Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Mille-feuille/Napoleon!

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baking, Daring Bakers, fall, French, mille-feuille, NaBloPoMo, napoleon, pastry, pastry cream, puff pastry, pumpkin

Our October 2012 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Suz of Serenely Full. Suz challenged us to not only tackle buttery and flaky puff pastry, but then take it step further and create a sinfully delicious Mille Feuille dessert with it!

So I was supposed to post this six days ago, but since I completed the challenge today, that would have been impossible sans TARDIS. Never mind, it’s done!

I think the last time I had a napoleon was while in college in Baltimore. There’s this dessert place in Little Italy called Vaccaro’s. What I mainly remember about that place was always being so overwhelmed by the size of their desserts. One would have been plenty to share between a few people, so naturally some would compete to see who could finish something off on their own. And then there were randomly waffle sundaes…

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Battenberg Cake!

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baking, Battenberg, British, cakes, curd, Daring Bakers, marzipan

Mandy of What The Fruitcake?! came to our rescue last minute to present us with the Battenberg Cake challenge! She highlighted Mary Berry’s techniques and recipes to allow us to create this unique little cake with ease.

You’ve seen these cakes, right? Likely it’s just been a photo on the box for a special pan and you’ve wondered, now how does that work? That was exactly my position with these cakes before the challenge was posted, and then once I saw how it was done, it seemed so obvious and simple.

Well, yes and no. Making a foil and parchment divider for a glass dish with rounded edges sounds like a super fun time, doesn’t it? If you agreed, you are a CRAZY person. Seriously. It turns out it doesn’t need to be perfect though because the batter is so thick, it isn’t going anywhere.

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Challah!

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baking, braids, bread, challah, Daring Bakers, Jewish, whole wheat, yeast

May’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge was pretty twisted – Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to make challah! Using recipes from all over, and tips from “A Taste of Challah,” by Tamar Ansh, she encouraged us to bake beautifully braided breads.

Yet again, the Daring Kitchen forces me to cross another item off of my list! Making challah was on there because braiding dough seemed like it would be somewhat tricky, but this was totally not the case. Way easier than French-braiding your own hair, that’s for sure.

Ruth provided a few recipes with the challenge, and I went with the first which was for a wheat challah. The dough seemed strange: it was almost cookie dough-like and kept sticking to everything! Since I had never made challah, I didn’t know if this was normal or if it was an issue with the yeast or measurements (used my scale), but persisted. I ended up adding what seemed to be quite a lot of flour, but maybe it wasn’t more than 1 cup. For the first rise, I put the bowl of dough on the front porch in hopes that the almost 90F heat would encourage it to rise. It did!

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Quick Bread!

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baking, banana, chocolate, Daring Bakers, easy, quick bread, vegan

The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.

Goodness, it’s been quite dull around here! But what’s this? Today is the 27th. This is the Daring Bakers’ Challenge reveal date. I am posting on time! It’s highly possible that a pig just flew by.

Perhaps I was eager to give this Marbled Banana Bread a go. Banana + chocolate is always a winner, but this bread is special because it’s vegan! No eggs, milk, or butter were harmed in the making of this loaf, but I promise that they are not missed. The final product is very moist and flavorful, plus lower in fat and not too sweet. And my, what a looker!

The only vegan-y thing that the recipe calls for is almond milk which you can replace with any milk substitute (I used flax milk) or milk itself. All of the other ingredients are probably residing in your kitchen: ripe bananas, sugar, vanilla, oil, flour, baking soda, salt, unsweetened cocoa powder, and water. Convenient if you’re a non-vegan who has run out of eggs!

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Scones/Biscuits!

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baking, biscuits, cheddar, chives, Daring Bakers, scones

Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host. Aud worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens!

I almost said that I’ve never made biscuits from scratch, which seems crazy for a Texan who loves to bake…but I’ve made scones! Looking back at those, they weren’t too pretty, but they sure tasted good and had a light texture. Not convinced that I’d mastered scone or biscuit-making by any means, I was happy about this challenge, especially since Audax was hosting! He always provides such a wealth of knowledge and help for both the Daring Bakers and Cooks that I felt confident with his instructions.

