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May 4, 2020

Blog-May The 4th

by Samantha Lapointe
Chocolate, Vegan

Yub-Nub!

Today, is my second favourite day of the year – May 4th!
It gives even the most humble of Star Wars fans a socially acceptable excuse (not that some of us need it 🤣) to go all out for one of our favourite fandoms. And even social distancing won’t stop us – in fact, it may make the celebrations stronger, as it teaches us that in the darkness, there is always light, there is always hope. “That’s how we’re gonna win this. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love.”

This Star Wars day, pop over to the Official Star Wars website for some fun online games, trivia, recipes and offline activities

– Or –

Join in the Virtual Star Wars Convention that has been created by ReedPop – the organizers behind the Official Star Wars Celebrations! The Online Revelry will take place May the 4th and Revenge of the 5th (May 5th) and will feature multiple virtual events, including live-tweeting movies and episodes, trivia with the chance to win prizes, Q&A sessions and panels with writers and voice actors and giveaways! This virtual con will take place across social media on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube!

For the full May 4th schedule visit EMC2020.com/force And find the full May 5th schedule at Supercon20.com/force

– And –

To keep your body, and taste buds happy while traveling to a galaxy far far away, also check out a favourite recipe by one of our talented kitchen crew, she swears by this Vegan Dark Chocolate Mousse.

Honestly, I was a bit skeptical at first, but I tried it, and not only was it delicious, it was also fast, easy to make, only 4 ingredients that are a bit easier to find than others AND also packed with protein, the perfect stay at home apocalypse fuel.

So, we all agree that Darth Vader was kind of the worst but also, very misunderstood and was at his best when he had Obi-wan, Ashoka and his other solid group of loved ones to help balance him? That’s kind of how I feel about tofu. It has a really terrible reputation but it’s actually a blank canvas ready to receive your flavour boost, and that’s what we’re going to do today.

Vegan Dark Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients
  • – 1 packet silken or soft tofu, room temperature
  • – 100g / 4oz vegan dark chocolate
  • – 1 tsp vanilla
  • – 1 tbsp maple syrup
Preparation
  1. Melt your chocolate over a double boiler or in the microwave (in 30 second bursts, stir between each burst) and ensure that chocolate is fully melted. Set aside.
  2. Whip your room temperature tofu using the whisk attachment of your stand mixer or hand blender. Whisk until very smooth looking, then add vanilla and maple syrup.
  3. Pour in melted chocolate and whisk until smooth, then portion into individual cups or small bowls. Serve at room temp for creamiest texture.
Tips and variations
The tofu must be room temperature or the chocolate will partially set in the mix and not have a smooth texture.

This is designed as a vegan or dairy free dessert, but you can easily substitute any type of chocolate you’d like or replace the maple syrup with honey, agave, or simple syrup. The vanilla can be swapped for peppermint extract, espresso, grand marnier, or any other flavour booster of your choice.

Sets quite firm in the fridge, you can even pour this into a prepared graham crumb pie crust or crushed Oreo crust (Thats what I did! 🤤) and serve sliced once it has set.

As always, we hope you and your family are safe and wish each and every one of you a spectacular May 4th.

Remember, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

For my May 4th gift, I would like it if you did one nice thing for someone today, even if that someone is yourself.

May the fork be with you. Always.
-The Grand Order of Divine Sweets

Blog – Homemade Hot Chocolate

April 27, 2020
by Kelsey
Drinks, Fun

Cozy Up With Some Hot Chocolate ☕️

They say April showers bring May flowers, and this week’s weather in Toronto is certainly looking like we will have a whole lot of flowers! To make what looks like a blustery week a little sweeter, we (GOoDie the octopus🐙 and I) are sharing our sinfully delicious Hot Chocolate recipe with you!

This recipe can be used with ANY of our GOoDS chocolate bars for a wide range of flavours. The hardest part is choosing what flavour to use! We decided to go with our Sea Salt bar first, and to make it extra special GOoDie is pairing it with homemade whipped cream and caramel! See more flavour suggestions at the end of this blog!

