Daring Bakers - August Challenge

It’s that time again – the August daring bakers challenge is un-veiled and I must apologise for the ugliest looking dobos torte you have ever seen. It tastes good though.

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful
of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos
Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite
Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague. Lorraine is one of my favourite bloggers, but her pick and I didn’t really agree.

The dobos is a layer cake – each layer is a light sponge filled with a chocolate buttercream filling. The difference with the dobos torte is that the final layer has a layer of toffee poured over it. It also has crushed hazelnuts pressed on the sides and whole hazelnuts prop up the little toffee shards on the top of the cake. Instead of making one or two cakes and slicing into layers, you make each of the cake layers individually. I halved the recipe and made much 15cm round cakes. The cake layers were fairly easy – sponge cakes really. The real recipe was for buttercream made with eggs, but the eggs were undercooked and one of my eaters is pregnant, so I made a simple chocolate buttercream using the mock cream recipe in the Edmonds book and adding cocoa powder.

I am not sure what happened with my toffee. It went a nice dark toffee colour, but maybe I didn’t take it far enough as it didn’t crisp up like toffee at the end. I just don’t think I have the patience to be a pastry chef. I adore baking and I have fun decorating cakes in my own rather non-creative way, but attention to detail for something like the dobos torte is lacking a bit.

On the bright side my husband loved this cake. I thought it was ok, but then I like pretty plain cakes and am not huge on lots of filling – unless it is whipped cream!

Have a look here and you will more than likely see what a real Dobos Torte looks like when you check out the other Daring bakers’ tortes.

Daring Bakers - July, Mallows

It is Daring Bakers time again and I was so excited by the recipe for July. There were two types of cookies that we could choose from – or do both if you wanted. I chose the cookies called Mallows – these are pretty much like a home made mallowpuff.

These cookies would almost be my favourite Daring Baker challenge yet. I loved them because they look amazing, but were actually very easy to make. The biscuit base is a plain little biscuit with a hint of cinnamon. They are not sweet enough to eat just by themselves, but are just perfect when you put the marshmallow topping on. The topping is marshmallow made by beating egg whites and then pouring in a hot sugar syrup. The marshmallow even by itself was deliciously light. You pipe the marshmallow onto the little cookies, leave them to set and then dip the whole thing in melted chocolate. Amazingly delicious.



I made only 1/3 of the recipe for the bases, but I did make the full marshmallow recipe. I poured the rest of the marshmallow into a tin, drizzled it with some left over melted chocolate and cut it into pieces.

I will definitely be making these cookies again. They are easy to make but impressive enough that people will think you are so clever!



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.

Check out the other Daring bakers here.

Daring Bakers June - Better Late than Never!

I must apologise for the lateness of my Daring Bakers challenge for June! The funny part is that I actually made the challenge a few weeks ago! But I was in Christchurch over the weekend and while I had every good intention of posting on my sister’s computer, time got away on me. This posting is also going to be a bit brief!



The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

I have always wanted to make a bakewell tart ever since I tried a mini bakewell tart in a small village in yorkshire. Bakewell tart is a tart filled with jam (traditionally raspberry I think), a frangipane (ground almond mixture) and then topped with flaked almonds. I used my own home made peach and vanilla jam to fill the tart. The peach jam went really with the almond frangipane filling. We had the tart at a dinner party with friends in early June and I served it with the honey peach ice cream I made for the TWD challenge a few weeks ago – a perfect combination.



I really loved this tart and loved the opportunity to make it! See if the other Daring Bakers loved it here.

Daring Bakers - Apple Strudel

Better a day late than never. I was excited about this month’s Daring Baker challenge which was apple strudel. Strudel is not something that I would probably buy if I was choosing at the bakery, but my husband absolutely loves this kind of thing. Strudel does have fond memories for me of our trip to Europe five years ago.

