Cake & Loaf Gatherings: Sweet and Savoury Recipes to Celebrate Every Occasion

PENGUIN

an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

Canada • USA • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

First published 2023

Copyright © 2023 Nickey Miller and Josie Rudderham

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Title: Cake & Loaf gatherings : sweet and savoury recipes to celebrate every occasion / Nickey Miller and Josie Rudderham.

Other titles: Cake and Loaf gatherings

Names: Miller, Nickey, author. | Rudderham, Josie, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220142874 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220142882 | ISBN 9780735239852 (softcover) | ISBN 9780735239869 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Baking. | LCSH: Baked products. | LCSH: Entertaining. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.

Classification: LCC TX765 .M55 2023 | DDC 641.81/5—dc23

Cover and interior design by Kate Sinclair

Food and Prop Styling by Nickey Miller and Josie Rudderham

Photography and Illustrations by Nickey Miller

Photo on page 209 by Tamara Campbell

a_prh_6.0_148350562_c0_r0

For my kids, Lily and Finn, all my favourite gatherings include you two.

—Josie

Celebrations would not be the same without friends and family. Thank you for all the fun, silly, and, most importantly, delicious memories.

—Nickey

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

How to Host a Gathering

Sharing Platters

Equipment and Tools

Pantry Staples

Valentine’s Day

Easter

Mother’s Day

Tea Party

Father’s Day

Summer Eats

Birthdays

Milestone Party

Fall Feelings

Halloween

Winter Holiday

New Year’s Eve

Basic Recipes

Acknowledgments

Index

Land Acknowledgment

Introduction

Welcome to Cake & Loaf Gatherings, a celebration of our favourite sweet and savoury recipes for sharing. We are Nickey Miller and Josie Rudderham, co-owners of Cake & Loaf Bakery in Hamilton, Ontario, founded in 2010. Holidays have always been our favourite times of year at the bakery. There’s something magical about the energy generated by the hustle and bustle of a well-run kitchen at peak capacity. Especially at Easter and during the winter holidays, we pump out thrice our regular volume of products. In every corner of the bakery there are folks icing cookies, dipping chocolates, or packaging up boxes of treats. Customers line up around the block each holiday to get their favourite pies, cakes, and seasonal treats from our little bake shop. The level of support is always humbling, and it’s been a privilege to have our baked goods be the centrepiece of many gatherings over the years. Whether you have tasted these recipes at our bakery or are just now discovering us, we’re sure we will have you drooling in no time. Each chapter of this book focuses on a holiday or type of gathering, progressing seasonally through the year from Valentine’s Day at the beginning of the year to a New Year’s Eve bash. We’ve always been driven to host gatherings and bring people together with food, and we’ve been planning and throwing celebrations together for over a decade now. A gathering can be intimate—just your household or a few close friends or family—or as grand as a wedding. It’s not the size of the gathering that counts but the connection it creates.

In these pages we’ll share all our best party planning and successful gathering advice along with our favourite recipes. Get intimate with Hot Cinnamon Blondies (this page) from the Valentine’s Day chapter or start a cuddle pile with the Sea Salt Brown Butter Pecan Cookies (this page) in the Fall Feelings chapter. Blow your family away with The Cream Egg Brownies (this page), an Easter recipe we have been begged to share for years. Get creative and try tempering chocolate with our delightful Halloween treats or plan a kid’s party featuring Cheesy Fish Crackers (this page) and a Raspberry Pop Tart Banner (this page), both included in our Birthdays chapter. We will help you gain an understanding of how important it is to prepare, not only so you will be ready to host but so you can actually enjoy the celebration too. Let us walk you through timing, preparation, adding a sense of playfulness, and building an environment of connection. If you want to host a gathering, we’ve got the perfect recipes for you to share.

The Recipes

You will find useful information at the top of each recipe. Vegan recipes contain no animal products and are identified with a V symbol. Note the yield for the recipe you are making. This is essential information to make sure you will have enough for your guests. The yield allows you to plan for doubling or tripling recipes, if needed. You also will notice a Prep and Cook time associated with each recipe. Prep indicates the active time involved in a recipe, including any microwaving and most stovetop activities. Cook indicates the total bake time. Where appropriate, any extra time needed (such as for cooling or chilling) is indicated. Each recipe also includes Do Ahead instructions to clarify timelines and help you plan dishes. When preparing multiple recipes for a gathering, it will help to know what you can make ahead.