If, like a few of us you don’t have any GOoDS bars left you can also substitute 25g to 50g of any chocolate you may have, and hopefully we can get you restocked soon.

Chocolate Bar Hot Chocolate

To make Chocolate Bar Hot Chocolate at home you will need:
  1. A GOoDs Chocolate Bar, you will use ½ a bar per cup
  2. 1 cup Milk or Milk Alternative
  3. Whipped Cream (optional)
  4. Caramel (optional)
Step 1:
  • Using half the chocolate bar, break it into pieces and place in a pot over the stove on low heat. This is important because you don’t want to burn your chocolate!
Step 2:
  • Melt down the chocolate, use a whisk to keep the pieces moving.
Step 3:
  • After the chocolate is fully melted whisk in 1 cup of milk until fully blended.
Step 4:
  • Pour into a mug.
Step 5:
  • Add your favourite toppings. Since we used a Sea Salt chocolate bar I topped with sea salt and caramel to make a Caramel Sea Salt Hot Chocolate.
Step 6:
  • Enjoy!

Caramel Sauce

For the Caramel Sauce I followed the Oh-so-easy Caramel Sauce from AllRecipes found here. To make Caramel Sauce you will need:
  • 1 cup packed Brown Sugar
  • ½ cup butter
  • ¼ cup milk
  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (optional)
Step 1:
  • Prepare the sugar, butter and milk
Step 2:
  • Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Step 3:
  • Add in the milk and brown sugar into the pot with the butter
Step 4:
  • Bring mixture to a boil and keep stirring until the sauce has thickened up.
Step 5:
  • Remove from heat and mix in vanilla extract
Step 6:
  • Pour on to desired food and enjoy!

Whipping Cream

Whipping Cream is very easy to make, you can sweeten it with sugar or flavoured syrup or enjoy it without adding anything! For this example I added a teaspoon of vanilla sugar. You can whip the cream by hand, or use a blender / magic bullet if you have one. Step 1:
  • Add your sweetener to your bowl or mixing vessel.
Step 2:
  • Add the whipping cream, the amount will depend on how much whipped cream you want, I used roughly 1/3 to ½ cup of cream.
Step 3:
  • Whip it. Whip it good! (I couldn’t help myself 🤣) This will take significantly longer if you are whipping by hand. For the blender or Magic Bullet blend it for 30 seconds, remove and shake, blend again. Repeat until it is a nice and fluffy consistency.
Step 4: Top your treats with whipped cream, or enjoy from a spoon 😉 We definitely won’t judge!
Other delicious pairing suggestions –
  • – Smoked GOoDS bar with a shot of whiskey for an extra special cozy treat
  • – Orange blossom GOoDS bar with whipped cream infused with a sprinkle of lemon zest
  • – Mint GOoDS bar topped with marshmallows
Stay cozy this week and let us know what flavour pairings you come up with!

This Sunday’s movie night is Jurassic World 🦖🦖 (Sadly, no Goldblum, but Chris Pratt is a dream and going to be a new daddy soon! Congrats! 👶 Sam was outvoted, but Meridith is going to be very happy this weekend!🤣) We will see you in the chat!

May the fork be with you,
– The GOoDS

April 20, 2020

Blog-Sugar Cookies

by Marianne Jette
Cookies, Fun

Cookie Overload 🍪 (is there such a thing?!)

So, this week we decided to give Sam a breather from the blog so she can focus on creating new original recipes for the shop 🤤 and the care packages of bread and other baked goods she’s been creating for local families in need. (Seriously, this woman is a machine, she just started doing this late last week and has already managed to help over 125 local families! I guess that’s just what happens when you leave an introverted baker at home. 🤭

 
Sam baking bounty

Sam’s big baking bounty going into Covid19 care packages.

