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 slack slack daring baker I am. Posting late again.... *sigh* So this month's challenge was povitica. In principle it sounded good. Bread with stuff in it. The reality was a bit average really. Probably just my personal opinion, due to the fact that I'm not a big fan of things with nuts in them (made a loaf with chocolate and nuts a couple of years ago from BH&G magazine and didn't like that either). But then again I also made a version with jam and dried apricot filling and that was less than satisfactory also. Maybe too much filling, who knows? It did come out looking good. But in future I'd probably just make the bread (lovely brioche style) and put whatever I wanted on top.

The best chocolate croissant I ever ate

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! Well! How hard can croissants be, right? Not that hard it turns out. How annoying can it be to make them. VERY annoying. How many times do you have to do things to the dough and then let it rest. More times than I can actually remember. What I do remember from this challenge though is thinking "this can't possibly be worth all the effort. Surely they are not that much better than croissants bought from the supermarket". But you know what? I was wrong These croissants are rich and buttery and light and dense at the same time (just in the right places) the chocolate ones had such a perfect blend of savoury saltiness from the butter and sweetness from the chocolate, Good thing I had a friend over or I probably would have had an orgy of chocolate croissants in the kitchen. Will I make them again? Probably not. I'm not a big fan of waiting around for things to happen. This recipe needs a good dose of that sort of patience. But I will fondly remember the best chocolate croissant of my life and the fact that I made it with my own two hands. As for photos? Well I took them and somewhere between the taking and the computer they disappeared. Possibly something to do with playing round with new camera. Will never know. Here is the recipe, for those of you who are prepared to put the work in for your best croissant ever: Actually I lied. Even copying and pasting is too much effort. Go to a good french bakery and you might get some as good as I made. But probably not.

Addition! Good news everyone! I found the photos! Ah, the joys of having two cameras....

 Before the cooking but after all the hard work

After the cooking. Nom nom nom.....

Yessssss *insert 1980s style fist pump here*

The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

Mmmmmmm candy. What is not to like? Chocolate, sugar, butter, more sugar, some other things, sugar, cream, butter. I just gained a kilo typing that. This month I was excited to find out that our challenge was making candy. I have, in the past, had a go at making fudge, and there have been some molded chocolates done in the past too. In saying that, this is really an area that I have not done much in.

First things first - what am I going to make??? Our brief was to make one chocolate coated candy - truffle, moulded chocolate or cut and dipped chocolate. Our second item was anything we chose. I decided to start with turkish delight. I am a big fan of turkish delight - I love the texture, the rose flavour and, well that is about all there is to turkish delight but they are big winners for me. So, I bought some rosewater essence.

No, wait I haven't got any cream of tartar.

OK have that. No, wait I don't have enough gelatine. Feck.

May as well do a month's worth of groceries at the same time as getting the gelatine to avoid another trip to the supermarket.

OK so finally I can start it. I used this recipe from Taste.com.

I did break my sugar thermometer (no idea how this happened - it just went crack and then water started filling up inside the tube) so I had to do the second part of this recipe by time rather than temperature. Worked out OK though. The end result was quite nice - had the rosey flavour that I love with the sticky solid-gooey texture. I added an extra teaspoon of rosewater to the mixture though as I thought the original was not rosey enough!



What next.... at this point I realised it was Wednesday and posting day was Saturday. Crap! I decided to make some peanut butter fudge. I figured that if necessary I could coat that in chocolate.

My love affair with peanut butter as a sweet thing goes back to my first taste of Reeces Cups. MMMmmmmmm....... For this recipe I got to use my shiny new sugar thermometer, which is very clever as is starts at about 14 degrees C and goes up to something high, meaning it can be used for sugar and for chocolate. I used this recipe from the challenge info:

115g Unsalted Butter
450g firmly packed Brown Sugar
120ml Milk
200g smooth Peanut Butter
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
425g Icing Sugar

Place butter into a medium saucepan and melt it over medium heat.
Add brown sugar and milk, stirring.
Boil for 2 minutes, stirring frequently.
Remove from heat.
Mix in peanut butter and vanilla.
Place icing sugar into a large mixing bowl.
Pour hot peanut butter mixture over icing sugar and beat until smooth.
Pour fudge into an 8 by 8 inch (20cm by 20cm) pan.
Chill until firm, about 1 hour.
Cut into 1-inch (25 mm) squares.

