Decorated Sugar Cookies

Hello! It's time for the fourth and final recipe of my 2015 Christmas Treat Guide!! This year when I made my holiday goodie bags I decided to go full on Martha Stewart and make sugar cookies. I'm not going to lie I was totally inspired by this beautiful post I saw cruising through Instagram and the rest is history...

Hours later I found myself elbow deep in flour and forrest green frosting on my cat's paws and as a result splattered on surfaces all over the house. It was all worth it though because I have found THE PERFECT sugar cookie for decorating. And although I do have a little experience baking, I certainly didn't think I would be capable of whipping up beautiful iced cookies that require time and effort.

So I bring to you the best sugar cookie that a) keeps it shape when baked, b) is delicious and soft, c) makes a shit ton of dough that can be split into two and frozen for last minute times when your mother-in-law, neighbour, or coworker stops in to say hello. Oh and I also can't forget if you don't want to go all Julia Child during the busy Christmas months because you have better things to do (e.g. criminal minds marathon) then don't fret because these cookies are equally as good without the icing. I made some when we had people over watching Love Actually and I think I stuffed about 10 in my mouth during the intense scene where Colin Firth is searching for the Portuguese women in her home town...... #stresseater

The original recipe comes from Rose Bakes but I omitted the almond extract for two reasons, the first time I made these cookies I was oblivious to the fact that I owned almond extract and the second time when I added almond extract my roommates and I agreed that we liked it better without.

Ingredients

- 1 cup salted butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 large egg
- 1 egg yolk (KEEP the egg white for the icing)
- ¾ tsp vanilla
- 2½ cups all-purpose flour, sifted


Directions
✿ Cream together the butter, sugar, and salt in a mixer until the mixture becomes light and fluffy.
✿ Next, add the egg yolk, mix a little and then add in the other whole egg. Mix in the vanilla.
✿ Add the sifted flour and mix until well-combined.
✿ Now the next step is really important!! Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for at least an hour. I often do it the night before and then make the cookies the next morning to break up the baking process (cause I'm an old lady and sometimes I get tired baking). Or if you're in a big rush just pop the dough in the freezer for 20 minutes.
✿ When you're ready to bake the cookies let the dough come to room temperature for at least 10 minutes, then knead it to make it smooth.
✿ Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Sprinkle some flour on your rolling surface and roll out the dough to ¼ inch thickness.
✿ Use cookie cutters to cut out your desired holiday shapes! Then place the cookies on a parchment lined baking sheet.
✿ This next step is also really important, place the cookies on the sheet in the freezer for 10 minutes. This will make sure that the cookies keep their shape.
✿ Bake for 8-10 minutes depending on the size and shape of your cookies, but keep checking to make sure they haven't started to brown around the edges.
✿ Let them cool for a while before starting to ice them!!

Now for the icing I put on my lab coat and started coming up with royal icing recipes. 

Ingredients

- 3 tsp water

- 1 tsp lemon juice

- 1 egg white

- 2 cups of sifted powdered icing sugar

Directions

You have a couple of different icing options depending on how much time and effort you want to commit to these cookies. I have tried all three options and they are all tasty, so no judgement if you're opting for the easy way out.  

Option 1

The easiest option would be to say forget it and eat the cookies without any icing. 

Option 2
The other option would be to make one batch of white edging icing with the ingredients above, which makes a stiff consistency that is pictured in the snowflake cookies I have pictured here. I then got some coloured sugar at Bulk Barn, sprinkled it on, and called it a day!

Option 3
The most time consuming option is to make two different icing consistencies: One thicker batch for the contour of the cookie and a thinner batch  to "flood" the interior. This is if you want your cookies to look really snazzy like the one's you'd see in a bakery around Christmas.

✿ Edging
With an electric mixer beat together the lemon juice and egg white, and then add in the icing sugar. Then, one teaspoon at a time, add in the water. This icing should be fairly thick because it is going to be the walls that keep the runnier icing from flooding over the sides of the cookies.

You can add colouring to the icing now. My favourite icing colouring are the Wilton gel icing colours because a little goes a long way. Once you have added your colours beat away to incorporate one consistent colour!

