Back to the Basic Ingredients

I am a transplanted prairie girl who loves basic ingredients – flour, cocoa, chocolate chips, sugar, butter, cream, etc. If a recipe had exotic ingredients in it, chances are that we weren’t able to find them in my small town, so I have historically stuck with the basics.

About nine years ago, however, I found a recipe for a decadent, triple layer chocolate cake from the Godiva Chocolate website. The hitch was, I had to find a couple of tablespoons of pear liqueur. Living close to the largest city in Canada, I figured I would have a much better chance of finding odd ingredients, so I decided to take a chance. Thankfully the local LCBO (government owned wine & liquor store) did have some, but I had to purchase the entire bottle as they didn’t have any sample sizes.

Being a teetotaler, I had no use for the rest of the bottle and there was little to no chance that I would ever make the recipe again since it was A) for a special occasion, B) rather expensive, ingredient-wise and C) wasn’t nearly as delicious as I imagined it to be, although others might have disagreed with me. And, realistically, how many other recipes would actually call for pear liqueur?

I ended up saving a baby-food jar sized amount (the green-hued liquid still sitting in my baking cupboard, nine years later!) and gave the rest of the bottle to a friend who had parties with people who might have some use for an “exotic” (?) drink. (Really, after too many drinks, probably nobody would really care if it was pear anything, so long as it could be mixed with something!)

Oh, and for those of you who wondered what the special occasion was… it was my daughter’s 1^st birthday party, so serving the rest of the bottle wasn’t exactly an option there either.

Now, that story isn’t to turn you off of trying new recipes or only staying with the tried and true, but it does tell you part of the reason why I will do my best to only feature recipes with more common ingredients. Too many people, myself included, are intimidated by lengthy lists of ingredients and chef-trained methods of baking. I want to help you bake delicious treats! And those treats don’t have to be complicated to taste good.

So, I hope you have fun browsing the different recipes that I have included. Let me know if you would like me to feature something specific in the future and I’ll do my best to get it in a blog soon!