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Tag Archives: Daring Bakers
This month’s challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux. They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.
 
What is a French Yule Log you say and how is it different from the Buches de Noel that the Daring Bakers made last December? In France you can buy two kinds of Yule log, either the Genoise and Buttercream type such as the Buches de Noel or what is more common which is a frozen Yule Log, which is very reminiscent of an ice cream cake, only it is not made of ice cream but rather chocolate mousse. In French this is called an entremets, which is sometimes translated in English as simply a cream dessert. When I first read the recipe I was definitely intimidated by the 18 pages of instruction, in fact, I seriously reconsidered making it on and off for a couple weeks. Then as with all challenges, I just decided to do it, I knew I could this! So, I came up with a plan and decided to prepare this special dessert for our annual crab fest with our good friends, Evelyn, Will and MEM. WAIT! There’s more »
I was very excited to see October’s challenge listed on the DB site – Basic Pizza Dough, by Peter Reinhart, I am so glad that Rosa over at Rosa’s Yummy Yum decided to continue with this challenge. She was suppose to host this challenge with Sher at What Did You Eat, unfortunately for all of us the lovely Sher passed away last summer.
We love making pizza at home and this recipe was very easy, even the tossing of the dough – which was too fun, so much in fact, we forgot to snap photos. The crust was thin and crispy and very flavorful. We topped ours with arugula, fresh tomatoes, olive oil and sea salt – so good!
Be sure to check out the other Daring Bakers, too!
over another Daring Baker Challenge. Our hosts this month, are Shel of Musings from the Fish Bowl and Natalie of Gluten A Go Go and they vegan and/or gluten-free lavash crackers from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. I had big plans to get very creative with this months challenge; but, then last night while having a glass of wine, listening to the debate, hanging out with my man and twittering, I realized (thanks to Susan) that the challenge was due today! EEEKKSS!
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I was EXCITED when I saw this month’s Daring Baker’s Challenge. Meetak of What’s for Lunch Honey and Tony of Tony Tahhan were our hostesses this month and they picked, Sugar Daddy Pierre Herme’s Chocolate Eclairs. After this challenge, I should be saying, my new sugar daddy’s sinfully chocolate eclairs! WOW!
I have been itching to make chocolate eclairs since I saw the French edition of Gourmet a few months back and have not had a chance or a reason to make them; after all, it is the LAST thing we need laying around our house!!! I knew I had to make them before heading out for vacation and lucky for me, the perfect opportunity came up, dinner at W & E’s house. I knew the MEM would appreciate a little chocolate in their lives…….
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Those Daring Bakers are at it again! Our challenge this month was hosted by Lis of La Mia Cucina and Ivonne of Cream Puffs of Venice, the ever so talented creators of the DB cult, as well, there were two honor hosts, Fran of Apples Peaches Pumpkin and Shea of Whiskful. As well this challenge has been dedicated to honorary Daring Baker member, Barbara of Winos and Foodies as well. WOW, that was a lot, huh?
Now onto the unveiling …. drum roll please! A very “tradition” and very “French” desert, one that I have loved on too many occasions when in France. The Opera Cake! You are asking yourself, what exactly is an Opéra Cake? Well it’s a cake that is made up of five components: a joconde (a cake layer), a syrup (to wet the joconde), a buttercream (to fill some of the layers), a ganache or mousse (to top the final cake layer) and a glaze (to cover the final layer of cake or of ganache/mousse). Traditionally, it is made with darker flavors, ie .. such as chocolate or coffee. This particular challenge we were instructed to keep it light – no dark flavors allowed!
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Moven over at Food Art and Random Thoughts is the hostess for this month’s Daring Baker Challenge. I was going to sit out it out as it has been a challenging month for me in so many other ways …. did I really need another challenge this month? As well, I was scared to have a big beautiful cake sitting around the house for L and I to devour. When I woke up yesterday morning I told L how I was going to use this months challenge as one of my two, to not do. Even though I felt it would be the easiest one I have done as of yet. Well …… he convinced me that I should not give up and I should do it.
So, yesterday at 5pm, I was making Dorrie’s Party Cake, to take over to an impromptu dinner party at our friend’s J and A’s home. Was I crazy to try to make a cake at 5pm for a 730pm dinner party!?!?! Kind of…….