How to Host a Gathering

We have a long history of hosting gatherings with our family and friends and have thrown some pretty incredible parties over the years together. In high school and throughout university and college, instead of planning keggers or your average teenage barbecue, Josie hosted elaborate multi-course dinner parties emulating the winery meals she had shared with her family or experimenting with ingredients she had never tried but had seen on the Food Network. Whenever her parents or a friend’s parents left a house empty for the weekend, Josie and her friends would hit up the local food stores, the more diverse the better, for new foods and inspiration and then spend hours planning menus, cooking complex dishes, and hosting friends. In the 2000s she would descend on any available house with fresh flowers, an assortment of beverages, and ingredients in hand and then use a last-minute combination of recipes from Epicurious, inspiration from the latest Iron Chef episode, and everyone’s current cravings to create a feast. There was always too much food, lots of deep frying, belly laughs, and a huge mess to clean up the next day, but we always learned something new about the food we were cooking and bonded deeply. For Nickey, hosting has always been a great way to get people together to forget about reality for a little while. Or let’s be honest: letting loose and dancing is really what she’s here for. When great music and dancing happen, getting lost in the moment is so easy! Halloween parties are a favourite for Nickey, who appreciates an imaginative hands-on approach with all things. Her parties include elaborately staged rooms in a spooky setting with keyed-up lighting, strobe lights, and full-on scene setups from horror movies complete with all the detailed decor that truly transports you into the experience. Freakishly carved pumpkins lit up and lining the walkways to the house, complete with cobwebs, lighting, and eerie music blaring from speakers set up outside. Thoughtful, detailed costumes are an absolute must, and she often has awards for the best costume. These parties are usually a potluck, and the outcome is always an adventure with a variety of interesting cold and hot appetizers. A memorable drink at one of her parties consisted of ice cube hands floating in a deep red spiked punch. The ice cube hands were created by filling clean plastic gloves with water, tying them off, and freezing them. Creative contributions to the food tables included skeleton-style charcuterie boards complete with a plastic skull coated in prosciutto that you had to peel off and olives for eyeballs.

In the past couple of years, many of us have reinvented what a gathering looks like. We’ve traded crowded dance floors at large events for cozy family dance parties in our pyjamas and rowdy New Year’s Eve extravaganzas for backyard cocktail parties with just two or three special guests. You may even have participated in remote parties over video chat apps, creating meals to be delivered and then consumed together but from afar. All these adaptations taught us important lessons: first, that we will always find a way to connect through food, even when we can’t connect in person, and second, that quality connections with the people we love endure and help us navigate the toughest of times.

Planning Multiple Courses

One of the first things they teach you in culinary school is to menu plan, and the key is lots of lists. When preparing multiple recipes for a gathering, you’ll want to plan them all out in advance so that nothing gets missed. First, plan a menu that balances impressive centrepieces like our Strawberries and Cream Celebration Cake (this page) with simpler projects like Ruby Chocolate Chunk Cookies (this page) or items easily made in advance like Mini Egg Shortbread Cookies (this page). Each chapter contains some simple recipes that can be made in advance and some that need to be baked fresh that day, like bread products. Read the recipes and create a timeline for yourself that includes shopping for ingredients, any components that can be made in advance, and rough timing for completing each recipe. Create a timeline for the day of the gathering and outline when you think you would like to serve different courses. Think about oven space when considering serving times. All our savoury mains, like Mini Chicken Pot Pies (this page), can be reheated or assembled earlier in the day and baked fresh for your guests. In the week leading up to your gathering, get to work filling your fridge or pantry as you complete your plan. Two days prior to the event, revisit the recipes and double-check your list to ensure that you have all the ingredients and any compotes, ganaches, and other recipe components made. On the day of your event, rewrite the list one more time with even more detailed items to check off—get as specific as zest lemons for loaf or chop fruit for passion puffs. You’ll get the satisfaction of checking off each item as you complete it, but it will also ensure that you don’t overlook any recipe components. This list is also helpful if you have any assistants helping you cook, as it will be easy to delegate tasks that need to be done without much thought.

