.daring bakers challenge: june.

I am clearly getting my strawberry fix this season!

Erica of Erica's Edibles was our host for the Daring Bakers' June Challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly daring by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.

I was thrilled to read what this challenge was! Baklava has been on my "to make" list forever. Seriously, over a year now. And I just kept putting it off. I can't say I would have been adventurous enough to make my own phyllo dough though!



My notes about the challenge are pretty straight forward. The baklava turned our wonderful, but probably not all that traditional. I didn't use all the appropriate spices but it still tastes dang good. Also, homemade phyllo dough is ridiculously easy to make, but not so easy to roll! I think part of this, however, was thanks to my uber crappy rolling pin. I hate that thing. An ex-boyfriend's grandma gave it to me. I should have known then that she was just trying to pawn it off on someone! Ha.

To make the phyllo dough you simply combine 1 1/3 cups flour, 1/8 teaspoon salt, 1/2 water (plus more if needed), 2 tablespoons vegetable oil (plus a little bit more to coat the dough later), and 1/2 teaspoon cider vinegar. Mix all of these together until combined, adding a small bit of extra water if the dough is too dry, then use a dough hook to knead for 10 minutes, or knead by hand for 20 minutes, until a smooth ball of dough is formed. Coat the dough with a small amount of oil and wrap in plastic wrap. Let rest for about 2 hours. If I could go back, I honestly would probably have doubled this recipe for my dish.

That awesome new food processor I told you about? It was instrumental in taking this lovely lot of ingredients:

To this lovely lot of ready to go baklava filling!

Erica suggested using an adapted Baklava recipe from Alton Brown. Since Mr. Brown is one of my favs I took her advice and followed his recipe on foodnetwork.com. Like I said though, I did not use all the traditional spices, as I didn't want to buy allspice when I really have no other use for it and it would just sit in my cupboard. I also didn't use any rose water. Alton would be so ashamed...

Out of the oven, ready for syrup!

After everything is prepared and the dough has sat long enough you want to roll out the sheets. In order to do this tear off small, golf ball size pieces, and roll them out on a well floured surface. According to Erica you can't over flour! You want each sheet to be as thin as possible, but it will probably not be as thin as store bought phyllo dough. You want at least 20 sheets (which I didn't get, hence needing to make a double batch). Stack the sheets together after rolling them, with flour in between each sheet.

Just got a syrup bath.

Get the rest of your ingredients together and start the layering! I continued to follow Alton's recipe for this. A couple layers of dough, with melted butter brushed between them, a layer of the nut mixture, more dough layers, and so on and so on. Then the baklava goes into the oven. While it's cooking start the syrup (also found on Alton's recipe).

After resting overnight. Mmmmm.

The hardest part was letting this rest overnight so the syrup could soak in. The next day though I had my first piece and it was awesome. This is a great dessert for a large group of people. It's so sweet that a very small piece satisfies any sweet tooth! As it is, I have more than 3/4 of it left still! I clearly need more friends to come over and eat my cooking.

XO

.daring bakers challenge: march.

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 Baker to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake. The recipe is up on the Daring Kitchen!

Completely oozing chocolate

And more chocolate

I immediately knew this was going to be a rocking awesome challenge. As soon as I saw the write up it reminded me of the pain au chocolate (chocolate filled bread) that I used to get from Kaladi Brothers in Anchorage. I am also still trying to master baking with yeast so I was even more excited for extra practice. It was also really nice to hear where the recipe for the coffee cake came from: An old, yellowed piece of paper in Jamie's father's recipe collection from the 1970s. I love that! I decided I was going to do a milk and dark chocolate and pecan coffee cake as well as a savory version with artichoke hearts, olives and goat cheese (hippy food, as the man says).

"Pizza" roll

Overall the recipe came together quite nicely. I did have one complete blond moment where, upon putting the dough in a greased bowl to rise I realized I had forgotten the eggs! I stuck everything back in the mixer and hoped for the best. As it turns out the dough came out quite nicely. I used half white flour and half wheat flour.

The rolls themselves were both incredible. The "pizza" roll, as we've dubbed it, was delicious. I may only be saying that though because I am obsessed with goat cheese. I think because of the olives and artichoke being packed in water, and how liquid the pizza sauce was, the dough in the very middle of the roll remained slightly doughy. Not too big of an issue, but next time I'll probably try to use ingredients that are dried better and cook the roll a little bit longer than 30 minutes.

Oh goat cheese... you are so good.

The yeasted meringue coffee cake though... WOW. This is one of the best things I've made in awhile. It combines two of my favorite things: bread and chocolate! It was absolutely delicious.  I would quote the man but he said inappropriate things about it. Good inappropriate, but inappropriate none the less.

Meringue and cinnamon.

Pecans jumped in.

Then chocolate joins the party.

He's ready for his close up.

Getting an egg wash.

Snipping the vents.

Great challenge this month. I actually feel like a mastered it, which is always a plus!

XO

.daring baker challenge: october.

Who knows what these are?