Now you're ready to pipe the outline of the cookie. I used this tutorial to guide me through and it helped a lot!

✿ Flooding
Next, keep adding water to the leftover coloured icing to thin it out. This should be a couple extra teaspoons and it should be runny.

Then fill a squirt bottle with the flooding icing and fill in the edges of your edging. Tap the cookie a couple times to pop any air bottles and then let the icing set before adding any detailing.

And there you go! Perfect cookies.

If you have any questions about this process just comment below because it can be quite finicky but once you've got the hang of it, it's super easy.

You can check out the rest of my cookie guide here.

Merry Christmas lovelies!!

The Best Brownies

Hello! I just got back from a jam packed weekend celebrating Christmas with my mom's side of the family and after playing games, eating amazing food, and being around the people I love all weekend I'm a pretty happy camper. Now that I am back home, I am totally ready to share the next recipe on my 2015 Christmas Treat Guide: my favourite brownies. My mom found this recipe many years ago in a magazine and we have been making them ever since because they are just so good!
After baking cookie after cookie during my 2k15 Christmas baking spree I was so happy to whip up this batch of brownies in less than ten minutes (excluding baking time).

Ingredients

¾ cup unsalted butter

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped

2 cups sugar

4 large eggs

1¼ cups flour

2 tsp vanilla

1 cup chopped pecans

2 cups of chocolate chips

Directions

✿ Preheat oven to 350ºF.

✿ Heat butter and chopped chocolate in the microwave for two minutes and then stir until smooth. Let stand for a five minutes to cool.

✿ Whisk in sugar, eggs, flour, and vanilla to the cooled chocolate mixture. 

✿ Then stir in pecans and half of the chocolate chips (1 cup).

✿ Transfer the batter to a 9x13 pan lined with parchment paper, then sprinkle the remaining chocolate chips.

✿ Bake at 350ºF for 35 minutes until the top is dry to touch.

So easy!! And the crisp top coat is so tasty.

Enjoy.

Chocolate Crinkles and Choco Oatmeal Cookies

Up first in this year's Christmas Treat Guide are chocolate crinkles and choco oatmeal cookies!

Oh boy! There's so much to be said about chocolate crinkles. One, they're vegan. Two, they're delicious. Three, they're hella easy to make. Four, they make the perfect chocolate filling to stuff into other cookies to make the cookie of all vegan cookies! I almost didn't want to advertise these cookies as vegan because some non-vegans will turn their noses at the very thought of A COOKIE WITH NO EGGS OR BUTTER???? (I'm looking at you, Dad). But I swear that these cookies just happen to be vegan, it's not like I purposely substituted ingredients to make them vegan. Oh and they're also nut free :)

First things first, ingredients!

- 1¾ cups sugar
- 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 cup unsweetened applesauce
- ½ cup coconut oil, melted
- 2 tsp vanilla
-2¼ cups flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 cup icing sugar (for topping the cookies)

Directions

✿ Combine the first five ingredients (sugar, cocoa, applesauce, oil, and vanilla) together with an electric mixer, or determination and a quick hand.

✿ In a separate bowl, whisk flour with baking powder and salt.

✿ Add the flour mixture to the chocolate mixture in three parts to allow the wet mixture to soak up all the flour.

✿ This step is crucial: Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least two hours. You want the dough to chill up so that it's easier to scoop into cookies. I have even made the dough at night and then baked them the next morning.

✿ Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or a baking mat.

✿ Sift icing sugar into a shallow bowl. Scoop spoonfuls of dough and roll in your hands to make balls. Roll them in the icing sugar to get them nice and coated. This will give them that beautiful crinkled look!

✿ Place on the baking sheets a couple inches a part (you will need two baking sheets cause this recipes make A LOT of cookies) and bake for 10 minutes or until they have a soft brownie-like texture. Cool for a long while before manipulating.

