The Daring Bakers' June 2012 - Battenberg Cake

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. 

I had never heard of or seen a Battenberg cake but our host provided this background information: 

The first Battenberg cake was made to celebrate the marriage of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Victoria, to husband Prince Louis of Battenberg. It’s traditionally flavoured with almond and has the signature Battenberg markings, that is, the yellow and pink squares (said to represent the four princes of Battenberg). The strips of sponge are glued together using jam (normally apricot) and the whole cake is covered in marzipan. Sometimes the edges are crimped and the top is patterned with a knife.

I wonder why the four princes were represented by pink and yellow squares? Perhaps to drive future bakers crazy. So I learned a few lessons this month.

1. Even a fancy tricksy cake like this probably won't look spectacular unless you put in a decent effort. I was haphazard with the slicing the cake and hurried the process of gluing the cakes together with jam. So the end result was a very amateur looking cake that I was a little embarrassed to present at my Mothers Group.

2. Chocolate plastique is not my friend. It was mandatory to use a firm edible covering - marzipan, fondant or chocolate plastique. According the instructions, chocolate plastique is a modelling chocolate made by melting chocolate, combining it with corn syrup, cooling it, then kneading it until it is pliable enough to roll out or mold. I was highly sceptical that this would work, but after reading the forum I decided to give it a go. I should have trusted my baker's instinct. Despite kneading for a very long time the chocolate remained grainy, oily and not even close to pliable. I was literally growling with frustration and had to throw a whole block worth of chocolate in the bin. Grrrrrrrrrr. Fortunately I had a good stash of almond meal at home and was able to quickly make some marzipan to enable to me to complete the challenge.

3. Really boring food photos can be improved with software.  

Thank you to Mandy for hosting this month. As always I learned a lot and I am really looking forward to seeing what the much better bakers and photographers of the Daring Kitchen came up with. 


PS - Check out this very cool Rubik's cube Battenburg 

Daring Cooks June 2012- Cannelloni

The finished product - a terrible photo but it was delicious 

Manu from Manu’s Menu was our Daring Cooks lovely June hostess and has challenged us to make traditional Italian cannelloni from scratch! We were taught how to make the pasta, filling, and sauces shared with us from her own and her family’s treasured recipes. 


Every time I make pasta from scratch I get halfway through and swear I will never do it again, and this time was no exception. I have made ravioli a couple of times and also fettuccine and while it was fun, I always felt that the results didn't justify the effort. However, I had never made cannelloni before before and after eating this I was impressed and amazed. I will be very immodest and say honestly that this was the best cannelloni I have ever eaten. The texture was perfect, soft but not too soft, with a gentle bite to it. The handmade pasta combined with two classic sauces and baked up on a cold autumn night made for a fantastic meal that we shared with my Dad. 


I used the host's Cannelloni Di Carne recipe which you can find here. The only thing that I did differently was to follow the instructions in Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (my favourite Italian cookbook) for making pasta dough by hand. She instructs you to knead for a "full 8 minutes" until the dough is "as smooth as baby skin". So I set the timer and kneaded away. It seemed like a long time and if I hadn't been timing I probably would have stopped after about 5 minutes. But I noticed after around 7 minutes there was a significant change in the consistency if the dough - it became  smoother and more supple. 


The most tedious part of making pasta is the rolling, rolling and re-rolling and that is the point at which I curse myself for forgetting that I swore never to do this again. (Coincidentally a few days after making this I saw in Aldi an electric pasta roller and actually thought that is not such a crazy idea.) But it is also awkward and time consuming to boil the pasta before filling it with the meat sauce. Plus you have the make the meat sauce and the cheese sauce and then bake the completed product. Fortunately I lucked out with a patient and happy baby on this particular day and the end result was really spectacular. 


Many thanks to Manu for this challenge (and to Marcella), I can no longer say that its not worth making your own pasta. 

A collage makes this look much easier than it was

My faithful assistant, also used to assess smoothness of the dough

The Daring Bakers' May 2012 Challenge - Challah

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.


I love when a challenge is something I have not heard of and that was the case this month. I also love sweet eggy buttery breads, so it was a good month. 


Challah is a Jewish celebration bread that is traditionally served on the Sabbath. Fortunately I made two loaves and put one in the freezer, because if there had been only one there is no way it would have lasted until Sunday. 