 

When your source for recipes is busy, what do we do?! We take to the internet! If you’re bored at home (or stress-baking!) and in the mood for about 200 cookies, this is the recipe for you!

This week we tried Emma’s Goodies recipe for making cookie boxes and the results were delicious. You can get the recipe we followed here. The recipe makes one basic dough, and has instructions for how to adapt that dough into 5 different cookie recipes!

🍪 Butter Cookie Super Recipe 🍪

  • – 750 gr soft room-temp Butter ( 6 2/3 sticks )
  • – 300 gr Powdered Sugar ( 2 1/2 cups)
  • – 3 room temp X-Large Egg Whites
  • – 900 gr All purpose Flour ( 6 cups + 1/2 cup)
  • – 3 tsp Vanilla
  • – 1/4 tsp Salt
Divide the dough into 5 equal portions. For each of the 5 doughs, follow one of the instructions below:
■ Vanilla Butter Cookies
Leave the first dough as is.
You’ll need a piping bag and a tip of your choice.

■ Linzer Cookies
to the second cookie dough, add:
  • – 60 gr Almond Flour (1/2 cup)
  • – 40 gr All Purpose Flour ( 4 tbsp)
  • – 1/2 tsp Almond Extract
■ Gingerbread Style Cookies
to the third cookie dough, add:
  • – 2 3/4 tsp Ginger
  • – 3 tsp Cinnamon
  • – 2 or 3 tsp Cocoa Powder
  • – 40 gr Flour ( 4 tbsp)
For stronger gingerbread flavor add more ginger.

■ Sugar Cookies
to the fourth cookie dough, add:
  • – 50 gr All Purpose Flour ( 5 tbsp)
  • – 1/2 tsp Vanilla
■ Chocolate Sugar Cookies
to the fifth cookie dough, add:
  • – 60 gr Sweetened Cocoa Powder (7 1/2 tbsp) (‘Bloom’ the cocoa with 5 tbsp hot Milk) If you’re using UNsweetened cocoa powder you may have to add 1 tbsp more icing sugar.
  • – 20 gr All Purpose Flour (2 tbsp)
Rolling, Cutting, Baking
Once all your doughs are mixed, roll them out to about ¼” thick and cut out your cookies with your cookie cutters of choice. Pop them in the oven preheated at 340F for about 15 minutes (although if your cookie shapes are very small, they won’t need quite as long). Once they are out, let them cool completely before decorating. Here’s the before and after: basic butter cookie dough to vanilla (we added some red food colouring to make the vanilla cookies pink!), chocolate, ginger, linzer, and piped cookie doughs! This makes for a lot of cookies to roll and cut out, so enlist helpers if you can! We used a combination of some basic cookie cutters to get cute cut-out cookies, and also a few fun shapes like Cookie Cat from the Cartoon Network show Steven Universe.

Don’t have cookie cutters? No problem! Cookie cutters are fun to have but if you don’t have them, you can still make yourself some delicious cookies. Just use a thin-rimmed glass as a makeshift cookie cutter instead! If you’re handy with a knife and very dedicated, you can also make yourself a paper template of the shape you want, and use a sharp knife or even a craft knife to cut out your cookies one by one. Or hey… be extra crazy creative and freehand cut your own shapes! Once the baking is done, the hardest part is waiting for them to cool down completely before decorating them. Good news is, this recipe makes so many cookies that it’s unlikely you’ll snack on them all while you wait to decorate.

Decorate

We used some homemade Red Clover Blossom Jelly that we made and preserved last summer. The jelly is sweet and floral and refreshing, and made for really cute cut-out cookies! If you don’t have jam or jelly on hand, that’s okay too! Other good options for cookie decorating include:
  • – Royal Icing (homemade or store bought)
  • – Buttercream (homemade or store bought)
  • – Melted chocolate
  • – Peanut Butter/Nut Butter
The rest of the cookies were left plain because by the time we got to this point it was also time to start making dinner!
Since this dough can last up to 10 days in the fridge, we recommend making batches of cookies this big over a couple days. You can prepare the dough on one day, then roll out and bake another. Leave them to cool overnight and decorate on the third day! Either way you choose to do it, you’re in for a treat. These cookies are delicious and perfect for all kinds of different events and occasions. There’s a lot of cookies, so brace yourself for a lot of yum!

