| Hint of Vanilla

I hate to say it, but summer is winding down. Just kidding, I'm actually pretty excited that summer is coming to an end, at least here in Vancouver. I've had enough of sweating. It's as simple as that. Summer is nice and wonderful, but sweaty. I managed to enjoy some of it after my trip to Italy, but then it was right into school. Not much time to enjoy summer when you're in a hot, humid, crowded kitchen for 7 hours a day.

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Dark Chocolate Espresso Ice Cream

Chocolate | Ice Cream

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You know those people that hate raw tomatoes but love tomato sauce? Or hate avocado on its own, but love guacamole? Or those people that hate drinking any kind of coffee drink, but adore coffee flavoured desserts? I'm one of those coffee people.

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Nectarine and Blueberry Crisp with Pecan Oat Crumble

Fruit | Pie

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While I love being in pastry school and learning more about baking soda than I ever thought I could, there are times when I want to make something messy and ugly. Almost always, I strive to make my food pretty, appetizing, and a little bit refined. I like doing that. But doing that for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week makes me want to do the opposite.

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Raspberry and Pink Peppercorn Macarons

Cookies | Fruit | Macarons

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These little gems were actually a project I did for school. It was a simple project, just scale down an existing cookie recipe to yield a certain number of overall cookies. It wasn't really an exercise in creativity, but I decided to get a little creative anyways. As soon as Chef told us about the project, the idea for raspberry and pink peppercorn macarons immediately came to mind. I was inspired by a dessert I made a little while back - the raspberry and pink peppercorn mousse. I loved the contrasting flavours of the raspberry and the peppercorns, as well as the slightly spicy kick from the peppercorns. And so, I set about making the mousse into macarons.

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Peach Vanilla Jam

Fruit

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Before I started pastry school, I only had one fear of what it was going to be like. I feared that we would bake sometime incredibly easy, like muffins or cookies, something I have done dozens and dozens of times. And I was afraid that for some strange freak reason, I would completely mess up. I would be completely embarrassed and have to explain to everyone that I did actually know how to make that simple thing, just not today.

That happened.

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