You thought I was done right? Well think again!! Last summer, when I surprised my roommate Sara at her boyfriend Jimmy's (hey Jim, I told you I'd give you a blog shoutout!) cottage, I made a batch of chocolate crinkles to bring and I had SO MUCH dough left over that I had the brilliant idea of using it as a filling in vegan oatmeal cookies! And it worked!! Beautifully might I add :)

So here are the deets for these oatmeal cookies pictured on the left hand side of the above photo.

Ingredients
- 1 cup flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- ¾ cup quick oats
- ½ cup coconut oil (NOT MELTED)
- ¼ cup white sugar
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 1 flax egg (1 Tbsp of ground flax seed mixed with 3 Tbsp water... let sit for five minutes)
- ¾ cups shredded coconut

Directions

✿ Preheat the oven at 350ºF
✿ In a bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, salt, and oats. Set aside.

✿ In another bowl, cream the sugars and the coconut oil, then add the flax egg and vanilla.

✿ Add in the flour mixture and once combined, add in the coconut.

✿ Let the dough chill in the fridge for about 30 minutes, then when it has chilled create a sort of patty with the oatmeal dough and then place a ball of the chocolate crinkle dough in the centre of said patty. In the palm of your hand roll the two cookies into one. Place on a lined baking sheet.

✿ Bake for 13-15 minutes.

Enjoy!

In other news, I hope every single one of you has listened to the first episode of Serial Season 2!!! When I was studying in France, a bunch of my friends would pile into one of our tiny (I mean TINY) residence rooms and drink tea and not move an inch or blink an eye as we listened ever so intently to what Sarah Koenig found out that week about Adnan Syed, a high school student in Baltimore that she suspected to have been wrongly convicted of murder fifteen years ago. The podcast EXPLODED and soon everybody and their brother was listening in! So flash forward a year, my friends and I are no longer cuddled up listening to a podcast on a crisp fall day in France, but thanks to good ol' Facebook the tradition continues, as we are all weighing in on the new season that is exploring Bowe Bergdahl's case.... I'm so excited I can hardly wait for the next episode this Thursday.

(Picture of girls listening to radio from Tumblr)

Christmas Treat Guide

Hello! I am super excited to share my favourite christmas treats with you guys. Before I travelled home for the holidays, I did some heavy duty searching and compiling and after many hours spent on blogs and Pinterest as well as looking through family cookbooks and my camera roll, I came up with four of my favourite cookie (slash one brownie) recipes that I haven't already posted here on Breakfast at Midnight. My top picks are great on their own, or thrown together to make a goodie bag. The outcome will have people praising your glory and kissing your feet... you can thank me later. 

I just happened to make the batch of baked goodies pictured in this post in the midst of exams because there's nothing that soothes my exam jitters better than a little baking with a cup of tea, some huge slippers, and dancing around the kitchen listening to Pascale's alterna Christmas playlist (yes, my bff is 8tracks famous). For those of you that are still in exams, or that need a little pick me up, I strongly suggest you head out the door this instance to grab your weight in butter and sugar and start preheating the oven!!

I also put my Martha Stewart-ness to good use to make these cute gift bags with little mittens drawn on cards. It was so easy to do and cheap too! I picked up the red bags at the dollar store and you can get the boxes at any bakery (for a small price) or at a papery/card store.

In the next couple of days I will be posting the recipe for each of the goodies in the pictures, and eventually they will all be linked to their corresponding pictures below. Happy baking!!

Appie Hack

Hello! I am home for the holidays and ready to get cooking, baking, eating, and photographing up a storm. One of my favourite food brands, President's Choice, just came out with their holiday collection and I'm so excited!! When I was in studying in France last year, I did a project and presentation on President's Choice for my brand marketing class and fell even more in love with this trusted Canadian brand. I love how all their products are always of excellent quality and so on point with food trends, as well as being affordable for a starving student. Plus their new website design includes tons of recipes and analytics on trending foods around the country... basically my dream come true! So when I was on their Instagram page the other day and saw that they were looking for people to try out their new collection I jumped at the opportunity faster than you can say "the PC cookie butter is on sale for three dollars!".

The post was making a call for appie hacks and recently I've been obsessed with pomegranates so I figured my recent cooking motto, "when in doubt, add pomegranate seeds" would apply to appetizers too!



