Always.
Never.
Not if Bieber’s watching my every move.
Maybe.
(The Butterfinger Bites, if you’re offering, Rocket Fizz.)
Indubitably.
(American-style iced coffee > Australian-style iced coffee.)
Shhhh. I know. You don’t need to tell me.
Won’t repeat.
(My gluten-free dairy-free poppy seed cake is better. Probably because I use sugar.)
Will repeat.
(Happiness is freshly-baked snickerdoodle cookies.)
Recipe here.
Heel click,
Hannah
I miss primary school fêtes. I miss how the schoolyard looked and felt different when visited on the weekend in the sunshine, how the tables in the quadrangle adorned with homemade treats or “trash and treasure” seemed more alluring than any shopping mall ever could, and how much fun it was to run around wildly with friends without having to worry about a teacher yelling at us for going out of bounds.
I miss putting so much tomato sauce onto my sausage sizzle sausage that the flimsy white bread beneath grew soggy (but tangy!), and I miss buying a toffee cup for ten cents; I miss those toffee cups in muffin cases that were nothing more than caster sugar, water, and food colouring boiled together into discs then topped with sprinkles, ready to be sucked on for hours (or until accidentally dropped it in the dirt while playing tag).
There would always be at least one plate of coconut ice on the tables selling homemade goodies. A uniquely Australian treat, coconut ice is traditionally a pink and white layered confection made from coconut, copha, red food colouring, and either sweetened condensed milk or icing sugar and egg white.
Coconut ice is sweet, so sweet, and pretty, so pretty, and coconutty, so coconutty.
A few months ago, I remembered the existence of coconut ice and could suddenly think of naught but veganising it with the help of my enormous jar of coconut oil. In a vague nod towards being a Grown-Up rather than an seven-year-old girl with a sticky disc of half-licked toffee in her hand, I replaced the food colouring with cocoa powder and took the resulting gluten-free, dairy-free, definitely-not-sugar-free treat into work.
My colleagues may not have the same school fête memory associations with this vegan chocolate coconut ice as I do, but they seemed to love eating it all the same.
Makes 16-20 squares, or more if you prefer teensy bites.
Adapted from Taste
Submitted to Healthy Vegan Friday and Allergy-Friendly Lunchbox Love.
I miss that face up there. That face is the face of my fantabulous housemate Sarah back in Toronto, and it is a face that my face enjoyed facing every day of our long winter face something face face this is one of those situations where the more you say a word the more nonsensical it seems face face face.
(I may or may not have eaten an unseemly amount of ice cream immediately prior to writing this post. Face face face.)
See? It’s such a great face, Sarah’s face. It is one of my favourite faces to see across the table at Fresh, the vegan and gluten-free-friendly restaurant I’ve previously posted about here and here.
Before I left Toronto, Sarah and I made a point of setting aside a few weekend days for Outside The House Adventures and, each time, we started said adventures with brunch or lunch at the Fresh closest to our house.
The juices are lovely, and the coffees can be made with almond milk. At our first brunch, Sarah and I sat at the bar ogling the enormous carrots and mountains of bananas wielded by Fresh’s juice chefs (juiceisters? juicetenders? juiceologists?), before diving into our delicious plates of goodness.
Sarah ordered from the gluten allergy friendly menu, opting for the blueberry pancakes with scrambled tofu and tempeh bacon. It hurt my heart that the pancakes arrived topped with the devilfruit, but perhaps this was a deliberate ploy to prevent me from stealing all the pancakes. All of them.
I chose one of Fresh’s big bowls of vegetables and grains (I asked for extra kale, which came after this photo was taken), and delighted in every bite.
What is a meal without dessert? Fresh stocks desserts by Sweets From The Earth, and I took a gamble on the Gluten-Free Walnut Brownie.
Eaten later while watching Departures with Sarah, the brownie had a great mix of crispy-outside and fudgy-inside, with the walnuts balancing the sweetness of each bite.
A few days before I left for the U.S., Sarah and I returned for a last meal at Fresh. As glorious as the red lentil, tomato, and fennel soup, grilled cornbread, hummus, and superfood salad were, no food could compare to the joy of sitting on a patio on a sunny spring day after six months of brutally cold weather…
…with that face.
I’m eating so many wonderful (sweet) things here in California that I can’t see how I’ll ever write them all up. Particularly when I’m still plowing through reviews, restaurants, and recipes from my time in Toronto.