It was a beautiful day when we drove from Munich to Salzburg. I am a die hard Sound of Music fan so I was very excited to be going to the city where the movie was based. We camped round Europe and had this wonderful book which advised the best camping grounds round Europe. We selected one and it was so picturesque! Perched on the hill above Salzburg, just as you would imagine Austria to be. Unfortunately about an hour after we pitched our tent, the clouds rolled in and it started to rain. And rain it did!. The whole two days we were in Salzburg it completely poured down. We ended up leaving the tent and renting a smelly old caravan in the camping ground – I was too scared to sit down it was so dirty.

Anyway, the point of this story is that one of the highlights of the trip to Salzburg was the apple strudel served in the camping ground restaurant. It was made on the premises and was a flaky, light, delicious pastry, so I was excited when this was chosen as a daring baker challenge as it gave me the chance to try my hand.

I imagine that there are all sorts of strudels that you can make other than apple. But as soon as I think of strudel I think of that apple strudel in Austria, so I decided to stick with the suggested apple and walnut. I’m not sure why I left it to the last minute to make my strudel, but I made the pastry for it on Monday night, resting it in the fridge over two days and then completing the strudel last night. To roll the pastry thin enough you rolled the dough on a floured table cloth (I used a tea towel). After rolling with the rolling pin, you stretched the dough by hand. I didn’t get mine as big as the recipe said, but it was still pretty thin.

The filling was toasted breadcrumbs (I guess to stop the filling leaking through the pastry), sliced apples, walnuts, cinnamon and sugar. The strudel was then rolled and baked in a crescent shape. My biggest regret was not having any vanilla ice cream to eat the warm strudel with, as that would have been the perfect accompaniment! I loved the strudel – perhaps not quite as good as the one we had in Salzburg, but still pretty good! My husband loved it too. I even tried a little bit cold from the fridge this morning and it was delicious.

I also loved this challenge as to me this is what the Daring bakers is all about – trying out new things that I wouldn’t necessarily do by myself. Check out how the other Daring Bakers did here.

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.

Daring baker Challenged

As you can see from the photo above, I was challenged rather than being a challenger in the March Daring Bakers challenge. 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.

I have to be honest, I actually thought that this was more of a challenge for the new Daring Cooks monthly challenge as I think lasagne is more of a cook’s than a baker’s kind of thing. I really enjoy cooking as well as baking, but didn’t really feel like this challenge fitted within the parameters of the daring baker challenges. And that ‘s not just because my lasagne was a no show disaster!

I have never made fresh pasta before. Firstly, because I don’t have a pasta machine and secondly, we don’t eat pasta all that afternoon and I actually really love the dried Italian pastas that you can get without faffing around, making my own. I wondered how I would go making pasta from scratch and then rolling by hand. Not well! The pasta was meant to be spinach pasta. I had a really hard time getting my flour, eggs and spinach to turn into a nice smooth ball of pasta. I added another eggs and keep kneading, but to no avail. It had been a busy weekendand I had had enough, so I gave up in disgust and threw my ball of pasta dough in the bin. What a waste of 3 c flour, 3 eggs and spinach.



I still had beef mince out and had to make something for dinner from it. So, I made my old favourite, nana’s spaghetti and meatballs recipe. My husband and I both love this. It is very unconventional and has a realy sweet and sour type of flavour. Firstly you make your meatballs with your minced beef, abut 1 c rolled oats soaked in ¼ c milk, about ¼ c tomato sauce and salt and pepper. Nana would roll her meatballs in cornflour and then pan fry them. I tend to just put them on trays and fan bake or fan grill them for about 12 minutes.

I made the sauce separately – all you do is mix together a can of condensed tomato soup, a can full of water, 1 tbsp soy suace, ¼ sugar and 3 tbsp vinegar (I use white). Bring to the boil and then add a can of crushed pineapple. I don’t bother draining this. Keep simmering until thickened (you may need to add some corhflour to help the thickening process), serve over the meatballs and spaghetti.

I hope that the other daring bakers were better pasta makers than me. Check it out here.

Daring Bakers - A Valentino Cake for February

Well, it is that time of the month again – time to reveal the Daring Bakers challenge for February. The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
They 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.

