Piece Monteé: Daring Bakers’ Challenge May 2010

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.  For this challenge, we must make our own pate a choux (puff pastry) and crème patissiere, and our piece montée needed to be a mounted structure with some height to it. And for once, I completed the challenge early in the month! Woo! I did have hopes of having another go at it though, as my pate a choux didn’t turn out as well as hoped. But as usual, the month just got away from me!  I really enjoyed this challenge, and it has opened the door to lots of other pastries with the same pate a choux base. And despite the height of my croquembouche, it disappeared pretty quickly!

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Traditional British Puddings: Daring Bakers’ Challenge April 2010

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.  I had two different attempts at this challenge, both sweet. I had planned for a savoury pudding, but the last month just flew by!  I will make a steak and ale pudding with a suet crust at some stage though, just not this month!  My two tries were a steamed rhubarb pudding (made with butter, not suet) and a steamed treacle pudding (pictured above) which was a bit of a disaster!  I really enjoyed this month’s challenge – I just wish I had more time!  Thank you to the challenge host Esther for a challenge that taught me a completely new method of cooking – and it’s not hard at all. I remember my aunt steaming Christmas puddings when I was young, but I had never tried that method myself until now.

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Tiramisu: February Daring Bakers’ Challenge!

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession. And this really was a challenge! It was time consuming with so many different parts (and a few disasters!) but the result was really delicious. I will make this recipe again – except next time I think i’ll just buy the mascarpone.  Thank you to the hosts for a great challenge!

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Graham Crackers & Nanaimo Bars : January Daring Bakers’ Challenge

What is a graham cracker? And I can’t even pronounce the second bit!  Oh it’s a place as well as a bar!  Really?  :) It’s the January 2010 Daring Bakers Challenge! Woo!

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.

Posting Date: January 27, 2010

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A Christmassy Gingerbread House

Ah, Christmas! It’s my first Daring Bakers Challenge and I am so excited that it’s a Gingerbread House! Woo! But it’s also a daunting challenge considering a quick Google can bring up the most incredible structures (Exhibit A).  So, I went for a rather simple house plan (I got my templates here (top of the list)) which made things alot easier than attempting to design this house myself!  I used joint Challenge-Setter Y’s recipe (which is a recipe by Beatrice Ojakanga from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book).

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