I fully expected my first batch to be a flop, and it was. I went with the basic scone recipe and think the problem was that the dough was way too wet; I shouldn’t have used the full amount of milk. Audax did say that a moister dough makes lighter scones, but I definitely passed that point! However, the amorphous lumps were still light and I had no problem polishing them off… 

Sourdough Follow-Up: Second Spawn of Brutus

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baking, bread, Daring Bakers, French, starter, vegan, whole wheat, yeast

So my first attempt at sourdough (AKA the December Daring Bakers’ Challenge) was a bust, but I persevered! That night I started feeding Brutus the Starter again from Day 1. He developed a voracious appetite and grew so much more than in the first week!

After reading through all of the posts in the challenge reveal thread of the DB forum, I felt better knowing that others had some related problems. A few things were different this time around: I used my scale to measure everything while making the dough, and resisted the temptation to over-knead. The production leaven was definitely bigger and more bubbly, and the dough itself was more wet than last time, which is supposed to be a characteristic of sourdough. There were also a couple differences due to being in my kitchen rather than my parents’: this loaf is round (different proofing vessel!) and it was a whole new oven and slightly different climate.

I also crossed my fingers while the dough was resting.

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Sourdough!

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baking, bread, Daring Bakers, French, starter, whole wheat, yeast

Our Daring Bakers Host for December 2011 was Jessica of My Recipe Project and she showed us how fun it is to create Sour Dough bread in our own kitchens! She provided us with Sour Dough recipes from Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley as well as delicious recipes to use our Sour Dough bread in from Tonia George’s Things on Toast and Canteen’s Great British Food!

I like to think that I have pretty good luck with bread. The fear of yeast has never been something I’ve understood because every loaf I’ve made has magically turned out with minimal fussing. Keywords: luck, magically. There’s a lot I have to learn about bread.

Sourdough and starters had never entered my little yeast-perfect bubble of bread-baking. Truthfully, I didn’t know much about them, so this challenge definitely piqued my interest. Not being a fan of rye, I went for the French Country Loaf even though the host had rated the difficulty of the recipe as medium to hard. I got this…I’m good with bread!

Famous last thoughts.

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Sans Rival!

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baking, buttercream, cake, cashews, chocolate, cinnamon, Daring Bakers, dessert, Filipino, gluten-free, meringue

Catherine of Munchie Musings was our November Daring Bakers’ host and she challenged us to make a traditional Filipino dessert – the delicious Sans Rival cake!  And for those of us who wanted to try an additional Filipino dessert, Catherine also gave us a bonus recipe for Bibingka which comes from her friend Jun of Jun-blog.

In case you’re confused, yes, this was last month’s challenge.  I am super late posting this!  Procrastination, the usual culprit, wasn’t to blame this time.  Although too late to count, I finally decided to make the Sans Rival last week in between bowing string parts for Beethoven 3 (it’s totally fine and normal if you don’t know what this entails).  With the ingredients on hand and friends to feed it to that evening, why not?

(umm, especially when this is the only thing I’ve been able to make since Thanksgiving…)

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Croissants!

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baking, bread, breakfast, butter, croissants, Daring Bakers, fancy, French, Julia Child, laminated dough, pastry, yeast

The Daring Bakers go retro this month!  Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

YUSSS!  I’ve been wanting to make croissants for a long time but needed something to get me motivated to do so.  This is a perfect example of procrastination paying off: “make puff pastry” has been on my list of things to do before turning 30, but that hadn’t even been enough to make me do it yet. Croissant dough is technically puff pastry with yeast and sugar, by the way, so this totally counts.

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Candy!

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baking, bon bons, candy, caramel, chocolate, Daring Bakers, gluten-free, hokey pokey, passion fruit, toffee

The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!.  These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies!  This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

I love chocolate.  I really do.

But you know what?  I will gladly fork out the cash to buy a box of nice chocolates from a chocolatier rather than attempt to make bon bons again.

Or maybe such an activity is not meant to take place in a kitchen in south Texas in August.  Either way, this challenge was a very frustrating one for me!