A chocolate valentine cake sounded particularly exciting and also appropriate given that Valentines Day is in February. And as for ice cream, with having been in the smaller kitchen of our rented flat this summer, I haven’t used my ice cream maker as much as I think I will in future summers, so it was good to be able to use that as well.



The instructions for the chocolate cake were to use your favourite chocolate as this is essentially what the cake would end of tasting like. My favourite eating chocolate is actually dairy milk, but even though the instructions said you could use that, I think milk chocolate can be a bit too sweet in baking. So I ended up using Whittakers 72% chocolate. I also scaled the recipe back to 1/5th and made the cake in two small brioche moulds. With most of our kitchen gear packed up I haven’t got anything larger than a 6 inch round cake pan out and also, we didn’t need to be eating a whole cake!!

I really really love chocolate but I actually found the cake to be a bit strong for me. I wonder if it was because of the darkness of my chocolate. Maybe about 60% would have been not so strong. The cake is a flourless cake and is basically just melted chocolate butter, eggs and sugar. It is very much something you would have for pudding. That’s why the ice-cream went perfectly with it.

I didn’t make either of the ice-cream recipes offered in the challenge and instead used a David Lebowitz recipe for Philadelphia ice-cream. Philadelphia style ice-cream is really easy to make as you don’t have to make a custard before. In fact there are no eggs in at all – just cream, milk, sugar and flavouring – in this case, vanilla. I used half cream and half milk (low fat milk actually) and I was surprised by how creamy the ice-cream was for something that was relatively low in fat. I will definitely make this style again.

All in all this was a fun challenge to make, but for me it wasn’t overly challenging. See what the other Daring Bakers thought here.

Daring Bakers Do Tuiles

Last month I didn’t make the Daring Bakers’ challenge mostly due to time constraints. 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. I chose to make the first tuiles. I havent made tuiles like these before – I have made ones that are more like brandy snaps or very thin Florentines. It was fun to make something different.

To go with the tuiles we had to make something light to partner them. I chose to make vanilla frozen yoghurt which was actually a great accompaniment. The tuiles were quite easy to make – it is a simple batter, spread out into shapes (I boringly spread mine into circles), baked and then shaped while still warm. I coloured a little of the mix with cocoa and made dots and swirls on the tuilles. I shaped mine over a rolling pin, but something a bit thinner would give a more definite shape.

I also think next time I would make them thinner – although they were still lovely and crispy.

The vanilla frozen yoghurt was based on a recipe from David Leibowitz’s ice cream book. I used yoghurt that was already vanilla flavoured, adding more vanilla seeds and then you simply churn it in your ice cream maker. I used low fat yoghurt which I thought might give an icy result, but it didn’t. The frozen yoghurt was so creamy and utterly delicious, that it is worth having an ice cream maker simply to make this!

See how creative the other Daring Bakers’ tuiles are here.

Daring Bakers - Caramel Cake

At first glance you may think that these are just more cupcakes, but these delicious Caramel Cupcakes are the Daring Baker challenge for November. The Caramel Cake with caramelised butter icing was chosen by Dolores of Culinary Curiosity and her co-hosts Alex of Blonde and Brownie and jenny of Foray Into Food. The recipe is courtesy of Shuna Fish Lydon and you can find it here.

We were allowed to make our cake in whatever shape we wanted, the only requirement being to include make the cake recipe and also the caramelised butter icing. The first step was to make the caramel which was the base for both the cake and the icing. This was made simple by boiling sugar and water until it turned a dark amber colour, then pouring in more water to make a thick golden syrup like caramel syrup. The instructions were to wear long sleeves because the caramel splutters a lot. It was a warm day here (we are definitely heading into summer!) and I was wearing a singlet top. Luckily I am fairly hardy and the bits of caramel that spluttered up (some onto my neck!) didn’t burn.




