.daring bakers challenge: february.

Alright! Here it is for real this time.

Ready to be filled!

The February 2011 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestle Florentine cookies.

Awaiting their chocolate drizzles...

This challenge was so fun. Honestly, both the panna cotta and the cookies were insanely easy. I was so excited to take pictures of them outside on the deck today but it has been dreary and rainy all day long! Bummer!

I did encounter a few issues. The first being, I made my strawberry gelee right after putting my panna cotta in the fridge. Not a smart move on my part. I would recommend waiting a few hours before making a gelee, if you even do, because the panna cotta needs time to set first. So, my gelee just kind of hung out for a bit. I also will probably not even make the gelee if I do panna cotta again, however, as it was a bit too gelled... it tasted a bit rubbery and I wound up eating around it. I might not have added enough fruit. Another issue, my Florentine cookies didn't seem to spread as much as they should have. Not sure what the issue was, but they were still pretty tasty.

I would like to make both of these desserts again. Next time I make the cookies I will probably cut back on the sugar a little bit. They were right on the cusp of being too sweet. The panna cotta, though, was spot on (minus the gelee).

XO

.i'm back.

Did you miss me? I missed you!

Juice and zest for the glaze!

So, I finally seem to be feeling a little bit better and decided I needed to get my self back in the kitchen. My poor husband is a saint. He has subsisted for the last two months on sandwiches, canned soup, take out and frozen pizzas. And he has not complained once. What a man.

Once I started feeling better I thought about what exactly I wanted to start off cooking. I thought I would do something a little bit fun. On thebump.com there is a chart showing you the size of your baby as the pregnancy progresses. For each week they show the new size with a new fruit or vegetable. Very cute, n'est pas? I don't even want to begin to think about week 40 (a watermelon, ZOMG!) but for this last week (week 14) the little nugget was the size of a lemon. I'm going to try to make a new dish each week to correspond with the size of the bebe. This might only last a week, but either way I'll try, haha.

Lemon glaze. And a lemony apron.

I got to thinking, lemons are pretty tasty. You can make a lot of stuff with lemons. This led me to Mrs. Martha Stewart. She has a delicious looking Meyer Lemon Pound Cake recipe that I thought I would scale down. The recipe can be found here. I only made 1/3 of the batter, and that fit perfectly in my loaf pan. I also decreased the cooking time from 1.5 hours to only 1 hour, and that was still too much. The cake was a little bit overcooked. I would recommend checking it at 45 minutes. I also had some issues with my glaze. It was a little bit too runny at first so, I added quite a bit more confectioners sugar and that did the trick.

Overall the recipe was super tasty, very light and lemony. This was my first pound cake and my first time cooking with lemon! It was very successful I would say. 

XO

.dear me.

I am terribly sorry with the lack of posts, folks. No excuse, I just haven't been cooking much. Why you ask? Oh, no reason really..... just a little thing called morning sickness. Bleh!

And actually I don't know if I should even call it that, as I have gotten off quite easy. It's been more like mild-nausea that spikes when I am around food. So yeah, I've generally stayed out of the kitchen lately.

I will be up and at 'em in no time though. And I have been finding some awesome things that I want to try!

I feel like I should end this by telling you I ate Kosher Dill Hot Sauce Flavored pickles, for breakfast. Yeah.

XO