Maybe today’s chocolates don’t need to be written about. But, then again, I don’t necessarily want to only post about hard-to-find, expensive, artisanal, and/or fancypants treats, because heaven knows that neither money nor chocolate grows on trees. (Well, cacao pods do…)
Aaaaaand I just managed to drip pistachio gelato down my top. That may’ve been the universe telling me to stop complaining about having a surfeit of treats. Message received, universe. Message received.
Firstly, Starbucks spelled “brûlé” in a way I’d never seen before, but Janet has informed me that it is, indeed, correct. Go you good thing, bilingual country!
Secondly, Starbucks spelled “natural” incorrectly. Unless “natrual flavours” are something new and exciting in the chocolate world?
Thirdly, these “milk and dark chocolate surrounding a rich, creamy caramel” bites were pretty in a dappled way, with a caramel ice cream aroma.
Fourthly, the chocolate coating melted easily and the caramel inside was chewy, but initially completely lacked flavour.
Fifthly, no, I really mean that; I spent the first few seconds of every bite wondering why I could taste nothing despite knowing something was in my mouth.
Sixthly, a mild sweetness did emerge after a few chews, reminding me of Werther’s caramels with hints of butteriness.
Seventhly, these were disappointing and I wouldn’t buy them again. Actually, I wouldn’t even eat them again if offered for free. Life is too short to waste on chocolate that tastes predominantly of nothing.
Larger than original M&M’s but far lighter when it comes to throwing and catching in one’s mouth, these Pretzel M&M’s were incredibly easy to eat.
The crackly sugar coating gave way to a thin layer of milk chocolate, together tasting like M&M’s. Yes, saying that is redundant, but what can I do? M&M’s have a particular taste, and thus M&M’s have a particular taste.
Beneath the chocolate lurked firm little nuggets of crunchy salty pretzel, thereby creating a fun salty-sweet-sugary-chocolatey-malty-toasty taste.
I hope peanut-butter-pretzel M&M’s are brought into existence next.
I’ve been craving Chick-O-Sticks like a fiend for months now.
Butterfingers are like Chick-O-Sticks covered in mockolate.
Cadbury Crispy Crunch(es) seem to be a Canadian version of Butterfingers.
Ergo I had to buy this candy bar.
With an aroma like roasted peanuts, then peanut brittle, then just a hint of sweet cocoa, I had high hopes for the peanutiness of this Cadbury Crispy Crunch bar.
It broke crisply, firmly, with the same peanut brittle-esque layers as inside a Butterfinger bar but less flaky, more solid.
Each bite was a tasty wallop of salt, caramel/burnt caramel, honeycomb, salted roasted peanuts, peanut butter, peanut brittle, nondescript unimportant milky chocolate, toffee sweetness, again salt, again roasted peanuts, again peanut brittle.
I want a Chick-O-Stick even more now.
Welcome. Would you like a slab of salted caramel brownie?
We could also call this treat by a more long-winded, swankypants, and technically correct name: Fleur de Sel Caramel-Swirled Brownies.
Or maybe: David Lebovitz’ Deep Dark Rich Brownies with Trader Joe’s Fleur de Sel Caramel Sauce.
Or else: Just Seriously So Good You Need To Make These Right Now Brownies.
I mean, look at that. Look at how the caramel sauce swirled into the batter turns into pretty crevices and canyons of burnished sea salt-kissed deeply-buttery dulce de leche nestled into soft, moist, heady chocolatey goodness.
Look at how the brownies firm up in the fridge overnight to become dense squares of intense richness hiding a layer of salted caramel within as well as on top. Look, imagine, dream, make.
Make these for someone you love. For people you love. Perhaps for the wonderful people who are letting you stay with them in Southern California for a few weeks, who are catering to both your sweet tooth with endless pints of Ben and Jerry’s and your love of vegetables with 3lb bags of broccoli. For the people whose sunny backyard you’re lying down in every afternoon until the heat sears into your skin and soul, for the people whose couch you’re curling up in every morning to drink coffee and write poetry, for the people whose kindness and care is making you feel so very much at home (-away-from-home).
Make these to say thank you. Make these to say I’m happy. Make these just because.
I followed David Lebovitz’ recipe for dulce de leche brownies to make these Salted Caramel Brownies/Fleur de Sel Caramel-Swirled Brownies, using Baker’s semi-sweet chocolate and Trader Joe’s Fleur de Sel Caramel Sauce. I recommend you do the same.