The mixing part was very simple to do in the stand mixer. The braiding part was slightly more complicated, but like most girls who have ever had long hair (or even a doll with long hair), I can plait pretty well. I chose to do a 4 strand braid, but you can't really see that from the finished product because it over-rose and the surface tore down the middle when baked. I don't know what the technical term for this is but I think it happened because I proved them for too long. I was not too upset though because it still makes a gorgeous looking loaf. 


I made the whole wheat version suggested by Ruth because I generally like wholemeal (as we call it Australia) but I think for next time plain white would probably work better.


Thanks to Ruth for the terrific challenge and especially for including lots of interesting information about challah - I really enjoyed baking (and eating) it. 

The Daring Cooks' May 2012 - Bouef Bourguignon

Our May 2012 Daring Cooks’ hostess was Fabi of fabsfood. Fabi challenged us to make Boeuf Bourguignon, a classic French stew originating from the Burgundy region of France.


This was a great challenge for me just at the moment. Firstly the weather is turning colder here in Sydney, so a lovely beefy stew is pretty appetising. It also makes 6 portions, so I could use it to add to my stash of frozen dinners. I recently discovered that it is a good idea to not cook dinner from scratch on the same day I clean the house - it only took me 5 months of staying at home to work that one out. 


The version of Boeuf Bourguignon suggested by the host is what I would call elaborate, in that it required the beef, the onions and the mushrooms to each be cooked separately and then combined together. The recipe is based on one from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which it goes without saying does not steer you wrong. So I was happy to follow the copious instructions, although I did note that there is a BB recipe in Stephanie Alexander's The Cooks Companion, which is also very reliable, and quite a bit simpler.  


My execution of this recipe provides a good illustration of my life at the moment. I spent most of the morning weighing, peeling and chopping the various components, in between feeds and naps and cuddles. Then I popped the meat in the oven and headed out to playgroup. It was supposed to cook for 3- 4 hours, which is roughly how long it takes me to walk to playgroup, play and walk back. But it was a lovely sunny day, the playgroupies wanted to stay longer than usual and I was the only committee member there, so I had to wait until everyone left. Then little mister fell asleep on the walk home and as decent naps are rather hard to come by for us, I was reluctant to go inside and tend to the BB until he woke up. So by time I got to it, it had been stewing away for 5 hours. There was not much sauce left and the meat was falling apart but it was far from ruined, so I was happy. 

Rather fortuitously I had leftovers of two delicious starchy sides to serve with the BB. Some parsnip dumplings left over from this recipe. And some leftover swede and potato cake leftover from this recipe. (Just quickly, isn't the internet amazing? Is there are recipe that you can't find a link to these days?)


So a few hours later, after our bath-feed-story-bed routine, it was nice and simple to reheat, add some veg and there we had a pretty amazing dinner. 


I can't recall now, but it is likely that we got about three quarters of the way through the meal before being summoned to the baby's room for a little more settling. "I'll go", "No, I'll go", "No its okay, you finish your dinner." Life is good. 


A big thank you to Fabi for hosting this challenge. I will think of you on housecleaning days in the coming weeks when I am eating delicious Boeuf Bourguignon for dinner without having to lift a finger.  

The Daring Bakers April 2012 - Armenian Nutmeg Cake

The Daring Bakers’ April 2012 challenge, hosted by Jason at Daily Candor, were two Armenian standards: nazook and nutmeg cake. Nazook is a layered yeasted dough pastry with a sweet filling, and nutmeg cake is a fragrant, nutty coffee-style cake.


So I have missed a few challenges since my little man arrived 5 months ago. It is not that I don't have time to cook. I am at home on maternity leave and I cook pretty much every day. It is just the palaver of photographing, choosing and editing the photos and writing the posts that I find hard to get around to. Its also hard to find time to read the forums and look at other's blog posts, which is half the fun of the Daring Kitchen. 


This challenge was the perfect example. I completed the challenge on time, although only after a timely reminder via social media from The Procrastinating Baker (ironic no?) Yet here I am several weeks later still trying to get my post up. But I do want to continue with the Daring Kitchen though as I enjoy it so much. So I will try harder. 


This nutmeg cake was very easy to make. I whipped it up in under 2 hours after a last minute invitation to visit a friend. It was mostly devoured over a  lovely afternoon chatting with 2 mum friends. Breastfeeding is such a great excuse to eat extra cake.  


I love nutmeg but don't tend to use it very much apart from atop banana smoothies. So I was slightly nervous about using 1.5 teaspoons as it such a strong flavour, but it was not too much at all and next time I would even use more. 

