Coconut Toast

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Last year, about this time, I made Coconut Bread (from Smitten Kitchen... via The Wednesday Chef via the NY Times via Bills breakfast menu) and basically said nothing about it. Except that I made it. It deserves more than that, especially since you can make it into coconut toast with maple syrup a la Lavish Habit in Balham, London.

Lavish Habit is small-ish, rustic cafe with lovely cakes set casually on the counter, Monmouth Coffee, and a vintage store in the basement. Very fun and super cozy. When I was in London a couple summers ago, I made sure to stop at the cafe whenever I could, since it was on the way to my closest underground stop.

So, they have coconut toast. A lightly sweetened loaf that is thickly sliced, toasted, dusted with a little powdered sugar (which I decided against below), then served with a dish of salted butter and, this is key, a small jug of maple syrup. I'm not sure I've ever had coconut and maple so beautifully paired together.

The recipe calls for sweetened shredded coconut, but I only had unsweetened, toasted coconut ribbon on hand. The sweetness was perfect here (because you'll want to put that maple syrup on there...), however, the texture of the loaf would certainly benefit from the more delicate shredded coconut. I also upped the cinnamon to 1.5 tsp... 'Cause it's cold out there.

As per my baking mo, this loaf comes together fast (and even in one bowl if you skip the browned butter part and aren't super particular about the wet-dry ingredient thing). It's in the oven for an hour or so, and will make your apartment/house smell amazing. And every time you make a slice of 'toast', it'll impart that nutty-cinnamony aroma all over again.

Easter Breakfast.

Hopefully everyone enjoyed the easter weekend. We ate a lot of eggs; both the chicken and chocolate varieties. There was also a satisfactory amount of ham and bacon.

We rounded things off with breakfast yesterday morning at our place. Claire came to join us, armed with juice. I made these beet pickled deviled eggs from Not Without Salt, and Bill Granger's Coconut Bread that was recently posted on Smitten Kitchen. Charles cooked some bacon and I cut up some grapefruit to lighten things up... just a little.

I neglected to pick up the camera, but Claire took a photo of the situation:

This type of breakfast is our favourite. There's a good variety, and it's easy to prepare, since nearly everything is served at room temperature. More breakfast dates like this are definitely in order.

Chocolate and Pear Cake

I've been stocking up on pears. They're my favourite winter fruit by far, and they will sit in our fruit bowl throughout the week while I slowly consume them (this is key since we now have a tiny apartment refrigerator - whatever can stay at room temperature, does).

Yesterday, I peeked into the fruit bowl to find three pears, a little too soft for my liking. With that in mind I headed over to Smitten Kitchen, where there is a great recipe index searchable by fruit, vegetable, season, food type, etc., etc. Under 'pear' there were tempting recipes, like pear and almond tart or the more recent roasted pear and chocolate chunk scones; in the end I went with the bittersweet chocolate and pear cake, which would utilize all three of my Anjou pears.

For the chocolate portion, I used a 60% Hispaniola bar from The Jones Chocolate Company, along with a bar of 64% Maralumi from Michel Cluizel. While the flavours worked well (especially the earthiness of the former), increasing the percentage of the chocolate to tone down the sweetness would have been a better choice.

The cake batter itself came together easily, though as others noted in the comments, the pieces of pear and chocolate didn't really become enveloped in the cake as they were meant to. Maybe a little less would have given the batter the additional room necessary. These things aside, the egg-y base provides a lovely canvas for the pear and chocolate, and we will happily enjoy as the snow falls.

I thought I'd include a few shots from Deep Freeze yesterday. We made it over with our friend Claire and had an incredible time. We enjoyed the perfect weather (as Sharon notes here, 2011 was freezing and last year's warm temperatures weren't any better), taking advantage of fire pits scattered throughout the site, skating and Bailey's poured through ice. Thanks again to the Arts on the Ave crew for another great year!

We ran into Tanya and Tom and Willow

The Village Pig

Because Smitten Kitchen knows: Pumpkin Cupcakes

I haven't carved a pumpkin in years, but today, in the spirit of Halloween, my friend Claire invited me to a pumpkin carving party. Whatever my contribution to the event would be, it had to be laced with pumpkin. And thus these Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting (that have been on my list for some time) would do perfectly.

As mentioned a couple posts ago, Deb's recipes are nearly always excellent. My only complaint here would be that the frosting wasn't really maple-y, but that's simply ratios that can be adjusted next time this one comes around. Whatever my thoughts, a dozen of these beauties were consumed by the time I ducked out for the evening, and I'll take that as sign of a successful recipe.

Once again - well done Smitten Kitchen, well done.