The recipe is so simple to follow, everything just started falling into place, so easy. The house smelled of sugar, buttermilk and sweet Meyer Lemons – was delicious! Then came the time to whip up the buttercream …. I could not keep my fingers nor my sweet little god-daughters out of the shiny meringue and buttery goodness – we were being pretty naughty over the kitchen aid!
I used tart raspberry preserves for the filling as the recipe calls for. I was worried I may run out of buttercream to frost the cake so I did skimp on the buttercream between the layers – now I know better. I opted out of the coconut part of the challenge only because I am not a big fan of flaked coconut.
I was finished with the challenge by 645pm, just enough time to wipe off the flour from my hands and pretty up for a dinner party. The cake turned beautiful and what a wonderful combination of flavors. The tartness of the buttermilk, the sweetness of the raspberry preserves and the freshness of spring that came from the Meyer Lemons was really nice. The cake was light and not to dense and the buttercream was amazing light and fluffy. We served the cake with a chilled glass of Lemoncello – everyone loved it!
Thank you L for convincing me not to give up on this challenge and Thank You Dorrie for creating a beautiful recipe – we will be using this more often!
The Daring Baker’s challenge for February was hosted by Breadchick Mary over at The Sour Dough and Sara over at I like to Cook. Drum roll please! It was Julia Child’s Pain Francais. (click here to see more photos of this challenge)
When I first read the recipe given to us by Breadchick and Sara, I was scared, very scared, 15 pages of instructions! WOW, this was going to be the mother of all challenges for me thus far. I was sure I was going to use this as one of my two I could bail on. Then I stared reading other comments from fellow DBs and I became inspired, should we say very inspired or just DAMN INSPIRED! I could not wait!
There was only one weekend in the entire month that I could do this and we were kind of busy – friend in from Hawaii, errands, dinner with friends – but, I knew I could make it work. So, Saturday rolled around and I did errands, worked, picked up the house, blah blah blah and dinner time hit! “Damn, I forgot the bread and now I had plans on Sunday with the friend!!!” But, I was confident that I could make it work ……
I got up early Sunday, started the lengthly process. So, far very good! The first rising was perfect and right on my tight schedule! Got it all ready for the next round of keeping warm and headed out for lunch and shopping with friend. It was hard to cut it short and fast because of a loaf of bread, so it ran a little late. Got home, still perfect! All was working out so well. I was very confident and very happy. Proceeded with the remaining steps and then molded the dough with my new pastry canvas and tucked it all in next to a warm heater and headed out to dinner! We had a fantastic dinner with friends but once dessert ended I started watching the clock and thinking about my perfect little breads at home. Again, I did not want to bolt over a pan of bread, so I held out as long as I could and finally told L. we had to leave. Then they started talking about after dinner drinks – NO!!! Thank god the host decided to kick us out since it was a school night!
Got home and all still looked perfect! I could not believe I had done it and still had a day of fun without sitting at home waiting for all the rising to take place. Now was time to unmold the beauties and get them ready to bake! Only 30 minutes until I could call it a wrap and head to bed!
Well, let’s just say – never be over confident when baking bread, especially this bread! They collapsed! They were flat baguettes! The color as beautiful! The texture was fantastic! The flavor was well, very french! But, something happened when I unmolded them – lost all their air, they were flat!
Moral to the story ….. Never be over confident until they come out of the oven! Was it a challenge – of course! Was it fun – definitely! Will, I make them again – on our next rainy weekend!!
make pie! Jen, from The Canadian Baker, was our hostess this month and she challenged us with making a Lemon Meringue Pie. This was my first time making a Lemon Meringue Pie and I even got L. to help out – we actually had a lot of fun doing it together! We made it for a dinner party we had a couple weekends back and our guests loved it. We loved it so much we made, it again, the next day and then again the following weekend!
We did use our lemon of choice which is the beautiful Meyer. As well I do not own a pie pan so we used a tart pan. The pastry dough was light and flaky and the filling was a beautiful shade of yellow and had just enough pucker! Meringue well you just can not go wrong with any sort of meringue. The first two pies came from the same recipe and unfortunately, once you cut into the pie it was more like floating islands on lemon soup – great flavor though. The second time around, we cut the water down but it was still rather runny. The flavor was so fantastic that it really did not matter to us nor our guests!
Want a taste of the drool fest click the blue link!
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