The cake was made in the usual way, with the caramel added. You could be forgiven in thinking that these cakes look very plain, but the taste was absolutely delicious! They tasted like little golden syrup steamed pudding! The icing was so yummy as well. You made it by cooking butter until it turned a nut brown colour – this adds real depth of flavour. You then beat in the icing sugar and some of the caramel syrup. This is so good! It has a real caramel flavour. I used the rest of the caramel syrup to drizzle over the cakes. I was hoping that this would set into a little round drizzle pattern, but it kind of melted all over the top of the cakes. Still, it tasted great!


The builders and blocklayers got most of these cakes and by all accounts, they went down well. My husband, Mum and I all loved them too, so I will definitely be making them again!!!



See how the other Daring Bakers cakes turned out here.

The Daring Bakers do Pizza!

Yes, it is that time again! Another Daring Baker challenge to post. This month’s challenge was chosen by Rosa from Rosa’s Yummy Yums and is Pizza! This obviously left quite a wide scope for imagination.

I have made pizza dough from scratch quite often, so the challenge wasn’t something new for me. I do love home made pizza though, so my challenge was to make something simple but tasty. Some of the best pizza I have ever tasted was at a small pizzeria (if that is actually an Italian word!) in Rome called La Renella. They sell pizza by weight in Italy and my husband and I kept going back there for more. Some of the stand out flavours were eggplant and mozzarella and potato and parmesan. I loved the simplicity of the Roman pizza.



I found the dough for this recipe quite sticky, but past experience has shown me that a sticky dough often gives a crisper base. I also only made ¼ of the recipe – enough just to make one large pizza. We were meant to try tossing the dough as part of the challenge, but my dough just a bit sticky for that. I had visions of dough sticking to the ceiling! The pizza stone (or tray in my case) was liberally sprinkled with semolina which gave the pizza a great crust.

We had to top our pizza with both a sauce and a topping. I made a sauce using chopped onion, garlic, olive oil and canned Italian tomatoes. I simply reduced this down, adding a small spoonful of brown sugar, salt and pepper to make a delicious well flavoured sauce. On top of the sauce I used prosciutto, blue cheese and pinenuts. My husband and I both really enjoyed this pizza! It was the first meal that I cooked in the kitchen of the place that we are renting while our house is being built. The oven passed the pizza test (and more importantly passed the shortbread test as well!).



See what variations of pizza the other Daring Bakers (I think there are well over 1000 of us now!) made here.

Daring Bakers do Lavosh

September’s Daring Bakers’ challenge was a little different to the earlier challenges, firstly because it was chosen by one of our alternate bakers, so there was a gluten free option and secondly because there are two components – Lavosh bread and then a dip of choice, but the dip had to be vegan and gluten free. This month’s hosts are Natalie from Gluten A Go Go and Shel from Musings from the Fishbowl.



I have made lavosh bread before, but the recipes I have baked before have been more like crackers, without any yeast. This lavosh bread recipe had a small amount of yeast in it. Lavosh bread is meant to be extremely thin and crisp and I think a pasta machine would be the best thing to roll it out. Unfortunately I don’t have a pasta machine, so I rolled the dough by hand and I didn’t get it as thin as I would have liked, although my crackers did crisp up nicely. We were given a choice as to topping for the lavosh – I topped mine with a sprinkling of ras al hanout (a Moroccan spice blend) and smoked sea salt. The smoked sea salt is a Maldon product and is fabulous. I think you need sea salt on lavosh bread, but the smokiness of the smoked salt gave a lovely flavour.

While I found this challenge quite easy, I did leave it to the last minute, meaning that my gluten free vegan dip wasn’t quite as creative as I had hoped. A couple of weeks ago at the market I bought a big bunch of rosemary and it has actually dried itself in the fridge, so using that as the start of my idea, I made a simple cannellini bean and rosemary dip by processing a drained can of beans with a clove of garlic, about 1 tbsp of chopped rosemary, the juice of a lemon and some olive oil, seasoning to taste. I guess this is fusion food – middle Eastern bread and Mediterranean dip! It all tasted yummy.



See the variations that the other Daring Bakers came up with here and stay tuned for next month’s challenge!

