Daring Bakers: Grahams

Do you prefer your graham crackers chocolate dipped, or plain?

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and http://www.nanaimo.ca/.

DB: Macarons

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

I have to say that there was a lot to like about this challenge. I enjoyed the lack of butter, my procrastinatory tendencies were rewarded with such a quick cookie, and the flavor combinations are endless.

My friend Allison and I shared sifting and piping duties on this one. I can't fault either our sifting or our piping, but our macarons didn't rise nearly as high as we might have hoped. In fact, my lemon macarons bore a remarkable visual resemblance to communion wafers. Fortunately, they tasted a lot better. I planned to fill the lemon ones with raspberry jam, but the cookies were great on their own, so I ate them plain.

For the remainder of our macarons, we considered savory options. Ultimately, we were unable to reconcile the 2 cups of powdered sugar with savory flavorings. We added a couple of tablespoons of cocoa powder, and some chili powder for a savory kick. These macarons rose a bit higher, and I filled them with a sour cream, dark chocolate frosting. I ate one. My family finished the rest in mere minutes.

DB: Milano Cookies

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

My grandfather died when I was in elementary school -- maybe second or third grade. After that, my grandmother moved to Pennsylvania to South Carolina and eventually remarried an old friend, Les.

I don't know whether it was Mimi or Les who chose the snacks that we were offered when we went to visit after school, but my mother was a strong woman to turn a blind eye to their 6pm offerings of Hilton Head Ice Cream (double chocolate or lemon custard, usually), chocolate eclairs, See's Candies that they ordered by mail, and yes, Milano cookies.

I haven't eaten Milanos much since then. The occasional reception, or airplane snack box I suppose, but I set out to replicate them on a really damp, rainy night. The cookies baked on a silpat came out somewhat sticky, those on standard cookie sheets had to be chipped off the sheet. I couldn't decide, which if either, I preferred. By this afternoon, however, some time in the cookie tin had mellowed the texture and they sure are tasty.

DB: Strudel

The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.

Using this recipe, I made both savory and sweet strudel. For the savory filling, I roasted potatoes, garlic, broccoflower and onions in some butter and olive oil. I seasoned them with garam masala, cumin, coriander, aleppo pepper and salt. In part due to the lack of moisture in this filling, it almost reminded me a lavash bread crust.


My sweet strudel was a strawberry-rhubarb. I sprinkled some demerara sugar into the crust along with the breadcrumbs and then again over the top.

It's better to photograph strudel with moist filling soon after baking. 24 hours later, it tasted fine, but looks a little mushy.


Could you read the newspaper through my dough? Not really, I got a bit frustrated as it began to tearing.

Daring Bakers: Cheesecakes

I love how the camera can be so deceiving. While not a Cheesecake Factory size slice, you might think that this is slightly bigger than it really is.

In general, I'm not a cheesecake fan. When I was in high school, however, there was this cheesecake/antique shop that did have a great cake -- it was light and fluffy and even eggy, rather than dense and thick.

I had fun with this challenge, trying to create a small size cheese cake that my family might even be willing to sample. I halved the recipe for both crust and filling. For the crust, I swapped the graham crackers for chocolate wafers and reduced the sugar a bit.

For the filling, I used RF cream cheese, followed the recipe. When it was time to add the cream, I heated part of the cream with some instant espresso powder, and combined it with 2/3 of the batter. I took another few tbsp of cream and melted 1 oz bittersweet chocolate in it. After filling the crust with the coffee batter, I swirled in the chocolate.

My batter resulted in one 6" cheesecake and 3 cheese cake "muffins".

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

Daring Bakers: Lasagne

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I spent my morning eating and learning about bacon. Bacon and bread, bacon and eggs, bacon and waffles, bacon and chocolate, and well, bacon and bacon. If you haven't had a morning with bacon yet, I'd highly recommend it. In fact, later this spring, I'll certainly be reading a tome about bacon, 240 pages worth, written by Ari Weinzweig of Zingerman's Deli. While I learned that bacon is no longer the "it" food for hipsters, I've never really been hip, so I don't feel any need to move away from bacon.

Ari spoke at length about bacon, he also talked about writing. Since the first sentence is often the most difficult to write, he suggested opening with a line of choice words. As I didn't feel that you wanted to read such choice language, I decided to start with a few choice symbols instead.

I joined forces with another Daring Baker for this challenge. Together we made a pile of spinach lasange noodles. When mixing our dough, however, it wasn't coming together. Proportionally, the egg to flour ratio was significantly different from other recipes we have tried. We ended up following the proportions in Mario Batali's Molto Italiano cookbook, which included 5 eggs. For the sauce, I again turned to Mario, making his Ragu Bolognese.

1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil

2 medium onions, finely chopped

4 ribs celery, finely chopped

2 carrots, finely chopped

5 cloves garlic, sliced

1lb ground veal (I subbed beef)

1lb ground pork

4 oz pancetta

1 6oz can tomato paste

1 cup whole white milk

1 cup dry white wine

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves

salt and pepper

In a 6-8 qt heavy bottomed pot, heat the olive oil over medium heat until hot. Add onion, celery, carrots and garlic and cook until the vegetables are translucent, but not browned, about 5 minutes. Add the meats and increase the heat to high, and brown the meat, stirring frequently. Add the tomato paste, milk, wine, and thyme and bring to just a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 1 to 1/2 hours.

