1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, minus one tablespoon
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp canola oil
1/4 cup sour cream
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp butterscotch extract
1/3 cup oatmeal stout
1 tbsp + 1 tsp milk powder
Directions [Makes 12] :
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line cupcake tins with liners.
2. In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until light brown in color. Transfer brown butter into a bowl and freeze for 20 minutes, or until solidified. Leave the brown butter out for 30 minutes, or microwave for about 15 seconds to soften.
3. Sift together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add sugar and briefly mix using an electric mixer at low speed until evenly distributed.
4. Add softened brown butter to the flour mix and beat on low for about five minutes, until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
5. In a separate bowl, whisk together canola oil, sour cream, egg, yolk, vanilla and butterscotch extract. Add it to the flour mixture and beat on medium-low until just combined. Do not overmix.
6. Add the milk and beat on medium speed until just combined.
7. Divide batter among liners, filling them half full. Bake for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Butterscotch ganache (optional):
1/3 cup butterscotch chips
2 tablespoons milk
1. In a small saucepan, combine the milk and butterscotch chips together. Stir over low heat until melted. Cool the ganache before using.
To assemble, fill a piping bag with the buttercream and pipe over each cupcake. Drizzle on the butterscotch ganache.
Butterscotch extract can be purchased from Le Vrac du Marche at Atwater Market.
Frosting:
1 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 egg whites
3/4 cup butterscotch chips
1/4 tsp butterscotch extract
Directions to make the frosting:
1. In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until light brown in color. Transfer brown butter into a bowl and freeze for 30 minutes, or until solidified.
2. Place the egg whites and sugar into a large metal bowl, and heat over a pot of simmering water. Whisk the whites until all the sugar dissolves into a white and creamy mixture. The mixture should be hot to touch.
3. Using an electric mixer, whip the mixture on medium-high speed until it doubles in volume.
4. Microwave butterscotch chips in 40 seconds intervals until melted, stirring after each interval.
5. Add the melted butterscotch mixture and whip until combined. Add in half of the brown butter and beat until incorporated. Then, add in the rest of the butter and whip until fluffy for about 1-2 minutes.
Green tea lava cake
(Jer Lin Poh / McGill Tribune)
Ingredients:
70g white chocolate
3 tbsp unsalted butter
1 large egg
Splash of vanilla
Pinch of salt
2 tbsp granulated sugar, plus extra to coat ramekins
2 tsp matcha powder (available at Eden on Parc)
3 tbsp all-purpose flour
Directions [Makes 1 Lava Cake] :
1. Preheat oven to 425°F.
2. Grease a ramekin with cooking spray. Dust with granulated sugar and tap out the excess.
2. Place the butter and white chocolate in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring until melted.
3. Whisk in the egg until smooth, then stir in vanilla and salt.
4. Sift the flour into the mixture, add the sugar, then whisk until just combined.
5. Fill the ramekin with the mixture and bake for 11 minutes.
6. Cool the lava cakes for two minutes. Run a knife around the rim of the ramekin, then invert the ramekin onto a plate. If desired, serve with vanilla ice cream.
Green tea white chocolate magic shell
(Jer Lin Poh / McGill Tribune)
Ingredients:
160g white chocolate
80g coconut oil
14g matcha, or as desired
Directions:
1. Melt white chocolate and coconut oil in a bain marie. Alternatively, zap the mixture in the microwave and stir at 45-second intervals.
2. Stir in desired amount of matcha powder.
3. Cool for 15 minutes before using. Drizzle abundantly on ice cream or anything
Two Thursdays ago, Tokyo Police Club guitarist Josh Hook spoke to me over the phone from Whistler, BC, and warmly answered as many questions as I could muster about the band’s origins, Montreal coffee, N64 games, and advice for aspiring musicians.
Hailing from Newmarket, Ontario, Tokyo Police Club first entered the limelight after paying $20 to open for Pony Up! at Pop Montreal in 2005. It just so happened that Lexi Valentine of Magenta Lane had encouraged a scout for Paper Bag Records to come watch the show. Any Tokyo Police Club fan owes a shout out to Valentine, for her aegis proved essential to the band’s success—soon after the show, the scout signed them to the label.
“That was when [the band] decided: All right, we’re not doing university, let’s give this band thing a go,” said Hook.