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Doughnuts!!!

This month Lori, at Butter Me Up, decided the Daring Baker challenge should be some form of doughnut. Now I love doughnuts as much as the next person (or, at least, out of people who love doughnuts) but I had never really had the desire to make them myself. After a bit of research I decided I wanted to make baked doughnuts, as I'm a bit terrified of frying things at home. I was pretty happy with my decision. They turned out very light and tasty, and were not very hard at all. I also chose a recipe that didn't call for yeast so it didn't have to rise for hours.

I used a recipe from Nicko's Kitchen, which can be found in the second video here. They really were just as easy as he makes them look. The only issue I had was my dough was way too sticky to work with so I probably wound up adding 1/4 cup extra flour, or more. I used white whole wheat flour, my new favorite, and added a few shakes of ground nutmeg and cinnamon. To cut them out I just used a biscuit cutter and the big end of a piping tip for the middle hole. Cause, really, who wants to go out and buy doughnut cutters?

I was running out of time to complete the challenge so I just did a simple sprinkling of powdered sugar, rather than icing or a glaze. I think it makes a nice, classic look to the doughnuts. And gives them just a little extra sweetness without tons more sugar!

Will I make doughnuts again? No, probably not. Ha. It was fun. And easy. And they did taste good. But overall I'd rather just eat one deliciously fried and iced doughnut from the store. The man loved them though and, since I'm such a good wife, I probably will wind up making these again, with some more adaptations.

Cook on!

.daring bakers challenge: september.

Yes! This will probably be my favorite monthly post. I am part of a group call Daring Kitchen. This includes Daring Bakers and Daring Cooks. Every month each group gives it's members a challenge in the baking world or cooking world. On the 14th of each month Daring Cooks reveal their completed challenge and on the 27th of each month, IE: TODAY!, Daring Bakers reveal their completed challenge.This month's challenge host was Mandy at What The Fruitcake?! She challenged us all to make homemade decorated sugar cookies with the theme of what September means to us. Awesome.

This challenge took me 7 hours. 7 whole hours. Ok, no, not really. Some of it is freezing time, some of it is baking time, some of it is cooling time but once the decorating starts, WHEW! No resting then. It was really fun though, especially once I got the hang of it. Which would also be known as: after I had already messed up all my really good looking cookies. But, c'est la vie.

So the cookie recipe itself it so easy. So easy y'all. Sugar, butter, flour, egg, extract.... that's it. Mandy's recipes sources were:

Basic Sugar Cookie recipe adapted from Peggy Porschen:
http://www.peggyporschen.com/images/press/pdf/Coso-Bride-Oct-Nov-2008.pdf

Also found in her book: “Romantic Cakes” http://www.peggyporschen.com/book-detail.asp?ID=2 

Royal Icing recipe adapted from The Joy of Baking: http://www.joyofbaking.com/RoyalIcing.html

So, check those out if you'd like to try these cookies yourself.

To start I made the cookie dough, per the instructions. Split it into two sections. Rolled those out with parchment and put them in the freezer. And here was my first challenge. I had never rolled anything out with parchment paper before, I always just use a floured surface. The parchment paper went all over the place every time I tried to roll the dough! It was a pain, for sure. I wound up sticking my kitchen aid mixer on one side and just rolling from one angle, which kind of sucked. It worked out in the end though so, that's all that matters. After letting the dough chill I cut out my shapes, simple circles and a little star cookie cutter. Then back into the freezer for another 30 minutes. After that I baked the cookies in three batches. Two batches of circles for 14 minutes each, and one batch of stars for 8 minutes. The first batch of cookies and the batch of stars turned out great but something went amiss with the second batch of circles..... they rose. Which, if you don't know, sugar cookies are not really supposed to do. Upon examining the cookies I found that the bottom was blown out and I'm thinking what happened was that the second batch was made from scraps that I rerolled and chances are I didn't knead the dough enough and got air bubbles in the cookies. Still, it was very weird.

After letting the cookies cool for about 2 hours I started on the icing. This was my first time working with royal icing and I made quite a few mistakes, but I know where I went wrong so, that's good news, ha. My first mistake was mixing the icing, placing some of it in other cups for other colors, then filling an icing bag with the white icing and starting before mixing the other colors. I realize now that I should have mixed all the colors, place them all in their icing bags, then started. I also realize now that my base white icing was way too runny at first. I quickly learned to add more confectioners sugar.... and to put some parchment paper beneath the cookie rack I was icing on, ha. But, it still turned out pretty good.

The theme I had decided on for my cookies was going to be "Georgia," as my husband and I just moved here. While trying to mix my black and red, however, I realized that wasn't going to work. My black looked purple, and the red looked pink. So, I made a few "G" logos then decided to just play around with some techniques, as you can see.

Overall I'm super happy with my first attempt at decorated sugar cookies. They're not perfect, but they're cute. I have a technique down now and feel like my next batch will be much better.


And, I gotta say, even though they're not perfect, they still tasted amazing!

Thanks Daring Bakers!

Cook on!