Daring Bakers August Challenge - Chocolate Eclairs

Well, it seems like some time since I have posted a Daring Bakers challenge and in fact it seems like some time since I made the August challenge, as I was very organised and made it the first weekend in August. The challenge this month was chocolate éclairs and was chosen by Meetak of What’s for Lunch Honey and Tony Hahhan.

For someone who has never made choux pastry until a couple of months ago, I’ve made choux creations three times now in the last two months – Dorie’s peppermint ring, savoury choux for a Hey Hey It’s Donna Day challenge and now éclairs for Daring Bakers. It is a lot easier than you think to make, but I am also learning a few tricks along the way – like don’t open the oven door while it’s baking, and beat the hot dough a little before adding your first egg.

If I was in a cake shop I would probably pick a chocolate cream bun or cream doughnut ahead of a chocolate éclair, but actually, anything with chocolate and cream has got to be good. The actual recipe called for a chocolate pastry cream as the filling of the éclairs. However, there was no requirement to make this – provided that you used a chocolate component somewhere in the éclairs. I filled my éclairs with whipped cream and topped them with the chocolate ganache from the recipe.

I halved the recipe but unintentionally made my éclairs a lot larger than I probably should have. I used a plastic bag with the tip cut off to pipe the choux pastry into éclair shapes and then I made a couple of cream puff shapes at the end. I made about 6 eclairs in total and two of them weren’t that good – they had that eggy kind of taste. I wonder if I made them too big?

The rest were delicious though and I found the fresh cream filling not as rich as pastry cream. The topping was a simple, thick ganache with some butter added. The recipe also called for chocolate sauce to be added, but once again I was lazy and didn’t bother.

I would make éclairs again and actually wonder if there is a trend back towards them, as in the latest issues of both Taste and Cuisine, there are recipes for chocolate éclairs with chocolate pastry cream fillings.



Check out how the other Daring Bakers did here.

Daring Bakers- Danish Braid

The Daring Baker challenge for June was Danish Braid. I am not a huge fan of pastry and I don’t like the Danish’s that you buy in bakeries in NZ. However, when we went to Denmark four years ago, I discovered that Danish’s in Denmark are noting like Danish’s in NZ – they are divine!!

The end result of the Danish Braid was kind of like brioche, but the steps involved in completing the challenge included spreading the dough with a butter and flour mixture and then folding the pastry/dough in the same way you do when making flaky pastry (which I also have not made before). The dough was then spread with a filling and then “plaited’ to create the braid look.



The suggested filling was an apple mixture which sounded nice, but I felt like something different than that. My two youngest sisters were staying with us the weekend that I made the braid, so I gave them a few filling choices and they picked chocolate pastry cream and raspberries. I used Dorie Greenspan’s recipe for chocolate pastry cream, leaving out the butter and it was a tasty combination.



I enjoyed the challenge of making the Danish braid, but I don’t think I will make it again – I prefer brioche as it is a bit more bread like and less pastry like. See what the other Daring Bakers thought here.

Daring Bakers May Challenge - L'Opera Cake

The Daring Baker challenge for May encompasses all the things I love about being a Daring Baker – it challenged me to make something I would probably not have tried, but for the challenge. This month it was L’Opera cake. Now, the cake you see in the photos probably doesn’t look all that complex, and to be honest, the individual components are not that hard, but put them all together and the Opera cake is quite a feat.



An opera cake consists of five components – a sponge cake made from ground nuts rather than flour, a sugar syrup which is used to moisten the sponge, a buttercream to sandwich the first two layers of cake together, a chocolate mousse and finally a glaze to top the cake. The main DB rule was that the cake had to be a light coloured cake. I based my cake around some little icing flowers I had made a few weeks ago that are a pretty pale pink colour, making my cake rose flavoured.



I didn’t have anything special to make the cake for, so decided to make only a third of the mixture. It made a nice loaf sized cake. The sponge was fairly easy – a nice light almond sponge which was then moistened with sugar syrup to which I added some rose water. The butter cream was made using egg and a sugar syrup. I think it was the best butter cream I have made – it was lovely and thick and creamy rather than buttery. I tinted the butter cream pale pink and also flavoured it with rosewater.