Ever since, Montreal has held a special place in the band’s touring hearts. When I asked Hook what Tokyo Police Club likes to do in the city, he revealed that a good cup of java is a treat that the group always looks forward to.
“We’ve definitely had some good coffee in Montreal,” he said. “One of my favourite places to go is Café Névé.”
Stepping away from Montreal and focusing on what it means to be a professional musician, Hook provided insight on the more valuable skills to hone—primarily the importance of meeting deadlines.
“A deadline is one of the most creative things you can have,” he explained. “You need the career deadline of always pushing yourself, doing shows where you can, and playing live. Never wait for anything. We have gotten lucky with a few things, but putting in a lot of hard miles and hard work at this point has shown us that at the time, a seven person show will be frustrating, but at the very least, it provides a very strong foundation for your band. It helps you be more comfortable playing live. The more you do that, the better.”
Even with this sharp attention to deadline detail, the band still manages to have a lot of fun. Their favourite way to relax and bond between recording sessions? Playing N64 together.
“We spend a lot of time with [the N64] in between trying to write songs,” Hook shared. “We’ll record something, then break for either Golden Eye, Tony Hawk, or Mario Kart. Whoever wins the round gets to choose how loud their instrument is.”
I closed our interview by asking Josh to give me a line of advice for those young musicians seeking to turn their passion into a profession. Again, he replied with sage advice.
“Don’t wait for anything to happen. Make it happen,” said Hook. “There was a music scene in our town, but mostly punk and hardcore. We didn’t fit in, but we put in the effort to go down to [Toronto] and get on any bill we could. Don’t be disappointed by the slow return rate you see early on, do it cause you love it. With this mentality, you’ll be in a better place to judge your progress after a year or so. There’s no magic bullet. Don’t think something will work for you just because it worked for Coldplay.”
Tokyo Police Club will be performing at Corona Theatre Thursday, Nov. 27. Doors open at 7 pm. Tickets are $24.50, $27 at the door.
Despite going punch for punch with the Redmen (2-1) through two hard-fought quarters, the final score read 69-38 in an embarrassing road loss for the Concordia Stingers (2-1).(more…)
The Commerce and Administration Student Charity Organization (CASCO) celebrated arts, comedy, and philanthropy at its 14th annual dance and fashion show at L’Astral Theatre on Nov. 22.(more…)
Last Wednesday, the McGill Social Equity and Diversity Education Office (SEDE) organized a Safer Spaces workshop on gender identity and sexual orientation. The interactive event offered an introduction for participants graduate students, faculty, and staff members to address issues of marginalization in sexual diversity. (more…)
Sampling is such a staple of modern music that it has become almost an overused nuance—unless, of course, you’re Kanye West. While the origins of sampling are blurry, largely because of the intensive legal confusion that arose during their early use, the Guinness Book of World Records recognizes “Step On” as the first song to ever use sampling. While that fact is hotly debated—and has incidentally been denied by the artists—the introduction of sampling to popular music allowed for a blossoming of creativity through the rejuvenation of past beats and lyrics.
Fa All Y’all
Artist: Da Brat
Album: Funkdafied
Released: June 28, 1994
Da Brat proved that Hip hop wasn’t just a man’s game when her solo album, Funkdafied, went platinum. Following in the footsteps of hip-hop duo Salt-N-Pepa, Da Brat proved that girl power was more than enough to make it to the big leagues. As for “Fa All Y’all,” it perfectly encapsulated Da Brat’s style: Fun, funky, and fierce.
“Believe”
Artist: Cher
Album: Believe
Released: October 19, 1998
Cher is a queen. She also just happened to be the woman that brought auto-tune into pop music. “Believe” was a groundbreaking song for the music industry and remains one of the best-selling singles of all time. Now autotune is getting constant facelifts, and depending on how it’s used it can either make (Kanye West: God) or break (T-Pain: Failure) careers.
Maggie’s Farm
Artist: Bob Dylan
Album: Bringing It All Back Home
Released: March 22, 1965
Even though Dylan had released the semi-electric Bringing It All Back Home four months prior to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, those in attendance were hardly ready to accept the folk icon’s new stylistic choices with open arms. The opening licks of “Maggie’s Farm” marked the first time that Dylan had performed publicly with an electric guitar across his chest, and many fans took it as an act of unimaginable betrayal. The refrain, “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more,” is just right for a song whose legacy is tied to an act of defiance towards the close-minded members of his fanbase.