Daring Bakers March 2012 Challenge - Tiger Bread

Sara and Erica of Baking JDs were our March 2012 Daring Baker hostesses! Sara & Erica challenged us to make Dutch Crunch bread, a delicious sandwich bread with a unique, crunchy topping. Sara and Erica also challenged us to create a one of a kind sandwich with our bread!

What a great challenge this was Make a yummy new bread and then make a special sandwich with it. I loved the idea when I saw it at the start of the month and thought I would have plenty of time to bake it and try out different sandwich toppings. Then suddenly I was reminded by a Facebook post from a fellow DB that it was the end of the month and hey I hadn't even started.

So that very afternoon I marched into the kitchen and whipped up the rolls. It's a very simple white bread recipe with a rice flour paste painted on top to create the crunch and tiger-like appearance. They came out a little dense but certainly yummy.

When it came to the sandwich I went with the amazingly creative approach of "what we had" - which was tomato, beetroot, avocado, cheddar cheese and rocket. I have never been a big fan of the salad sandwich, but with the sweet bread and a good slather of mayo, this was actually quite delicious.

Thanks Sara and Erica for a great challenge. I loved learning about this unique bread and seeing the sandwiches that others came up with.

Daring Bakers' February 2012 Challenge - Quick Breads

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.
I think I have mentioned before my crazy love of banana bread. "Toasted, no butter" is pretty much my catch-cry. At times I have eaten a slice a day for weeks on end. So I was pretty happy to see quick breads as the challenge and an opportunity for me to broaden my quick bread horizons.
I had high hopes to make many different breads, including a lime version of this lemon coconut bread and a proper high fat "cafe-style" banana bread. But once again I must plead the excuse of the new little baby in my life. In the end I made just two versions, one sweet and one savoury.
The sweet bread was this zucchini bread. Sadly it was not "the best" and in fact was not even very good, but I did omit the chocolate (because I ate it) and reduce the sugar (because we had run out) so I can't blame the recipe.

Zucchini bread - Papa loaf and baby loaf

The savory bread was a stout version of this beer and cheese bread. I happened to have some stout left over from making a most amazing stout and coffee ice-cream. (I would very highly recommend that recipe, but it's not part of the challenge.) The stout bread was interesting and livened up a few dinners, but it was a little too stodgy for my taste.

Stout bread - toasted, no butter 

Thank you to our host Lis. Without Lis there would be no Daring Kitchen. Imagine! It was great to have a challenge that allows us to see the amazing creativity of the bakers, I will never get tired of that.

Daring Cooks' February 2012 Challenge - Patties

The Daring Cooks' February Challenge was hosted by Audax and Lis and they chose to present patties for their ease of construction, ingredients and deliciousness. We were given several recipes, and learned the different types of binders and cooking methods to produce our own tasty patties.

Initially I was a little disappointed with this month. Patties. Not exactly daring and certainly not a challenge. But what it lacked in daring it made up for in deliciousness. Anything that leads to three yummy meals in one month can't be cause for complaint. I made two of the recipes suggested by the host and then free-styled a third.

The first was zucchini, prosciutto and cheese fritters. Thanks to my Mum's garden's zucchini abundance and to Costco's irresistibly cheap prosciutto, I already had all the ingredients in the fridge. These are technically a fritter and so are poured and fried like pancakes rather than pre-shaped. In any case, they were yummy. I served them with a fattoush style bread salad for a very pleasing dinner.

The second recipe was titled Basic Canned Fish and Rice Patties. Not the most inspiring sounding dish, but when host Audax said it was one of his favorite recipes and he makes it regularly, I knew it would be good. And good it was. Simple ingredients that you would almost certainly have on hand, easy to prepare and really tasty. This recipe is a keeper.

Finally I made my own rather special creation - Thai Fish Cakes. These were inspired by, but rather different to, traditional deep fried thai fish cake. The ingredients were simply the leftovers from two dinners made by my partner Tom. The dinners were the rather incongruous Hot and Sour Rice soup from a David Thompson recipe and red wine braised rabbit from a Julia Child recipe. So when I was emptying out the fridge on a Sunday night and found one container of leftover fish soup and rice, and one of leftover steamed potato and carrot I decided to (literally) mash them together and fry them up. Hey patty! As you'll see from the picture, my patties were too wet and my frying technique poor, so the end result looked like a hash, but it tasted fantastic. Served with a little Sriracha on the side it made a great lunch.

So that was my adventure in patty land. Thank you to our hosts, I really enjoyed the recipes you provided and got a kick out of making up my own.