I then headed into the nearest store that sells President's Choice products and went ham on buying fresh fruits and veggies to make the tastiest appie for the holidays. I settled on this mango salsa recipe I posted a little while ago but with a little twist... I added pomegranate seeds!! They're honestly the best way to spice up any dish, whether its dressing up a cheese plate, topping your yogurt and smoothies, or tossing a few into dips and on hors d'oeuvres.



Another food hack?? Using President's Choice products! For this recipe I used PC Market Trio Tomatoes for the salsa and then threw some PC Appetizer Flatbreads topped with PC Soft Unripened Goat's Milk Cheese into the oven. I then loaded the fresh juicy salsa onto the crisp cheesy flatbread and cut it into strips for a quick and easy appetizer. It was refreshing to have something that wasn't dripping with grease, when the holidays are definitely a time for heavy foods.

The recipe is posted in my Crostini with Mango Salsa post, but I snapped some pictures today for fun  to show just how good PC products can make any classic family recipe.

Enjoy!

Banana Ice Cream

Sorry for dropping off the face of the earth but this has been the busiest semester of my life!! My current stress level is somewhere between the time I got lost in the middle of rural Holland in a field on my bike in the pitch-dark and the time I thought an ax murderer was hiding outside my window... except the stress I'm living right now has lasted months instead of mere hours. But only two short weeks until I'm done (!!) so I'm holding on for dear life until then.

If you would like something simple and utterly delicious to satisfy a classic mid-study session craving (what, I'm sure I'm not the only one) without indulging too much I have the perfect snack for you! You're going to go BANANAS for this "ice cream" because it is completely vegan, gluten-free and as you might have guessed it's made of just bananas. Also, for those that don't love the taste of bananas don't fret because freezing the bananas makes them taste less banana-y.

Very appeeling, am I right??

Everybody and their brother has probably made this before but there's a small chance that a few of you haven't, so here is the recipe! I basically live off this stuff in the summer time and I think it's about time I share my secret obsession with banana ice cream.

Also if you don't have a good food processor they are the number one thing sold at garage sales, church basement rummage sales, and on kijiji, so drop what you're doing and go get a $5 food processor.

One Ingredient Ice Cream

Ingredients

- 2 Bananas

Directions

✿ Slice the bananas and place on a parchment lined plate or pan.

✿ Freeze for at least 5 hours.

✿ Blend the banana mixture in a food processor. At first it will look crumbly but just keep blending away as the ice cream magically starts to look like soft serve ice cream.

✿ You can add some milk of your choosing if it is hard to blend together but try to keep at it without milk to get that optimal ice cream texture. 

It should be thick enough to do the Dairy Queen blizzard flip test, so if you flip it upside down and it runs everywhere then I hope you have some napkins near by...

✿ Enjoy COPIOUS amounts of this stuff because it's more addicting than crack cocaine but it is literally just bananas, so just a few less side effects.

Use the pictures below as a guide because I clearly wasn't born to write recipe directions.

You know what's also fun?? Toppings and add-ins!

Here are a couple options to change up your regular banana ice cream:

1) Cocoa powder! Add 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder to your banana mixture for chocolate ice cream.

2) Mango gelato! Add 1/3 cup frozen mangoes to your two bananas and blend away.

3) Vanilla! Add a teaspoon of vanilla to your banana mixture for yummy vanilla soft serve.

4) Choco-peanut butter! Yes, you can probably guess by now... just add a tablespoon of peanut butter to your chocolate banana ice cream.

5) There are millions of other options that I won't take time to name here, but basically just throw some sprinkles, fruit, nuts, yada yada yada onto your banana ice cream and you'll be thanking me forever and always.

6) You can even go cray cray and make a banana ice cream layer cake with raw vegan cookie dough and your coworkers with strict diets will cry. True story.

Happy exams!

Apple Spice Cake

Hello and happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

I'm back in Ottawa for a hot minute and since my parents had a sudden urge to be good citizens and work at the advance election polls all weekend, I've had a lot of time to do some baking, see relatives and friends, and get outside to admire the beautiful trees changing colours this time of year.

