MLA’s tasty antidote to both holiday and workday stress

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This article was published 20/12/2021 (1100 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

No matter what politics you lean toward, there is no debate that Nahanni Fontaine can bake.

The MLA for the Winnipeg riding of St. Johns often turns up the political heat at the Manitoba legislature from her place on the NDP’s Opposition benches.

At home its her oven that gets cranked up, and her baking results have become part of the public record, thanks to the videos and photos of cakes, muffins, scones and cookies she’s posted on her Instagram account.

While Fontaine shares White Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies with Free Press readers for the 12 Days of Christmas Cookies, it’s worth checking out her video of making a six-tiered birthday cake that begins with an empty plate but winds up as a blue-frosted delight.

The time-lapse video takes 45 seconds, but that’s just a fraction of the real time it took. She makes the cake one day and decorates it a day later.

“It takes me a good four or five hours total, maybe six depending on how fancy the cake is,” Fontaine says. “There’s also a lot of cleaning. People don’t see all the cleaning you have to do when you bake.”

Like many people at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Fontaine spent her spare time trying something new.

“I was stuck at home alongside everybody else,” Fontaine says. “My boys have grown up with me baking. I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to do cakes now.’ I kind of just learned and taught myself how to do it.”

She says an MLA’s job can be stressful and that making and decorating cakes has been one of the ways for her to release tension.

“One day I wanted to make a wedding cake, so I made a wedding cake, just for no reason,” she says. “What people don’t see in the videos that I post is that I have music blaring.”

One of the problems she’s found is that her new hobby eventually found some opposition among family and friends.

“Then I started making cakes for people, because, obviously, I can’t eat all those cakes,” she says. “And now my family won’t answer my texts anymore when I’m baking. Nobody wants my baking anymore because I give them so much baking.”

Her recipe comes from a large batch she made last weekend, most of which she shared with about 60 residential school survivors in Winnipeg she’s met over the years.

White Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies

1/2 cup butter
1/3 granulated sugar
1/3 brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup pumpkin purée
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking sofa
1/4 salt
1 cup (or a little more if you’re feeling extra) white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Cream together the butter and both kinds of sugar until light and fluffy.

Add the pumpkin puree, egg and vanilla and mix until fully combined.

Slowly add flour, baking soda, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice and salt.

Mix in white chocolate chips.

Use a cookie scoop to scoop out the size cookies you want onto a baking sheet. Make sure to space the cookies because they do spread and grow in size.

Bake for 14 to 16 minutes expending on your oven (I like mine a little crispier so I leave it in a little longer).

Enjoy!

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @AlanDSmall