Time to taste test!

What cookie shapes did you create? Show us your creations! Tag us at either @thegoodsweetsto or #goodsweetsfamily

This weekend we’re diving in to Jurassic World 🦖 for our Netflix Watch Party! Stay tuned to our socials for the movie link 📽 posted on Sunday and hopefully we will see you in the chat!

Stay safe, and may the fork be with you. Always
– The GOoDS

April 13, 2020

Blog-Sleeping Beauty Tea Party

by Mandy Halasi
Cakes

Sleeping Beauty Tea Party! ☕🍰🍪

Thinking of things to keep us entertained during our ‘stay-at-home to lower the curve’ time means getting creative especially with kids. Who doesn’t love a tea party and all the scrumptious and beautiful sweets that go with it?! ☕ So we dressed up our table with our vintage tea cups and set to work making Tea Cakes and Cookies to pair with our tea for pinky’s up time.

🍰 Sleeping Beauty Tea Cake 🍰

Between Briar Rose’s name and her iconic pink dress, this tea cake was inspired by the classic Disney princess, Sleeping Beauty.  The cake and buttercream are straight forward, and the optional extras really take it up a notch. Note: the recipes included are enough for a full size cake.  I reduced the portions to suit my needs, I have been stress eating enough during the Covid isolation without piles of extra cake hanging around!
Cake Sponge

Let’s make cake!

Recipe from: Mastering the Basics: Baking from Murdoch Books Ingredients:
  • 200g unsalted butter, softened
  • 220g white sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 3 eggs, room temperature
  • 300g All purpose flour
  • 1 Tbsp Baking Powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 3/4 cup milk
Instructions:
  1. Preheat oven to 325F, grease and line your baking pan.  Measure your flour, baking powder and salt together and set aside.
  2. Cream together butter , sugar, and vanilla in an electric mixer until pale and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Gently fold in milk and dry ingredients until well combined.
  3. Spoon the mixture into the prepared pan and smooth the surface with the back of a spoon or an offset spatula.
  4. Bake for 40-50 minutes (ovens may vary) until starting to turn golden and bounces back slightly to the touch.
  5. Leave in pan for 5 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack.  Cool completely before cutting or icing.
Rose Buttercream
Somewhere between a Swiss Buttercream and American Buttercream, I find that the American buttercream can be a bit dense and often too sweet, but the Swiss buttercream can be just too buttery for my taste, I think this variation married the best of both worlds and the rose water can easily be swapped for vanilla or other flavours. Note: I eyeballed this while making it so some measurements are a guess. Ingredients:

Buttercream

  • 3 egg whites
  • ¼ cup white sugar
  • 1 ½  tsp rosewater
  • 1 cup butter (room temperature)
  • 1 ½ cup icing/powdered/confectioner’s sugar
Instructions:
  1. Place white sugar and egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer, then place the bowl over a double boiler.  Stir constantly until sugar has dissolved and egg whites are warm to touch.
  2. Place bowl onto stand mixer with balloon whisk attachment and whip on high until stiff peaks form and bowl is no longer hot to touch. (if you don’t have a stand mixer available a hand mixer will work just as well)
  3. Add rose water and then butter (in pieces the size of golf balls) until all incorporated. Your mix will look lumpy/curdled, that’s ok, turn the mixer off and add the icing sugar, then turn back on at low speed. Once it no longer looks as if powder is sitting on top, increase speed to high and whip until fluffy.
Tea Cake Assembly