On Friday evening, I went to my aunt and uncle's house for Thanksgiving dinner and I brought along this wonderful apple cake. I had made it a couple weeks ago with hand picked apples and it was so quick, delicious and easy (i.e. Breakfast at Midnight blog post prerequisites). The last time I made this cake it was in a bit of a different context...

The day I went apple picking just happened to be when the red moon made its appearance. So when my friends and I decided to sneak onto our campus golf course and watch this rare occurrence, I had the (not so) brilliant idea to bring along an apple cake... in an extremely heavy cast iron pan... in the pitch dark... where I ultimately had to jump a fence. Needless to say not my brightest moment, but it tasted even better after the job and a half it was to get to eat it. And I can say that the second time I made it it was just as tasty!

I found the recipe on Joy the Baker (love her!!) and I knew I couldn't go wrong when she suggested making it an a cast iron pan. I mean how fall-ish does that picture look?

Apple Spice Cake

Ingredients
✿ 1½ cups all purpose flour
✿ ¾ tsp baking powder 
✿ ¼ tsp baking soda
✿ ½ tsp cinnamon
✿ ¾ tsp salt
✿ 6 Tbsp butter (just under 1/2 cup)
✿ 1 cup white sugar
✿ 1 egg
✿ 1 egg yolk
✿ 2 tsp vanilla
✿ ¾ buttermilk (you can make this by adding ¾ Tbsp of white vinegar or lemon juice to regular milk, then letting it sit for a minute)
✿ 4 apples, sliced into thin rounds and cored
✿ ¼ cup sugar and ¾ tsp cinnamon for topping

Directions
- Preheat oven to 375ºF. Once this is heated put a little butter in a cast iron skillet and stick it in the oven to melt it. Then spread it around with a paper towel to grease the pan.
- Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.
- With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until well incorporated and lighter in colour (roughly 3 minutes).
- Add the egg and yolk and beat for 1 minute, followed by the vanilla.
- Turn your mixer to low and add in half of the flour mixture.
- Add the buttermilk and then the remaining flour. Beat until just incorporated.
- Spoon the batter into the greased pan and then top with ALL THOSE APPLES!!
- Sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar mixture onto the apples.
- Bake for about 35-40 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean from the centre of the cake.
- Preferably paired with vanilla ice cream and enjoyed under a cozy blanket, while listening to soft acoustic music.

Enjoy fall, my lovelies!!

xox

Roasted Veggies

Hello sweet readers!

I hope I haven't lost you all :) I am working on a bigger post about everything cake, buttercream, ganache, truffles, tiers, toppings at the moment, but in the mean time I am itching to give you a little trick I used yesterday when roasting some cauliflower and sweet potato. 

I wanted a quick but filling dinner between classes, so I biked home and scavenged around a bit in my fridge and cupboards to throw a meal together that could get me through a three hour lecture on the changing trends in labour relations (i.e. something that would also keep me awake!!). 

And guess what I discovered? The best seasoning for roasted veggies in a pinch is.................... taco seasoning! It makes sense, in most taco seasonings you have chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, red pepper flakes, oregano, paprika, cumin, salt, etc., so basically what I usually sprinkle on my cauliflower before roasting it, but this was just so easy!! Especially if you're a student like me and most meals you make need to be made in about 10 seconds while brushing your teeth and finishing up a reading. Also, if you don't have a stacked spice rack you can just buy a pack of taco seasoning for a couple bucks and voila!

So here are the deets on the steps I took to achieve crispy mouthwatering roasted vegetables:

Ingredients:

✿ One head of cauliflower

✿ One sweet potato

✿ One package of taco seasoning

✿ Drizzle of olive oil

Directions:

- This is very simple, so follow closely :) 

- Preheat the oven to 400ºF.

- Cut up the roasted cauliflower and sweet potato into bite sized pieces (pictured above).

- Place on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil.

- Sprinkle a little taco seasoning on the veggies. You don't need to use the whole pack.

