Jan 01, 2017 We just arrived back in Vancouver. I didn’t mean to take a blog break over the holidays, but I think I needed to just unplug and unwind (I actually just typed un-wined which would have also been pretty accurate). I packed my camera and didn’t even take it out of my suitcase. It was so nice to be at my mom’s in New Brunswick for the holidays. I hadn’t been home for Christmas in four years. It was heartwarming and soul-healing to just hang out in my jammies with my own little family plus my mama and step-dad, sister and brother-in-law and my special Aunt Joan. There’s nothing like being surrounded by comfort and familiarity in a loud, bustling home and have someone cook you a turkey dinner. Our flight left at 5 am yesterday from the Atlantic coast, which means our travel day with the babies started at 3:45 am (which is only 11:45 pm Vancouver time) and continued for 10 hours. It’s basically a red-eye flight. So know what I did for NYE? Went to bed at 8:15 and slept until 7:30 this morning. I have no regrets. I’m sorry that my first blog post of January is a delicious pie instead of a kale smoothie or something. Wait. No, not really sorry. See, when I took my first bite of this pie, my eyes actually rolled back in my head. It tasted indescribably like the tart I’d had in my friend Aude’s grandmother’s kitchen in Belgium. Her bonne maman was an excellent cook, and I took meticulous notes from her as she dictated recipes for incredible breads, waffles, etc. This belgian specialty, translated to English as sugar pie, has a yeast-dough crust. A buttery, eggy base that tastes almost exactly like a true Belgian waffle. I can close my eyes smell the sweet, yeasty steam of dough and caramelized sugar wafting from carts on the streets in Liège. The filling is part custard, part gooey butter tart. Brown sugar melts beneath an egg-and-cream topping that sputters and caramelizes under the oven’s heat. It’s magical. Wonderful. Everything I love about baking. I made a belgo-canadian hybrid, replacing half of the brown sugar in the traditional tarte au sucre recipe with maple syrup. Heavenly. Maple syrup has a more caramelly, toasty flavour and adds even more depth to something that was already pretty perfect. And guys, the base. So easy. If you’re afraid of traditional pie crusts, forget it and just make this instead. It uses yeast, but only requires a quick 30 minute rest rather than hours of proofing. And a stand mixer easily handles the manual labour. So yummy and totally qualifies pie as breakfast food (in case you were ever on the fence about it). Happy new year one more time and last thing – photo nerds, these photos were shot with artificial light. I’m still working out the finer details, but I’ll be resuscitating the Photo Fridays series this month and sharing my learning as I go. xo