Ice the cakes

Petite square cakes

  1. Trim off dome from the top of cake with a long serrated knife to even it out and then slice layers horizontally.  Standard cake should be cut into even layers, tea cakes can be cut into any shape you imagine. I cut mine into squares with 2 layers. *Baker’s Tip* cool your cake in the fridge or freezer over night; the cake will firm up considerably making it easier to cut into even layers with minimal smooshing and crumbs.
  2. Ice and stack your cakes giving them an even crumb coat and set icing in fridge. At this point you can add a second layer of buttercream for a classic cake, or you can be unnecessarily extra and complicate your life with Mirror glaze, like I did.
White Chocolate Mirror Glaze
This optional extra was included because most of us have more time on our hands these days, and I was feeling extra. 🎉

🍪 Alice’s Tea Cookies 🍪

Russian Tea Cookies

Russian Tea Cookies are seriously my favourite cookie that you can find at an afternoon tea, even more than the fan favourite French Macaron. Very similar to Mexican Wedding Cookies, these icing sugar coated cookies almost melt in your mouth and are crazy easy to make with only 5 ingredients.  You can even get a little crazy and make them more of a Mad Hatter treat by swapping the vanilla extract with lime oil, coconut extract, almond extract, dried lavender, or whatever your heart desires.
Russian Tea Cookies
Yields: about 24 cookies

Dusting cookies after baking.

Ingredients:
  • 1 cup softened butter
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 6 Tbsp icing sugar
  • 2 cups flour (pastry flour or all-purpose)
  • 1 cup ground nuts (I used almonds)
  • ¼ cup extra icing sugar for dusting
Instructions:
  1. Preheat oven to 350F.
  2. Cream together the butter, sugar, and vanilla
  3. Mix in ground nuts and flour until well combined; do not overmix.
  4. Using a small cookie scoop or a spoon and wet finger, portion dough into rounds on a parchment lined baking sheet.
  5. Bake 10-12 minutes until starting to brown around the edges.  Allow to cool on the tray for 10 minutes before tossing gently in icing sugar and transfer to wire rack to cool.  Some sugar will absorb into the warm cookie, once fully cooled, either roll in icing sugar again or dust with icing sugar using a mesh sieve.

Pinky’s up! ☕🍰🍪

Now that all the baking is done it’s time to pair with your favourite tea, ours is Sloane’s Heavenly Cream black tea or our favourite no-caffeine flavour is Sloane’s Rouge Provence. Both go amazing with afternoon treats which is why we love serving them at the Dessert Cafe (Bonus: Sloane Tea is also a Toronto-based business). We can’t wait to get back there to visit with you all again soon. Until then… May the fork be with you, always! -The Grand Order of Divine Sweets

Cupcake Colouring Sheets

April 7, 2020
by Meridith Braun
Fun

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!🧁

We wanted to make sure that even during isolation everyone feels special on their birthday, and what’s a birthday without cake?! Make a birthday wish by colouring, cutting, and pasting together the perfect cupcake from our cupcake craft pages below!

Bring it into The GOoDS once we reopen and we’ll trade you your paper creation for one of our Classic Cupcakes for FREE to make your day sweeter. Click on each link to print the two pages needed to make your cupcake.

Happy birthday from all of us at the GOoDS, and may the fork be with you. Always.

Click on each link to print the two pages needed to make your cupcake. Don’t have a printer? We’ll accept hand-drawn cupcakes too! This is for birthdays from March 10, 2020 until we re-open (which we hope is soon!)

Design-A-CupcakeCraftSheet
CupcakeRedemptionSheet

Blog – Cornbread

April 5, 2020
by Samantha Lapointe
1 comment
Bread

The GOoDS Baking Blog

Time for something new!
Okay, lets get real, the world is a bit topsy-turvy right now and we’re just as sad as you are about our favourite events and cons being postponed and not being able to see you all in the café, especially over Easter. But we’re here and we’re together thanks to the handy dandy interweb! We have always, and will always try to make your world a bit sweeter, and even covid-19 can’t stand in the way of that!