Daring Bakers' January 2012 Challenge - Scones

The amazing 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!

Scones are simple to make but Audax encouraged us to make multiple batches and really perfect the technique. This is a wonderful idea and I would have loved to do so, but a little baby is taking priority at the moment. I am just pleased that I managed to make two different versions, photograph them and do a blog post. 
For the first batch I followed the host's recipe and directions. It worked very well but honestly, anything tastes good fresh out of the oven and slathered in jam and cream. It was interesting to discover that I consider scones absolutely must be accompanied by a red jam - strawberry, blackberry etc, while Tom considers marmalade or apricot jam to be perfectly acceptable. 

Plain scones with the compulsory cream and strawberry jam 

For the second batch I made Flo's pumpkin scones. For any non-Australia readers, Florence (or Flo) Bjelke-Petersen is a former politician and wife of a well-known ultra-conservative politician, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. I am not sure why, but she is also known for her recipe for pumpkin scones. While she is certainly not my cup of tea politically, I was keen to try her famous scones. They were tasty enough, especially plenty of of butter, but I was disappointed that they didn't taste of pumpkin at all. 
Thank you to our host Audax, who not only did an amazing job with this challenge, but contributes a huge amount to the Daring Bakers and Daring Cooks every month. Visit his blog to be amazed. 

Flo's pumpkin scones

My best creation

Our little bun was in the oven a little longer than expected, but as you can see,  he was perfectly cooked when he came out. 

Back in my apron for the first time. Shepherd's Pie, for the record. 

The birth-day cake. Chocolate congac cake, baked by Ama. 

Dinner has become a moveable feast. 

 

Daring Cooks' December 2011 - Cha Sui Bao

Our Daring Cooks’ December 2011 hostess is Sara from Belly Rumbles! Sara chose awesome Char Sui Bao as our challenge, where we made the buns, Char Sui, and filling from scratch – delicious!

Okay, so this is possibly going to be my dodgiest post ever. I completed this challenge back in late November but stupidly I didn't do my post before our baby was born (!) on 8 December. Since then I have been um, kinda busy. But I have to post to prove I did it and besides, this was my favourite DC challenge yet.  I love to eat BBQ pork buns but had never made them at home before, and both versions I made were excellent. 
I first made the recipe as suggested by the host, cooking the BBQ pork on the BBQ (duh!) and steaming the buns. Then, as I was a lady of leisure on maternity leave, I also made a version of David Chang's famous pork buns, which are like a cross between Char Sui Bao and Peking Duck pancakes. 
Thank you for the challenge Sara, I loved it. 

The inside of the Char Sui Bao with Tom enjoying one in the background 

The BBQ pork on the trusty Weber BabyQ 

Char Sui Bao pre-steaming 

My Momofuku-style pork buns. We visited David Chang's new Sydney restaurant Seiobo for Tom's birthday in October and these buns were served as part of the 14 course degustation

Daring Bakers November 2011 - Sans Rival

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.

I got in early this month so I could make this in time for my very last day at work before starting maternity leave. A Sans Rival cake involves layers of baked dacquoise (similar to meringue) with lots and lots of buttercream icing. I have a serious sweet tooth and am not afraid of fat, but even I had to baulk at the idea of eating this cake between two. Fortunately it was a big hit at work . I am hoping that I find a mothers' group that likes baked goods so I have a regular place to share the DB challenges and other sweet things I make.

I made the recipe exactly as prescribed, except I adopted a suggestion from someone in the forum to bake the dacquoise layers spread on baking paper instead of in a tin. That worked really well because I don't have multiple cake tins in the same size, but I could still bake 2 at a time. Although this is not the kind of thing I would usually make by choice, it was lots of fun to prepare the layers and decorate the cake.

Thank-you Catherine for hosting this month and for introducing me to something new. I would love to explore more Filipino foods in the future.

The Daring Cooks November 2011 - Cooking with Tea

Sarah from Simply Cooked was our November Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to create something truly unique in both taste and technique! We learned how to cook using tea with recipes from Tea Cookbook by Tonia George and The New Tea Book by Sara Perry.

For this month's challenge I took up smoking. I'd had the idea of using tea leaves to smoke food floating around in my head for awhile, I can't remember where I picked it up. So when this challenge was revealed and the only requirement was to make something savoury with tea, I knew what I wanted to do.

I googled tea-smoked chicken and it came back with hundreds of recipes and suggestions, but many of them were based on a mixture of equal parts tea leaves, raw rice and brown sugar. The traditional approach is to use a foil-lined wok but I wanted to try it in our barbecue.