- Bake for 30 minutes or until golden and crispy.

- Serve on toast with hummus, in a salad, in a wrap with fresh vegetables, or shove it in your face because it's THAT good.

 

I'll be back soon with more goodies to share!!

xox

G

Breakfast in Ottawa

Since this blog is called Breakfast at Midnight I think it’s about time that I write a bit about breakfast! Breakfast seems like a pretty safe zone, compared to brunch, which for some reason people have such strong opinions about. I feel like you can categorize people into two buckets: brunch lovers and brunch haters. I know you know what I mean, there’s the total brunch lovers that take birds eye view Instagram pictures of their perfectly crisp croissant or eggs benedict on blue and white china, with their glass of OJ and coffee placed right at 1 and 2 o’clock. Then for others, brunch and by association brunch lovers are just the bane of their existence.

Well I’m a brunch lover, so haters gonna hate.

But we’re not talking brunch! We’re talking breakfast, a.k.a. Switzerland in this battle.

There’s nothing I love more than going for breakfast on a Saturday or Sunday morning and I just happen to live in a city, four months out of the year, that is bursting with cute little spots to grab a bite to eat early in the AM. So here are my favourite breakfast places in Ottawa broken down into a couple of categories:

1)      Best Vegetarian Breakfast

2)      Best Trendy Breakfast 

3)      Best Bring-Your-Mother-In-Law Breakfast

4)      Best Greasy Spoon Breakfast

5)      Best Classic Ottawa Breakfast

1) Best Vegetarian Breakfast goes to The Wild Oat

If you’re frolicking around the city with a vegan or vegetarian and you’re looking for a good breakfast that veggie-heads and meat lovers alike will enjoy, then the Wild Oat is for you. They have a great selection of plant based breakfasts and a wicked good bakery attached to it. Bonus: It’s kind of hippie moms/Glebe adventurer central so don’t feel bad if you just rolled out of bed, threw your hair into a bun and strapped on your Tevas, you'll blend right in!

Favourite thing to order: The Croissant Breakfast Sandwich with cheese…. Those croissants alone bring me back to sipping a café au lait along the Seine.

2) Best Trendy Breakfast goes to Art Is In

I love Art Is In because even though everybody and their brother knows about this bakery/restaurant, I feel like I’m in on a secret when I turn into the big ugly factory complex that it is nestled into. This place is filled with urban hipsters drinking matcha lattes and munching on kale salads (#guilty) but I love it. It’s popular for a reason, and that reason is that the food is so dang good! They also have the best bread in town, so more often than not I buy a loaf to-go after my meal.

3) Best Bring-Your-Mother-In-Law Breakfast goes to Scone Witch

When I used to work downtown I would sometimes treat myself to one of Scone Witch’s mouth-watering scones on my lunch hour. And now that my yoga studio is a hop skip and a jump from their newest location I am finally reunited with the cutest little spot to go have some tea, scones, or a light breakfast with the ladies. They’re famous for their sconewitches, which are scone-sandwiches… brilliant, I know!

Favourite thing to order: The Cream Cheese & Cucumber Sconewitch on a lemon poppyseed scone.

4) Best Greasy Spoon Breakfast goes to the Elgin Street Diner

This place could leave a huge football player full after breakfast or could please your elderly grandmother, in other words, they have something for everyone! The Elgin Street Diner has been featured on You Gotta Eat Here and word on the street (or on their website haha) is that they have been voted best diner, best breakfast, best poutine, and best milkshake in Ottawa. Phew!! Aside from all the stellar honours, they have won a place in my heart for the sole reason that they offer a gazillion choices of bread with your meal, including bagels!! Oh and they have 99 cent cappuccinos... the real key to my heart.

5) Best Classic Ottawa Breakfast goes to the Ottawa Bagel Shop

Bagels? Did someone say bagels?? I guess maybe bagels aren't really a thing like they are in Montreal, but whenever I'm back in Ottawa this is the first place I go to, and I've been going to for my whole life. There’s a bit of controversy over what is the best place to get bagels in Ottawa but since the Ottawa Bagel Shop is a ten minute walk away from my house it wins over Kettleman’s Bagel Shop any day. Either one has freshly baked bagels and an array of tasty breakfast options to go along/on the bagels. When I was a little kid, it was the biggest treat when my parents would bring home some of their cinnamon puffs!