The mousse was made by folding melted white chocolate into beaten cream. This gave an almost ganache like mousse. I also tinted this pale cream. The glaze was actually a bit thicker than I thought it would be. It was ganache like as well. I went a bit crazy on the food colouring in the first attempt, so I re-made it. It still turned out a bit darker than I would have liked. I think I would also add a bit more cream to the glaze to make it a bit thinner.



The verdict? This cake was delicious. I took it into work and it was a hit – at least with the women. I heard through the grapevine that my business partner thought it tasted like hand cream! At least he got that it was rose flavoured! This is a real special occasion cake. I would make it again and would be interested to try different flavours – I think a chocolate one would be particularly nice. I really enjoyed making this cake and I enjoyed the challenge of trying to make it look as good as I could. Thanks again to the Daring Bakers for another fun challenge! You can see the other DBs’ Opera cakes here.

Daring Bakers - cheesecake pops

It’s that time again – another Daring Bakers challenge completed. This month the challenge was cheesecake pops. These are little cheesecake balls dipped in chocolate on a stick. The recipe comes from a book that I have just ordered from Fishpond called Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey –how good does that sound!!!

The recipe called for 5 containers of cream cheese – which is a lot! I had no real special occasion to make these for, so I decided to halve the recipe. The original recipe was baked in a 10 inch tin – I did mine in an 8, but if I made these again I would make even half the recipe in a larger tin, as I wanted to cut the cheesecake with cookie cutters to make shapes, but my cheesecake was too thick.

The cheesecake itself was a fairly basic recipe – I actually think it needed some lemon to add a bit of bite. It was vanilla flavoured and I added Heilala vanilla past to get those vanilla bean flecks that I love. As I have mentioned before, I am an impatient person, hence my pops are a bit larger than I should have made them and are un-even sizes – I didn’t have the patience to make them small and uniform. I dipped my pops in white chocolate. I had made all these little pink flowers to go on them, but unfortunately, the flowers hadn’t set hard enough and I couldn’t get them onto the pops successfully. So I ended up dipping most of the pops into coloured sugar and hundreds and thousands. Not quite as creative as I would have liked, but ok I guess.







This was a fun challenge – it took a bit of creativity. My only disappointment was I had this great idea for these gorgeous little white chocolate pops with pale pink flowers, but I only got a couple of those because of the softness of the flowers. Now I have a whole heap of flowers – I guess they will be good decoration for some cupcakes.



Check out the other daring bakers (now over 1000 of them!) creations here.

Daring Bakers - let them eat cake!

Once again I am slightly late in posting my DB challenge (but it is still 30 March somewhere in the world right now!). That is mainly because I had no special occasion to make this cake for, and I didn’t want to do it too close to Easter, so thought I would make it yesterday and then bring to work for morning tea today – I was still assembling the cake at 7.40am this morning, which is why I am a late poster.

The March Daring Baker challenge was picked by my fellow kiwi, Morven. The recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan’s From My Home to Yours and is the perfect party cake. After checking out some of the other blogs this morning with the most gorgeous looking cakes on them, I think mine can be called The less than perfect party cake!!! The cake was a lemon sponge layered with buttercream and raspberry jam and then coated in more buttercream and thread coconut.



The cake itself was easy to make. A simple lemon sponge – it was quite simple to put together and just involved lots of beating. Making it with just egg whites, rather than whole eggs made it lovely and light as well. I made the buttercream yesterday, deciding to just make a half batch to coat the cake with and then fill it with whipped cream (one of Dorie’s alternate suggestions). Dorie used raspberry jam to fill her cake. I made some blackcurrant jam in the weekend and decided to fill mine with that instead of raspberry.

My buttercream came together beautifully! But I made a big mistake! Because I was making the components last night for my cake today, I put the buttercream in the fridge over night. I just couldn’t get it back to that beautiful creamy consistency this morning and so I had to put it down the waste disposal and then beat some more cream and use that to decorate the outside of my cake.



