As the title explains, last night was my Dad’s birthday. My sister, who lives in Ottawa, is in town and she decided to make our Dad a marbled hazelnut cake with peaches. However, the plan was to prepare the cake and the celebration food at my apartment. That is where the kitchen demotion came in. My sister took over my kitchen and demoted me to food prep. Oh the horror!
The original plan for the family was to go to Shakespeare in the Park at High Park to see The Tempest and to have a picnic (this did not happen due to the rain). We began by disagreeing on what to make for dinner and it took us nearly two hours to agree on making vegetarian croissant sandwiches while we glanced out the window hoping the rain would stop. Even as we were leaving my apartment to go buy the required ingredients we were still struggling over our decision for dinner. Thankfully we were able to come to an agreement to make the sandwiches and a veggie dip.
For the croissant sandwiches, we caramelized two onions, about a cup and half of sliced mushrooms and one sliced zucchini. Once the caramelized veggies were done we began to arrange the sandwiches; swiss cheese, avocado and tomato slices and the caramelized veggies. We made a very simple veggie dip of yogurt and cucumber. It’s almost like tzatziki sauce except we only used strained yogurt and grated cucumber and did not add anything else to it. It was so simple and delicious.
All throughout the cooking and prepping, my sister and I got in each other’s way and we bickered about who would stir the vegetables and whether or not my way of using a Kitchenaid mixer was better than her way of mixing by hand.
“It takes me two hours to make the cake batter because I am very thorough and there are never any lumps in my batter,” she said with a smirk after I learned it would take us three hours to make a cake I could make in half the time.
“It takes you two hours to make a cake if you are not experienced in the art of cooking,” I retorted.
But it was all in good fun and the end result was a fantastic, moist, rich cake.
Cake without the hazelnut sauce.
Finished cake with hazelnut sauce and peach slices.
Delightful veggie sandwich.
