Baking with Canola Oil is easy

My friend Vicky (momwhoruns) asked me to join her for a fun Baking with Canola event at the Luxe Appliance Studio on King St. in downtown Toronto recently.  Although the event happened on a thursday and I had a bit of a nasty fall on the monday and had a hard time lifting my arm, I since found out I have a rotator cuff injury, but anyway I really wanted to go so I just did as much as I could at the event an relied on my baking partner Heather (thetastygardner) to do the heavy lifting part.

The event was sponsored by Canola Oil and hosted by Joey Salmingo and special guest Emily Richards who is a home economist, was there to show us some of her favourite family recipes from her new cookbook Per La Famiglia.  

Upon arrival we sampled some of the tasty appetizers that Emily prepared for us.  I really enjoyed the panzerotti stuffed with charcuterie. 

We listened to Jeannette (@farminginpearls) who is a Canola farmer from Winnipeg speak about the Canola farmers and how little space they have to grow Canola and how challenging it is to grow and the benefits of using Canola Oil.

Ellen Pruden explained how Canola is graded with a little Canola crushing demo.  They allow only 2 uncrushed Canola seeds for their top grade.  The portion that is unused is used as animal feed.

Emily started the demo with a Bomb.  Actually she made some Nutella stuffed Bomboloni which means bomb in Italian.  I didn't actually have time to try one but it looked delicious.

We were split into pairs of 2 and we were given one of Emily's recipes from her cookbook to make.  I was paired with Heather who has a blog called The Tasty Gardener.  Heather had to do any heavy lifting with my arm in bad shape I was a bit limited but I did what I could.  Our recipe was Potato donuts, we made them sweet with a coating of cinnamon sugar and savoury with an anchovy surprise in the middle.  We gathered the ingredients and heather did all the kneading to get the dough together.  We both rolled out the donuts from a batch Emily had prepared in advance.  It's a yeast dough so it needed time to proof.  We actually went back to our batch later once it had proofed.

Both of us were set up to fry the donuts.  it was a bit of a slow process because we could only do about 5 at a time.  We made a lot and I was the last person to finish frying them up.  I used my left arm to flip them in the pot.  I'm learning to be a lefty for now.

Heather topped her sweet ones with Cinnamon Sugar and I decided to use Icing Sugar so there would be more variety.  They were very rustic looking but looked great.

I have been using Canola oil for frying for a while now and my mom's Chiffon cake calls for oil in it.  But it was great to see all of Emily's recipes.  Some reminded me of my childhood because one was a peach cookie that my neighbour used to make during the holidays.  She also has a recipe for Struffoli that my other neighbour used to have only at Christmas time.  Most of my neighbours were Italian growing up and I developed my love of Italian food from them.  There was also Crostoli which I think a few of my friends had because I guess it was readily available at our local Italian Bakery.

Emily's cookbook has some fantastic recipes that are Classic Italian generational recipes that you should try and make if you haven't had the experience of having an Italian Nonna around.

If you haven't baked or fried with Canola I would suggest you try it and see how your recipes turn out.  You can even substitute for lard or butter I am told for some recipes.  Canola has Omega 3's so it's a really great product and also Canadian so it's great to support our local Canadian farmers.

Website: Www.CanolaEatWell.Com

Twitter/Instagram: @CanolaEatWell   #BakingwithCanola

Emily Richards http://www.emilyrichardscooks.ca/

Twitter/Instagram @ERiscooking