I know that the cake looks fine, but I wished I had put more effort in to making it look gorgeous like some of the other Daring Bakers!! Still, it tastes nice. And it was a challenge as I have never made a layer cake like this before - that is what i love about the Daring Baker and other challenges - it takes me out of my comfort zone!! Thanks Morven and thanks to the other Daring Bakers. You can check out their creations here.

The Daring Bakers go French

The Daring Baker challenge for February is Julia Child’s French bread. I quite enjoy making bread, but I have never made a plain white loaf and not in the style of French bread.

The bread in France is unbelievable! I am not a big bread eater, but when we spent time in France four years ago, I think I ate my bread quota for about a year in 3 weeks!!! My favourite memories are of a still warm pain aux lardon (bread with bacon in it) and a divine anchovy fougasse. Yum!!!!! The Julia Child recipe was for a plain French loaf.

The instructions for making the bread were very long and thorough. I used the mixer method, rather than the by hand method – I usually use my kenwood for kneading bread. The bread turned out well, but did not have the WOW factor that I would have liked.

I followed the instructions as much as I could–although didn’t leave it to rise as long as the recipe said. My funny old atlas oven is not the best thing to make bread in – It probably doesn’t get as hot as French Bread needs. Also, I don’t have a pizza stone, so made the bread on a normal oven tray. I did put ice in the oven to create steam which is meant to keep the bread nice and moist.



The bread tastes really yummy – especially warm from the oven with some lovely butter on it. But it didn’t go a glossy brown colour and the outside was not as crisp as I would have liked. I made a rather mis-shaped baguette and a kind of a boule. We ate the baguette hot from the oven and I have put the boule in the freezer.

I am not sure that I would make the French bread again. I don’t think I can re-create the French bread oven enough to get a good result. I think I will stick to making things like fougasse and foccacia.



You can see the other daring bakers’ French bread here.

Daring Bakers - LMP!

My third Daring Baker challenge is lemon meringue pie. This is actually something that I made for the first time last year. I compared the Daring Baker recipe with the recipe I had followed last year and they were pretty close. I had every intention of making little individual tarts just so that I would be doing something different to what I had done before, but time counted against me yet again! One little confession - the challenge was meant to have been posted yesterday (the 28th) but it was anniversary holiday here - I figure as NZ almost leads the way time wise, it is still the 28th in many parts of the world!!

I decided to take the pie into work for my birthday morning tea shout. The crust came together beautifully and I actually baked it the night before I filled it. I knew that the capacity of my tart tin (which is quite shallow) wouldn’t take the entire 5 egg filling specified in the recipe so I made 3/5th of the filling. It wasn’t quite as sweet as the recipe I had made previously and I’m not sure I liked the addition of 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla as I think it ever so slightly detracted from the lemon taste.

Instead of free-forming the meringue, I piped it on. It actually looked quite good – although it was a little browner on top than I would have liked. I put it on a platter and started to carry it down stairs when I realised that it would likely slide straight off the platter onto the floor of my car, so I carefully lifted it into a cake container.

I stopped at the supermarket on the way to work and bought some thickened cream and fresh blueberries. I imagined plating a slice up beautifully for my challenge. BUT, unfortunately the lemon meringue pie was not destined to be all in one piece. It was still kind of warm when I put it in the container at home and when I went to lift it onto a plate at work, the bottom collapsed!!! I was gutted!!!!! Luckily I had taken one (not very good) photo before I left home, but it was heartbreaking that my beautiful pie had to be scooped out of the container onto people’s plates!!!!

The reviews were still good though! Everyone really enjoyed it. The pastry was crisp, the filling tart and the meringue light – even though it was kind of de-constructed the taste was good and I guess that is what counts!

View the rest of the daring bakers (probably not de-constructed!!!) LMPs here.

daring bakers do it again!