Hosting a Gathering

Gathering to share food is still our favourite way to connect with loved ones and friends. Our parties have evolved over the years, but a few things remain key: invite people worth chatting with and create an environment in which they feel comfortable; pick a reason to celebrate; plan for a variety of foods and drinks and make them accessible; encourage curiosity and discovery with a unique dish, experience, or artistic addition; and don’t stress about cleaning up right away. This holds true whether you have 2 or 200 guests. There are times when grand, catered affairs are appropriate, but generally when you are hosting a gathering, it’s more about deepening the connections with people you care about. Sometimes the best parties are the mini parties at the beginning and end of the main party. At the beginning, it’s just you and a couple of guests united in starting something. There’s an electric tension in the air, an excitement about the memories about to be made. Creating something, connecting for a joint purpose, is always powerful. The after party has its own special appeal. It is often your best friends who have stuck around till the bitter end, so there’s an intimacy to it. Everyone is usually a little tired and ready to just sit, chat, and snack on leftovers. Maybe even cuddle up for a movie. Hosting a successful gathering may seem intimidating at first, but we’ll walk you through it step by step, and with all these delicious foods built for sharing, you can’t go wrong. Don’t get caught up in perfectionism, and have some backup plans for your food if it turns out you’re spending more time in the kitchen than hosting. Everyone loves a bag of chips and dip, and your guests won’t even realize that your half-finished main course is in the fridge. Eat it later and don’t worry about dropping plans that don’t serve you mid-party. Your guests are there for you, and if you are too busy rushing around because you overextended yourself or a dish goes awry, they are less likely to enjoy the party.

Creating a Connection

The art of hosting lies in knowing your guests and creating an atmosphere of connection. You would throw a very different party for your best friends than you would for your extended family or a group of co-workers. Connection is about relationships, but it’s also about connecting to something larger than ourselves, to the land we inhabit and the food we consume. We all seek to escape the mundane and indulge in something different from our day-to-day. Seek to understand the higher purpose of your gathering and address the needs of the people attending the party to create true connection. A company holiday party superficially may be about celebrating the season and perhaps an upcoming break, but the higher purpose might be to help newer employees feel more comfortable with their co-workers or to build conflict resolution skills in a diverse group. Plan activities that support this purpose, such as Jeopardy-style quiz games about the company or ice breakers that allow folks to share details about themselves. One method to create connection in a group is providing space for a united goal. Murder mystery parties are one example of a fantastic way to get a group of strangers united in a task. When a group of people work toward a common goal, it often brings out the best in a group. Plan any gathering to be specific to you by considering the deeper purpose of the event. If the gathering is meant to support someone in an exciting but potentially scary time, such as marriage or parenthood, think about how to incorporate lots of soothing advice or opportunities to record gems of knowledge from your guests. A guest book or creative alternative record will be a meaningful physical reminder of your milestone gathering.

To plan a party that creates connection, first sit down and try to assess: What do these people physically need to create connection? How will the food and drinks help or hinder in creating that connection? Consider accommodations that will help everyone feel welcome. Loud music may be the mainstay of some parties seeking to create atmosphere, but if one of your guests has limited hearing or a tendency to have sensory overload, it can cause a lot of stress. Are there dietary restrictions or physical disabilities to consider? If you don’t know, ask! It will be much less awkward to do that in advance than as folks arrive at your party, and you will feel confident that you’ve done your best to prepare. A great way to do this is to include a note in your invitations: We want everyone to have a great time at this party; please let us know if you have any dietary restrictions or if there is anything that may affect your enjoyment that you’d like us to know about. Leave space on their RSVP card to write you a short note and make sure you include multiple ways to contact you, such as by email and telephone. If you know your guests well enough, simply ask yourself: What do they need to feel fully included? They might need a ride, and you could assist with arranging a carpool or calling taxis at the end of the night. Consider the physical accessibility of your space and washrooms; if it’s important to your guests, rent an accessible space that is on ground level with accessible washrooms and accommodations for guide dogs or support animals such as water and an area for toileting. If it’s a children’s party, decide whether you want parents there and make expectations clear in the invites. Sensory overload at parties is common for a variety of reasons for different folks. Allow for a few quiet spaces where people can go to recover or decompress. Depending on your guests, consider a scent-free party. Strong scents can be overwhelming and may result in allergic reactions in some folks. If a guest is nonverbal or communicates in another way, you can download free software apps to help you communicate. If doing activities, consider teaming people up, such as kids and adults, and using both written and visual instructions to make it easier for everyone. If you know someone has a caregiver, be sure to also invite them to attend so they aren’t forced to ask permission.