Here on our new blog, and throughout our Instagram and Facebook pages we will be posting handy recipes, fun activities and clever substitute suggestions for all kinds of isolation nourishment for the body and soul. We hope you join in our Corona-cation Baking Adventures.

Our first recipe is inspired by the lack of flour in the grocery stores, at least here in Toronto, and the need for tasty tasty carbs!

quick easy cornbread recipe

Buttered warm cornbread…nom nom nom!

Corn Bread!!!

  • 1/4 Cup Butter
  • 2 Eggs
  • 2 Cups Buttermilk
  • 2 Cups Cornmeal
  • 1 tsp Baking Soda
  • 1 tsp Baking Powder
Preheat your oven to 425
Melt the butter using an oven safe metal pan or cast iron skillet.

In a separate bowl combine all the other ingredients together and mix. Once mixed, slowly pour the melted butter into the bowl and stir, leaving just enough butter in the skillet to coat the bottom and the sides – this will help your cornbread release from the pan later.
quick easy cornbread recipe

Cornbread baking in the oven

Take your delicious mixture and pour it all back into the skillet.

Place the skillet in the oven on the middle rack and bake until cornbread is browned, pulling away from the skillet on the sides and bounces back when lightly poked in the center. (about 15-20 minutes)
quick easy cornbread recipe

Beautiful golden cornbread ready to eat!

Substitution Ideas

Cornmeal for this recipe can be either white, yellow or blue depending on what you have on hand or can find at your grocery store.

Buttermilk can be made by mixing 2 cups of milk (this works with low or high fat milks) and 4 tablespoons of white vinegar or lemon juice. Let this mixture sit at room temperature for 30 minutes until it curdles and becomes acidic. This may sound gross, but there you have it… Buttermilk! You can use this in any recipe that uses buttermilk, and it can be made ahead and stored covered, in the fridge for up to three days!

Butter – If you don’t have butter, you can also use equal amounts margarine or leftover bacon fat for this recipe! What? No one said cornbread had to be low fat… just delicious.

There you have it, our first blog and easy to make yummy recipe to help the time pass at home during this extended stay-cation! A few more things we have going on right now around the web…

Pantry Diving Challenge

Have an odd combination of ingredients that you just don’t know what to do with? Check out our new Pantry Diving Challenge on social media – Take a photo of your pantry items, post or tag @thegoodsweetsto and see what Sam can come up with! Can you stump her?

Netflix Movie Night

Each Sunday at 8pm EST join us for The GOoDS Netflix movie night! Every week we post the movie and instructions to join our movie watching party each Sunday on our Facebook and Instagram! Previous weeks included Ghostbusters (original) and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Tune in and join us in chat for this week’s fun movie night.

The Last Word

A bit of GOoDS news! Though we are currently closed, we are fortunate enough to be able to continue supporting our staff, we have donated our supply of unopened gloves and masks to our local hospital, and we want you to know we’re thinking about each and every one of you and will keep helping however we can. Together (apart) we can make the world a sweeter (and healthier) place.

Stay sweet, and may the fork be with you. Always.
– The Grand Order of Divine Sweets


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CAKE FLAVOURS & FILLINGS

Step 1 Choose Cake Flavour

(choose one) 

Vanilla Cake 

Chocolate Cake

Red Velvet Cake 

*Vanilla and chocolate cake can be made gluten free by request $5 fee

**cannot guarantee trace amounts

Step 2 Choose Filling

(choose one)

BUTTERCREAM  OPTIONS:

Vanilla Bean
Ice Wine Lavender
Lemon Cream
Chocolate
Cream Cheese
Hazelnut Crunch
Cookies & Cream
Peanut Butter Caramel
Stone Ground Matcha

GANACHE OPTIONS:

Double Chocolate Raspberry
Caramel Sea Salt
Earl Grey Cream
Chocolate Espresso
Dark Spiced Rum