I have described my method and ingredients below, but it really extremely flexible and could be used in any sort of salad, or sandwich or ramen or pasta or whatever. The result was some perfectly cooked and very tasty chicken pieces, but the smoke flavour was very subtle and the tea flavour was non-existent. I think it would need a longer smoking time (at a lower temperature than I could achieve in our barbecue) to develop more flavour.

Tea-smoked chicken summer salad

For the chicken

4 skinless chicken thigh pieces

Salt

Pepper

1/4 cup tea leaves

1/4 cup uncooked rice

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 cinnamon stick crumbled into pieces

Lightly season the chicken with salt and pepper and set aside.

Preheat your barbecue on high for around 10 minutes.

Choose a robust baking tray and wire rack that will fit inside your barbecue.

Wrap the tray on both sides with a double layer of foil.

Combine the tea, rice, sugar and cinnamon and spread evenly inside the tray.

Place the tray inside the barbecue and wait until it starts to smoke

Place the chicken on the rack and then put the wire rack over the tea mixture in the barbecue.

Turn the heat down to low, close the lid of the barbecue and leave for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes I checked the temperature using a digital thermometer with a probe and it was good to go.

For the salad (to serve 2)

2 smoked chicken thighs, shredded

1/2 cos lettuce, shredded

1 bunch asparagus, blanched and sliced

1/2 ripe avocado, sliced

1 cup cherry tomatoes, quartered

Combine all the ingredients in a salad bowl and dress as desired. I used just a little olive oil and balsamic.

Daring Bakers' October 2011 - Povitica

The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

What a beautiful challenge. While I am usually more interested in the taste of food than the look, it is fun to make something that also looks lovely. And I had never heard of or seen this kind of bread before.

The basic idea is to make a sweet bread dough, roll it out very thin, top it with a sweet nutty filling, roll it up jelly roll style, then loop the roll around in the bread pan to create a pretty pattern in the baked loaf.

The challenge recipe called for a 1.5 hour rise time, but with a really busy week and an inability to stay up late, I made the dough in the evening, left it to rise all night, then rolled and baked early the next morning. Surprisingly this didn't seem have any adverse effect on the finished product.

You can find the recipe I used, which was created by the host, here in the Daring Kitchen archive. I made the half batch to produce 2 loaves. For one loaf I used the suggested walnut filling and for the other I used poppy seeds, simply replacing the amount of ground walnuts in the recipe with poppy seeds.

You can see from the pictures that the poppy seed version was more successful. I think that was partly because I allowed the loaf longer to rise/rest after it was placed in the plan, and party because the poppy seed mixture was thinner and easier to spread than the walnut version.

It seems that this bread also goes by the name Potica, and you can find many different recipes by searching for that.

Thanks to Jenni for the excellent challenge - it was fun to make and yummy to eat and I will definitely be making it again. This last picture features one of my favorite op-shopped linen tea towels - I thought it was appropriate as it was made in Czech republic.

The Daring Cooks October 2011 - Moo Shu

The October Daring Cooks' Challenge was hosted by Shelley of C Mom Cook and her sister Ruth of The Crafts of Mommyhood. They challenged us to bring a taste of the East into our home kitchens by making our own Moo Shu, including thin pancakes, stir fry and sauce.

I was intrigued by this month's challenge. We eat lots of Chinese and go to lots of Chinese restaurants and I have never heard of Moo Shu. I don’t think it is a thing in Australia. But I love pancakes of any description, so I was keen to give it a go. In fact on the day I made this I also made pancakes for breakfast - a truly excellent day.

So this challenge had three components – pancakes, filling and sauce. The pancake dough was easy to work with and I found I could roll it very thin, but I was not completely happy with the results. In short, the pancakes were hard. I found they were only pliable enough to wrap after a short zap in the microwave. A minute or so in a steam basket would probably have the same effect. Also the favour was quite bland. Next time I would follow the suggestion of some of the other Daring Cooks and add salt to the dough.

The stir-fry was very simple to prepare, but I had never used wood ear fungus before, so that was fun. It is amazing how much it puffs up when re-hydrated and I loved the unique rubbery texture. I still have most of a bag of dried fungus in the cupboard so I am on the lookout for ideas to use it up.

When it came to the hoisin sauce recipe I was very sceptical. Why would you make your own hoisin sauce, especially with inauthentic Chinese ingredients like peanut butter and honey? But I am a (mostly) obedient Daring Cook, so I gave it a whirl.