Before the Party

Planning is key to make your gathering as stress-free as possible and to allow you to enjoy your guests. First and foremost, consider who you want to invite and check their availability. There are great apps that take the hard work out of coordinating a large group of people; just pick a few times that work for you and send out links so that everyone can share their availability. Once you have a time or a few possible times, consider location. Most gatherings are held in the home, but if it’s a large event or the guests aren’t folks you know well, you may want to rent a venue or set up in a public park or community space. Next, schedule the party roughly into blocks of time to give you an idea of how long a party you want to throw and the direction the food should take. For a tea party, for example, you might want 30 to 45 minutes for guests to arrive and mingle, 60 to 90 minutes of seated eating or passed bite-size foods, and 30 to 45 minutes for circulating and socializing after the food. Therefore, you will need to invite guests for a 2- to 3-hour time block. If the time block includes a standard mealtime like breakfast (7 a.m. to 9 a.m.), lunch (11 a.m. to 2 p.m.), or dinner (5 p.m. to 7 p.m.), you need to serve enough food to act as a full meal. If you choose to hold your party in the afternoon or after dinner, you likely can get away with just snacks. Finalize the menu after you receive the RSVPs so that you can include any dietary restrictions. There’s no reason to research a bunch of gluten-free alternatives if no one attending is actually gluten-free. We love a potluck, and it’s an excellent alternative if the idea of cooking for a crowd makes your nervous. You can assign recipes directly by hosting a Cook the Book party using your favourite cookbook. Or assign invitees a course like main, salad, appetizer, or dessert and let them pick a favourite recipe. Since cooking isn’t for everyone, never be snobbish about it and always allow people to purchase their contribution if that makes them more comfortable. If they aren’t from the area, suggest small businesses they can order from. Depending on the size of the party, you may want to plan multiple drink stations. Ideally divide your alcoholic drinks, THC/CBD drinks, and virgin offerings into different stations, to make it easy for folks to identify what they are drinking. If you are offering alternatives like THC beverages, make sure that they are clearly labelled and you have potency information readily available. Allow guests the option to label their drinks as theirs with cups they can mark with Sharpies, colour-coded rings, or decorations that attach to the cups.

Consider your theme or decor alongside the food. The more you create a temporary alternative world for your guests, the deeper the connections and the more memorable your gathering will be. Use the entire party space as your empty stage and fill it with items that enhance your theme, from the entrance, throughout the home, and in all the small open spaces where you are allowing guests, even in the backyard (weather permitting). Small details really do keep the theme continuous. For example, a summer beach party theme could be assembled from items you likely have at home. Decorate your bathroom with a selection of sunscreens, clean buckets and spades, or decorative shells and driftwood. In the living room, drag out those beach towels and blankets and lay them on the couches. Use sand buckets as drink coolers and set up a beach umbrella over the drink station. Play beachy music or even the sounds of atmospheric waves crashing on the beach. Enhance the feeling of a temporary alternative world with rules for the party. Especially with a diverse group, pop-up rules set a cohesive tone for the group and help unite strangers and harmonize behaviour. Pop-up rules can be formalized and written out, especially if you want to have multiple rules or one as simple as the first person to check their phone gets penalized and has to sing a childhood song. The more familiar a group of people are with each other, the more complex the fun rules can be. For a group that is used to being together, rules such as a list of banned words that require a penalty are entertaining because people will know the right questions to ask or topics to raise that will bring up the word. The penalty can be taking a shot or losing a privilege (such as cutlery), or each guest can have an item like a clothespin or bracelet distributed at the beginning of the party and they have to forfeit it to their challenger when they are caught. Whoever has the most items at the end of the party wins a prize. For a less familiar group, the fun can be as simple as a few ice-breaking games.

A few practical considerations: It’s a good idea to warn your neighbours, or even invite them, if you think your party may be loud or is primarily outside. Make sure you leave time to clean your space. Clean and tidy any areas guests will have access to, empty your garbage and compost, have recycling and waste containers ready for guests, have backup toilet paper within reach in the bathroom, and empty the dishwasher. Designate a space for coats and bags and ensure that you have seating for at least fifty percent of guests. Prepare your entryway and exterior to make them festive and inviting. Communicate with your guests about parking and public transport and make sure that folks have a safe way home so they aren’t tempted to drive under the influence. Nickey is the queen of logistics at the bakery and has an incredible eye for efficiency. She also hates the after-party cleanup part of gatherings, so she has perfected making it as easy as possible. She always gets organized before guests arrive by labelling large bins with to wash, paper, plastic, compost, and waste to empower guests to clean up after themselves. Set up these bins close to the food area or in a designated obvious spot so they’re easy to access.