This month, the daring bakers challenge has a Christmas theme! It is a yule log. In NZ we have adopted many Northern hemisphere traditions, but the yule log is not one of them. A yule log is basically a sponge filled with a creamy filling, rolled up and then covered in buttercream and decorated to look like a log. The rules were that we could chose whatever flavour spong we wanted and whatever flavour filling we wanted, but had to decorate the log with a dark coloured buttercream - coffee was suggested. we also had to make meringue or marzipan mushrooms to decorate the log.

We went out for dinner last night and I volunteered to make dessert, so thought I would make my log for that. I decided to make a chocolate log and fill it with whipped cream and sliced strawberries whcih is more in keeping for a NZ Christmas. I covered the log with chocolate buttercream.



My meringues were a real disaster (see above)!!!! I normally pride myslef on being a reasonable meringue maker, but for the gods were against me on these babies!! First of all, I decided to half the mixture, but for some reason I did 2/3 of the egg whites, so I had too much egg white for sugar. Then I turned the oven off early as I had to race back to work for a last minute Christmas settlement. Then I took the meringues out of the oven before they were completely cool - I usually leave them in over night. AS a result my "mushrooms" don't look remotely mushroom like! I toook them off before we took it out for dinner.

I was delighted with teh butter cream though. it was delicious and set perfectly. All in all it was a success, mushrooms aside. Once again I attempted something i havent made before and learned new techniques. I wish you could see what it looked like when it was cut open as it looked great with teh strawberries and cream and was delicious!!! See how the other daring bakers did here.

have a wonderful Christmas and happy holidays. I am off for 3 weeks now. Thanks everyone for reading!! It has been a fun few months and my blog is certainly filling the void for writing a cook book!!! I look forward to next year!!! :0)

I am officially a daring baker!

When I first read about the daring bakers on another blog I was so excited – this sounded exactly like my kind of thing!! I love to challenge myself and even better accept a challenge from someone else. The daring bakers are a group of bloggers and each month a different member gets to chose the recipe for the month. Each daring baker has to make the challenge and post about it on the same day. I duly applied for membership and was accepted!!! Nervously I waited to see what my first challenge would be.
I must say I was a little disappointed after reading about the fabulous sticky buns, chocolate caramel tart and other sweet confections of months gone by to find out the November challenge was potato bread chosen by Tanna from My kitchen in half cups. I know not many people make bread, but I do, not really regularly, but often – usually on a Saturday afternoon if it is just going to be the two of us for dinner and sometimes on a Sunday if I feel like some nice fresh bread with lunch. However, I have never made potato bread before and usually I use my kenwood cake mixer rather than knead the recipe by hand as the recipe called for.




So, last weekend, I duly cooked my potatoes and following the recipe to the letter, I made my potato bread. I decided to make my bread into foccacia to go with the salmon salad we were having with dinner. There were some variations allowed for the topping, but with it being my first challenge, I thought I would stick close to the recipe and make the suggested rosemary and sea salt topping.

I used my potato ricer to “mash” the potatoes. I think that helped with keeping a smooth texture for the bread. The only thing I couldn’t get at the supermarket (although you can get it at the organic store, but it wasn’t open when I started making the bread) was unbleached flour, so I just used plain. The recipe said that the mixture was quite wet so I was conscious of not adding too much flour. The kneading part went not too badly – I don’t think I kneaded it as much as I should have but it didn’t make too much difference to the end result.

The dough rose a lot more than other breads I have made – maybe it was because the mixture was more wet or maybe it was the kneading by hand? I made one large foccacia with it, and sprinkled it liberally with chopped rosemary, sea salt and drizzled it with good olive oil. The bread baked beautifully. The crust was lovely and crispy and the inside was fluffy. Even though I only made one loaf, it made enough for us to have some with our dinner (dipped into beautiful parmesan oil which I bought at Sileni Estate in the Hawkes Bay earlier in the year), and I was able to cut the remainder into two decent sized loaves which I froze for another day. My husband said it was some of the best foccacica he has tasted!!! And that is my seal of approval!!!




So, even though initially I wasn’t too excited about my first challenge , in the end it gave me everything I hoped for – I tried something different, using a new technique and it was successful. I cant wait for the December challenge!!! You can see how the other daring bakers did here.