Walk This Way
Artist: Run-DMC ft. Steven Tyler
Album: Raising Hell
Released: May 15, 1986
Hip hop had been around for a while, but during the mid-’80s it was increasingly looked at as a fad as opposed to a serious musical genre. That viewpoint changed when Run-DMC’s third album, Raising Hell, went triple-platinum and proved that Hip hop was here to stay. Beyond solidifying rap as a true form of popular music, “Walk This Way” also introduced the new genre of rock-rap to the music industry by successully covering an Aerosmith classic.
Heebie Jeebies
Performed by: Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five
Album: Heebie Jeebies
Recorded: February 26, 1926
If you google “Heebie Jeebies,” one of the first options that will come up is a discussion on whether the song is racist and representative of the oppression black artists faced in the early 20th century. Yet, putting aside the murky history of America’s treatment of black professionals, “Heebie Jeebies” is representative of a much larger achievement on behalf of jazz musicians. Louis Armstrong became jazz’s first dominating soloist, and he transformed the genre by introducing scat for the first time in this 3-minute recording.
March 3, 1875: The first organized game of indoor ice hockey was played at the Victoria Skating Rink on René-Lévesque between Drummond and Stanley, where the Sheraton Hotel now stands. Civil engineering student James Creighton organized the game, and many of the players were McGill students. The current standard dimensions for a hockey rink are still the same as those of Victoria Rink.
1891: A McGill alumnus had a hand in the creation of another major sport: Basketball. James Naismith was working at a Massachusetts YMCA in 1891, and was instructed to invent an “athletic distraction for rowdy kids trapped indoors by the harsh winter.” The rules of basketball have changed significantly since Naismith’s original game, but it is now one of the most popular professional sports around the world.
1929: The name “Redmen” was used for the first time to describe McGill sports teams. The origin of the name is a topic of debate. Regardless, the name stuck and has since been an integral part of McGill’s sports identity. McGill women’s teams adopted the “Martlets” moniker in 1976.
1978: The Formula One Canadian Grand Prix moved to Île Notre-Dame in Montreal, where it has been held every year since. In 2005, the Canadian Grand Prix was the third most-watched sporting event worldwide, behind only Super Bowl XXXIX and the 2005 UEFA Champions League Final. The race attracts over 300,000 spectators each year, 25 per cent of whom are from outside of Quebec.
August 12, 1994: The 1994 Montreal Expos held a Major League Baseball-leading 74-40 record when a players union strike cut the season short, cancelling the playoffs and World Series. This hurt the Expos’ campaign for a new stadium, and the team owners decided not to invest in retaining star players such as Larry Walker and Moisés Alou. Attendance declined over the next decade and financial troubles compounded, prompting the team to move to Washington D.C. in 2005 to become the Nationals.
1995, 1996: The Winnipeg Jets and the Quebec Nordiques moved from Canadian cities to cities in the United States, exemplifying a gradual league-wide shift in the NHL to the American market. The Montreal Canadiens are the last Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup, having done so a record 24 times up until the 1992-1993 season. This accounts for a whopping 25.3 per cent of all championships contested since the founding of the NHL.
1996: The Baltimore Stallions CFL expansion team moved to Montreal to re-establish the Montreal Alouettes. Montreal had been without a CFL team since the 1987 season and had not had much success on the field since the 1970s. In more recent years, the Alouettes have been a dominant force in the CFL with seven Grey Cup appearances between 2002 and 2010, as well as four titles.
2005: Marty the Martlet is chosen as the official kilt-wearing mascot of both the McGill Redmen and Martlet teams by a student vote. He was officially unveiled at the 2005 Redmen football homecoming game.
2005-2006: The McGill administration cancelled the last two games of the Redmen football season following public revelations of inappropriate hazing that younger members of the team had been subjected to. The team struggled in the seasons following their suspension, winning a total of only three games from 2007 until 2011, including four winless seasons.
2012: The Montreal Impact joins Major League Soccer and become Montreal’s first top-tier soccer franchise. The Impact has won two CONCACAF Champions League-qualifying Canadian Championships in the last two seasons, representing Canada in both competitions. The squad has been key in growing the sport both within Québec and Canada as a whole.
Boundless: McGill Tribune Special Issue
November 30, 2016
The Sport Authority EP. 7: Looking back at Sam Hinkie and The Process
April 12, 2016
Rare books: The hard spine of the modern library
April 5, 2016
