Daring Baker’s Challenge - September 2015

OK --it’s been waaaay too long since I played in the Daring Baker’s Challenge, so back to it! 

For the month of September Meredith from the Poco Loco Olsons challenged us to experiment with soda bread.

I was happy to see a pretty easily accomplished recipe for my first recipe back. I’ve made Irish Soda Bread a number of times before but thought I’d try the source recipe for this challenge instead of using other recipes this time. 

The recipe from the challenge can be found here.

What is different about this recipe is that it uses Whole Wheat flour. I don’t think I’ve ever made a whole wheat soda bread before. 

The dough came together, just as the recipe indicated and it was quickly ready for the oven. 

I seemed to (strangely) out of the parchment paper the recipe called for, so just baked the bread on my stone.

It was ready to pull out after the first 30 minutes of baking -- golden brown all over. Clearly with no need for the additional 10 minutes. 

The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris. You can find your copy of these recipes on the Daring Kitchen website.

I have to admit, I was not looking forward to this challenge. I'm not a big fan of marmalade, nor orange desserts. And the individual servings looked tedious and troublesome. Therefore, I put it off until quite late in the month.

I do have to admit, though, the marmalade is the best marmalade I've ever had -- and would choose to have it on toast. (In fact, it's pretty impressive on homemade brioche!).

I ended up making the Orange Tian in a tart pan, and assembled it right side up, rather than upside down and flipped as the instructions call for. It seemed appropriate since the base was a Pate Sablee. The completed dessert also surpassed my expectations and was surprisingly good. 

Daring Baker’s Challenge - June 2011

This month's Daring Baker's challenge was simply too good to pass up. Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge.  Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava. The Recipe can be found here.

Good Baklava is fantastic - but finding good baklava is often a challenge in Southern Oregon. So the opportunity to make it for the Daring Baker's challenge was simply too enticing to pass up. Besides, the opportunity to make phyllo is intriguing--I've been looking for a good reason to try my hand at phyllo and this was that opportunity.

So I set about making the homemade phyllo and baklava. The hardest part was simply finding an appropriate dowel to roll out the baklava with. The reason it was hard was that I didn't want to drive into town to the hardware store and had to find something at the general store that would work. I finally found a short pipe that with the benefit of a saw - would do the trick.

While the video makes it seem supremely easy to roll the dough onto the pipe/dowel, the reality is not quite that simple. Whenever I tried it, I ended up wrinkling the dough -- now crinkled fabric is pretty -- but it's not quite the look I was going for in my phyllo. So I ended up rolling it out in the beginning and end, but tried to roll it up on the dowel in the middle. Clearly, I have more technique to perfect, and used the final rolls to flatten it out as best I could.

Baklava itself though, is extremely simple to make. Just nuts a few spices and a food processor. Then patiently assembling the whole deal (imagine a lasagna). Cut it, pop it in the oven, and then start the syrup. Recut it, finish baking, an pour the syrup over the whole thing. There is a scary moment or two when you're pouring the syrup over and it looks like the whole thing may float away -- but it absorbs the initial onslaught quickly, and that's the magic of baklava.

Daring Baker's Challenge - March 2011

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

After an absence of far too long, the Daring Baker's Challenge this month was too good to pass up. A Yeasted Meringue Filled Coffee Cake. Yum! That coupled with the return of my stand mixer (which broke on Thanksgiving) from KitchenAid*, and it seemed like the perfect way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon.

I opted to make Jamie’s All-American versions with cinnamon, chopped pecans and chocolate chips or chopped chocolate - it simply sounded too good to be true. While the recipe was fun to make, the results were less than amazing. We certainly won't be making this again, but rejoining the Daring Baker's Challenge was fun.