The overall effect was a perfectly tasty dinner, but for me it didn't quite have the wow factor of other challenges. I would love to try Moo Shu in a good Chinese restaurant and see how it compares.

Thanks to Shelley and Ruth for introducing me to something new. I especially enjoyed reading about the history and etymology of Moo Shu.

Croissants - Daring Bakers' Challenge September 2011

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!

Ah, whoops. I was so excited about this challenge that I didn't realise we were required to make croissants to a specific recipe. 500 grams of butter later, there was no way I was going to make a second batch, so I hope I will be forgiven.

I recently acquired the Bourke St Bakery cookbook, which I have wanted for ages. I got it at the newly opened Sydney Costco for only $30 and was excited to try the croissant recipe. The book includes a basic croissant dough which can be used to make traditional croissants, pan au chocolat, raisin scrolls and danishes.

The basic recipe calls for 900 grams of flour, 500 grams of butter and fresh yeast, and at one point the instructions say to roll the dough out to 90 cm, which is wider than our kitchen bench. So the recipe is not wonderfully suited to the home baker. But I forged ahead. The results were not perfect. The taste was too buttery - I know croissants are meant to be buttery, but these were extreme. In terms of texture, the outside was crisp and somewhat flakey, but the inside was a little too doughy.

The interior honeycomb - not perfect but not a disaster either.

The money shot! Despite my misgivings, I must say that when I was eating this for breakfast the next day, with butter, strawberry jam and a coffee, I was feeling extremely smug.

I divided the huge amount of dough into three and also made some almond croissants and cinnamon nut scrolls.

Almond croissants are my personal all-time favorite pastry and there are lots of different versions. I made mine by spreading some frangipane over the cut croissant dough before rolling and then sprinkling flaked almonds on the top before baking.

I made the scrolls using the cinnamon bun roll and cut technique with chopped walnuts added. All three versions were tasty but I liked the basic croissant best. I froze some of each version and I am hoping I can lure some friends around for brunch soon and impress them with my handmade pastry.

Thank you to our host Sarah and I am awfully sorry I didn't make the Julia Child recipe. I promise I will try it out next time I make croissants.

Appam and Curry - The Daring Cooks Challenge August 2011

Mary, who writes the delicious blog, Mary Mary Culinary was our August Daring Cooks’ host. Mary chose to show us how delicious South Indian cuisine is! She challenged us to make Appam and another South Indian/Sri Lankan dish to go with the warm flat bread.

I am always excited when a new challenge is revealed, but I was especially excited when I saw this one. I have a connection with Sri Lanka because my father was born there and my grandparents lived there as tea-estate managers for many years. Also my sister lived in Colombo for a time in 2006 and I visited her there. I have many good memories of the food, but my absolute favorite thing was the egg hopper - also known as appam!

I made the appams, the beef curry and the carrot dish as suggested by the host. You can find all the recipes here. I also made a pol sambol from a recipe by Charmaine Solomon and a chilli sambol. This was one of the best meals I have had in a long time. The variety of flavours and textures was wonderful and everything tasted very authentic.

I saved some of the batter for next morning and made an egg hopper. I wouldn't usually go for chilli sambol at breakfast, but this was brilliant and also very satisfying.

And look - this is a picture from my trip to Sri Lanka in 2006. You can see an egg hopper with pol sambol and chilli sambol in the background, and I think probably a fish curry in the foreground. How good is it that I am able to recreate such amazing food at home? Thank you so much host Mary, this was my favourite challenge yet.

Fresh Fraisiers - Daring Bakers July 2011

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

Yes, this was as good as it looks. A chiffon cake soaked with sugar syrup and filled with pastry cream and strawberries - pretty hard to go wrong here. Each of the compulsory components were simple to make, but you'll be pleased to hear that I made things a bit more challenging for myself. Firstly, by baking it on the last possible night and not starting until after 7pm. And secondly by transporting the finished cake over 90 kilometers on the train the next day to share with my colleagues in a regional office.

You can find the recipes here in the Daring Kitchen archive. I chose to make the chocolate flavored chiffon cake. I used syrup that was left over from poaching rhubarb, so it was infused with flavors of rhubarb, orange and vanilla.

My colleagues absolutely loved the cake. I have not baked for them before and it was a joy because they all went out of their way to thank me and say how much they enjoyed it. I thanked them in return for helping me not to eat the whole thing myself.