Sustainable Hosting

Sustainable parties are generally thrifty parties, and cheaper parties means more parties—so it’s a win for everyone! It should be your goal to eliminate plastic and other disposables (even ones that claim to be recyclable) from your gatherings as much as possible. Invest in neutral cloth napkins and tablecloths, reusable fake candles, a set of metal or silicone straws, and reusable decor that’s flexible like baskets and neutral platters. Check garage sales or thrift a set, or several sets, of inexpensive plates, glassware, and cutlery and store them in a big rubber tote to avoid buying disposables. Or throw a zero waste–themed party and educate your friends. Have them bring their own place settings and research a fun zero waste project to share, such as making your own laundry detergent or having a visible mending lesson. You can certainly use digital invitations of any variety to invite your guests for the smallest carbon footprint, but we also love cutting the fronts off old greeting cards and using them as postcard invitations. To ensure sustainable menu planning, eat local or grow your own food. Use the food itself and seasonal accents like pumpkins or pussy willows for decorative touches instead of expensive table settings. Shop your own pantry first when menu planning and take a waste not, want not attitude. Expand your definition of charcuterie platters to use up as many odds and ends as you can uncover in your pantry; think of it as a black-box culinary challenge. Just taste for freshness to ensure quality and get creative with what you gather.

Avoid plastic-filled goody bags by creating a take-home activity like planting a small plant, or decorate cookies during the party. Every year at the beginning of December, Josie’s kids host a Decorate Your Own Cookies Party for their friends to ring in the winter season. They source more than a dozen different sprinkles—a cheap but effective way to add colour and personality to your cookies. Josie bakes up a huge batch of sugar cookie snowmen, snowflakes, and mittens. She also makes a huge batch of royal icing, divides it into a rainbow of colours, and sets up piping bags with No. 1 or 2 round tips so that the kids can’t load too much icing on their cookies. Then Josie steps back and watches the imagination flow. Since it has been mostly the same kids for years at a time, it’s fascinating to see how the kids evolve their cookie decorating style as they mature, from just piling as much icing and as many sprinkles on a cookie as possible to intricate designs and themes. Each kid heads home with a bakery box full of treats and a great memory.

Getting the Party Started

It can be a little awkward as the first guests arrive at a party. To avoid staring at each other blankly, plan something so your first guests can contribute to the party. You can set up the drink station with a blank display area and ask them to design a signature beverage for the evening or reserve easy food prep like plating cookies or cutting up veggies for crudités. You can leave flower arrangements for the last minute and have your first guests get creative in assembling them. It’s a wonderful way to get the first folks to arrive engaged and invested in your gathering by also making it their own. Greet guests as they arrive, give your gathering a brief introduction, and point out where to put coats or bags and where to find beverages. Once most guests have arrived, do a more formal summary. Introduce yourself and your party once people are settled and explain the agenda or provide a written reference. Welcome folks as a group, tell them where the washrooms and quiet areas are, and provide any other details that are key to your party. Creating a mood is important, and something we have found successful is splurging on one big thing that people will be talking about for months to come. For one Cake & Loaf holiday party we hired a glass artist who works with blowtorches to make gorgeous miniature glass animals and plants. He worked away for the whole party, acting as entertainment, and every guest left with a keepsake from the evening. You can hire musicians or another artist to create live art during your party, or you could invest in an adult bouncy castle. Consider your guests and what might wow them and then do some research. Your dream entertainment might be more accessible than you think. Ice breakers at gatherings are optional but a great way to get people talking regardless of how intimately they know each other. Have a couple planned in case the need arises. If it’s a competitive group who is not afraid to get loud, have some Minute to Win It games ready. For a calmer crowd, try more discussion-based ice breakers like Path Not Taken, where everyone states what they do now and what their lives would look like if they had engaged a different passion in life or work. Whose Story Is It? is another great ice breaker for a crowd. As guests arrive, give each guest a chance to write a true story (the more bizarre, the better) and then place it in a hat; draw a story at random throughout the party and have people guess whose it is.

Keeping Things Rolling

Once everyone is settled in and the agenda is progressing, be flexible. Plans rarely go off without any hitches, so don’t be surprised if there are a few bumps. It’s okay! There’s no such thing as perfect. To keep the party rolling, it’s always nice to have music. Make or find a couple of playlists in advance for different moods throughout the party. If any of your guests are musical, you could invite them to bring their instruments along to the party and play a few songs or start a spontaneous jam session. Nothing gets people moving their bodies better than live music, even if it’s just some basic acoustic guitar skills. Add to the