Season the ragu with salt and pepper; remove from the heat and let cool. The ragu can be refrigerated for up to two days; it can also be frozen for up to one month.

This lasange was a real change from the neapolitan style lasagna I usually make, and the fresh pasta was a treat I am sure to make again in the future.

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

Daring Bakers: chocolate

Flourless chocolate cake, a bit too dry, served with Vanilla Frozen Yogurt from 101 cookbooks. It appears the frozen yogurt recipe originally came from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop.

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

DB: Tuiles

If you haven't spent some time with The Inn at Little Washington Cookbook, you're missing out. The food is beautiful, the photography is beautiful, and the entire book is inspiring. My favorite dessert of all time, in fact comes from this cookbook. The grapefruit tart is stunning in it's surprising in it's flavor combination of grapefruit, pecans and bittersweet chocolate.

These aren't the 1970's named "cigarette cookies" I remember my mom making as a kid. They were a bit thicker and more dense than I had hoped. But tasty. After some free-form shaping, my tuiles more or less looked like Pringles. I dipped them in some bittersweet chocolate, and served them with a slightly looser version the Inn's grapefruit custard. I meant to sprinkle it with the pecans, but the urge to eat overcame me.

This dish reminds me of these chocolate covered potato chips that we used to eat in boarding school. It's that chocolate and salt combination that gets me every time.

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

Daring Bakers: French Yule Log

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il enFaut Peu Pour Etre Heureux. They have chosen the French Yule Log by Flore from Floriege Gourmand.

This one is sure to break any New Year's Resolution. It contains lots of chocolate and almost 2 cups of whipping cream. I won't tell the taster's at tonight's New Year's Eve party. I'm excited to try the end result and even to see the inside, especially since I occasionally felt like I was baking without a net -- the recipe just left me with questions at times, and a big runny slurry for the supposed chocolate mousse.

Like most, I'll start my diet tomorrow...

Daring Bakers: Chocolate Eclairs

I made the eclairs -- with a cointreau pastry cream filling. I sure don't feel like writing about them, though. Funny thing... I enjoyed each of the parts alone more than the completed project.

Daring Bakers: Danish Braid

There it is. In all of its ugly glory.

I've never studied French and I've never made laminated dough. I'll admit to feeling rather proud of myself as this became buttery and puffy in the oven. My danish was filled with a sweet and tart combination of fresh goat cheese and homemade blueberry orange jam from last summer. I absolutely love this combination, as the sweetness of the jam is well tempered by the cheese. It's getting closer to blueberry season here in Michigan, and I'll be picking, and freezing, and jamming before I know it.
So I made the dough, omitting the cardamom for lack of a desire to shop. The dough came out well and was much easier than I had anticipated. Then I got to the filling and braiding--this is where the wheels fell off the cart. I tried to make mine hold together as in the photos. The more the braid rose, the less it stayed braided. I intervened several times, trying to stretch and tuck it back together. During the baking, it split entirely in two, leaving dry, flaky danish-y pieces and thick, moist filling-y bites. Both were good, but they would have been so much better together.
My perfectionist side would like to conquer the Danes, but my other half really prefers so many other baked goods to Danish.

Daring Baker's Opera Cake

It's my first Daring Baker's challenge. When I printed out all eight pages of this recipe, I was impressed by the sheer scope of the challenge. None of the individual components looked difficult but the project management (combined with the TWD sticky buns) aspects would take juggling.

I ruminated on possible flavor combinations for several weeks. With one week left to go, I took a hint from the grocery store and picked up a pound of strawberries. Strawberry and orange are one of my favorite flavor combinations. My sister, who bakes at a cupcake bakery in Charlotte, swears that fresh strawberry buttercream is one of her all time favorite frosting.

My layers included:
Joconde -- as written in the recipe
Syrup -- with orange oil
Buttercream-- fresh pureed strawberries mixed in at the final step
Mousse-- white chocolate with orange zest and Cointreau
Ganache--white chocolate, powdered sugar, melted butter, cream and pureed strawberry

I found my buttercream to be very stiff after its stay in the fridge, but it softened up nicely when I spread it across the joconde with my fingertips. I was worried that the yield might be a little low, do feel that more buttercream might have made a better cake, but overall it worked well.

Saturday night: Had one of A.'s colleagues over for dinner. I cut my opera cake a delivered tall, multi layered confections, which were enjoyed by all. So much so, that A. offered to send a large portion of my remaining cake (which did serve 20) home with our guest. I muttered under my breath; I was planning to serve the second half of this cake at a potluck Sunday night. Fortunately it's quite rich, right?

Sunday night: My 10 very small, almost petit four like squares were dusted with pink sprinkles. Frustrated when the less-than-tasty Whole Foods fruit tart was more popular on the dessert table, I felt no shame in sneaking the last two slices for myself!