a smell, but my fridge isn't mini. Plus, I am a blue cheese lover, so it's not surprising that I didn't quite note the "slight" odor. Turns out my workmates were not a fan of the so-called stench that hunk of cheese generated in the fridge, and one day, I was seriously scolded and belittled for daring to bring in such a smelly food and for storing it at work.

And so, my daily apple and blue cheese snack phase came to a serious halt. I never dared to bring blue cheese to work again.

If you are a blue cheese lover, these scones are for you, but be forewarned that when they hit the heat of the oven, your kitchen will quickly fill with the scent of blue cheese. So, you have to be a hardcore blue cheese lover to make these, but if you're not, replace it with an equal amount of either cream cheese (as suggested by the initial recipe in Ricardo magazine, volume 10, number 8) or a crumbly goat cheese. You could also vary the ratio of butter to blue cheese. I went with equal parts (115 grams of each) but for a less "cheesy" flavor, maybe try using more butter (say 173 grams for 57 grams blue cheese). I recommend serving these scones with sweet fruit jam. I served them with a homemade quince and vanilla bean jam.

Date and blue cheese scones

    Makes 16 scones

• 125 mL (1/2 cup) milk (I used 3.25% fat milk)
• 1 navel orange, zested and juiced—make sure you have 60 mL of juice
• 280 grams (2 cups) all-purpose flour
• 50 grams (1/4 cup) light brown sugar
• 2.5 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 115 grams (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, cubed and very cold
• 115 grams (1/2 cup) blue cheese (I used Castello Rosenborg Danish blue cheese)
• 70 grams (1/2 cup) pitted dried dates, chopped
• 1 tbsp milk (for brushing)
• Several spoonfuls coarse raw cane sugar (for sprinkling)

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a large (or two small) rimmed baking sheet with parchment. Set aside.
2. In a small bowl, combine the milk with the orange zest and 60 mL of orange juice. Set aside.
3. In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt.
4. Add the butter and cheese, and pulse to combine.
5. Add the reserved milk mixture and pulse til a dough forms.
6. Turn out the dough on a generously floured work surface and with floured hands, work in the chopped dates.
7. Pat out the dough into a rectangle and cut out 16 scones. Place the scones on the prepared baking sheet, brush them with milk and sprinkle generously with the coarse cane sugar.
8. Bake them for about 20 minutes or until they are a deep golden color.