**Honourable mention goes to Baker Street Cafe because it seems to be a Westboro staple. To be honest though this breakfast joint didn’t make my top 5 cut because there’s usually at least a half hour wait to get in and I’m so not about that life. Also, the portions are HUGE, so much so that my mom and I split a meal and were still SO full.

*** Other places that have been on my radar but I haven’t tried out for breakfast yet are Stone Face Dolly’s, Fraser Cafe, and Wilf and Ada's.

**** I should probably also say that the pictures for Art is In, Scone Witch, and Elgin Street Diner weren't taken by me, but I couldn't wait a second longer to post this guide to breakfast in Ottawa, so I cheated a bit :)

Shawarma with Falafel and Garlic Sauce

Hello! I hope you are all having lovely summers so far. I posted a picture on Instagram the other day with the caption "Summer has been so good to me so far" because I've recently just been basking in the little moments that are so uniquely summer. Last weekend, I went for a bike ride and hit up seven different festivals along the way! This weekend, I watched the sunset at the beach while sipping wine on a blanket, went to an outdoor concert, ran in the hot rain, picked strawberries with my mom, and drove up to the country to eat baked goods with freshly picked lavender. See what I mean? Summer summer summer. And although I am totally a die hard fall lover, summer is slowly inching its way into my heart. 

If you are wondering about my no-dessert challenge, it's been going well! I have been doing lots of cooking and baking because I feel like being in contact with sweets is kind of, sort of the same as eating them, right?? On Father's day, I wanted to make a meal that my whole family could not only eat but enjoy, which is harder than it sounds with two vegetarians, one meat lover, and two eat-anythings. I landed on shawarma with homemade garlic sauce and falafel and they were oh-so delicious! Even my dad was happy with his meal. Gasp!! 

My friend Kelly requested a blog post for these beauties, so ask and you shall receive said the Lord food blogger.

Shawarma with Falafel and Garlic Sauce

For the garlic sauce, I was looking for a recipe that was very very close to the sauce they serve at all the shawarma places in Ottawa. You know the type I mean, thick, garlicky, and the best part of the pita. After a lot  of googling and searching on Pinterest, I found a recipe that didn't require a whole cup of garlic and seemed fairly fail proof. I'm just going to link the recipe here because there are more steps than the Eiffel Tower...

Garlic Sauce

Be warned though that this is a little difficult to get just right and add the oil VERY slowly, like a couple drops at a time or else your sauce will separate. It might take you a little bit of time too,  but don't give up because everyone in my family agreed that this was key to the whole meal!

Falafel

This recipe, that I adapted from one I found on Pinterest, is the BOMB. So so so easy and good either in a pita with toppings, in a salad, or by itself. 

Ingredients

✿ Two cans of chickpeas (500g x 2)

✿ ½ cup fresh parsley, chopped

✿ ½ cup fresh cilantro, chopped

✿ 1 carrot, grated

✿ 1 onion, chopped

✿ 6 cloves of garlic, minced

✿ 4 Tbsp flour

✿ 1 tsp paprika

✿ 1 tsp rosemary

✿ ¼ tsp chili powder

✿ 1 tsp cumin

(or if you don't have a stacked spice rack just throw in a couple shakes of whatever to give it a little flavour... my version of "cooking")

✿ salt and pepper to taste

✿ 2 Tbsp tahini

Instructions

- Use a food processor to blend chickpeas

- Then add the chickpea paste to a large bowl and mix in the rest of the ingredients.

- Heat some oil in a frying pan

- Make the patties (about 2-3 Tbsp per patty)

- Fry them on each side for a minute, then bake them at 350ºF for 10 minutes on each side.

- Add the falafels to a pita with the garlic sauce, hummus, lettuce, tomato, and pickled turnip. 

- Enjoy!

xox

Gaby