This fudge came out REALLY well! It had that nice fudgey texture, and it was not too sweet or rich, it is perfect. I cut it into squares and used half of my pretempered chocolate (more info to come) to drizzle over the top.

Finally - The Chocolate. I have been looking for an excuse to make Bakerella's cake balls for ages, like since I found out they existed. I decided to make my favourite cake in the whole world, Devils Food Cake (it deserves the capital letters) and use buttercream frosting to mix in. So of course I did that. That was the easy part. What I thought was going to be the hard part was the tempering of the chocolate, but as it turns out it actually is not that hard. I first went down to The Essential Ingredient in Newcastle, to buy supplies (by which I mean ignore the fact that my toddler was sick of being in the pram and drool all over everything in the shop). I bought some Lindt bittersweet chocolate, a digital thermometer and some chocolate moulds. Got no change out of $50! The people at EI were not familiar with tempering chocolate, especially by the 'adding pretempered chocolate to melted chocolate' method that I had heard about, so they sent me up to Coco Monde, which is a new Chocolaterie in Darby Street, Newcastle. I spoke with their head chef/chocolate maker who was fantastic - obviously in the middle of a busy day (he had chocolate on his forehead) but he took the time to explain to me how to temper chocolate and even gave me a bit of cocoa butter to add to make it come out a bit better. Here's his tips:
1. Chocolate must be melted to a temperature higher than 45 degrees C
2. Chop 1/3 of the final amount finely and add that back in to the melted chocolate. Stir until the temperature reaches 32 degrees C. This will take time and a lot of stirring!
3. In future don't buy expensive chocolate from boutique cooking shops, the stuff they sell at the supermarket is exactly the same (I assume he means the cooking chocolate not the chocolate aisle chocolate).
So I followed his instructions and would you believe it, I ended up with nice smooth chocolate with a satisfying 'snap' when it breaks. Hence the Yessss and the fist pump. I have also told myself I am 'wicked' and that I 'rule'. Yes I am a child of the 80s. The coating of the cake balls was a bit tricky - I had hoped to make perfect unblemished spheres of chocolatey goodness but it didn't quite work out that way. Still though, they taste bloody fantastic and are a great way to bribe master 19 months. A little too good, seeing as his latest word now is "choc-it".

Peanut butter fudge and devils food cake balls

Fresh Fraisiers

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.

Cake. Custard. Cream. Strawberries. Need I say more? No. DO you need a picture? Yes.

Daring Bakers May Challenge - Marquise on Meringue

The May 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Emma of CookCraftGrowand Jenny of Purple House Dirt. They chose to challenge everyone to make a Chocolate Marquise. The inspiration for this recipe comes from a dessert they prepared at a restaurant in Seattle.

To start with, all I can say is YUM. Now let me explain the yum

Marquise=frozen chocolate mousse. The first day consisted of making the marquise. I did splash out on a candy thermometer ($10) just to facilitate the sugar syrup making - I have no idea how to recognise soft ball, hard crack etc and the thermometer did provide a flawless sugar syrup. Not having a stand mixer also meant I had to use a living stand (AKA Gavin) when I was doing the syrup and eggs at the same time.

The eggs came out surprisingly fluffy, considering it was mostly egg yolks. I did not know they could do that!

The fun part was making the chocolate base for this part of the recipe - I really enjoyed the combination of flavours that I used and found it needed plenty of taste testing......

On the Sunday (serving day) I started with making the caramel, using dark rum in place of tequila. I enjoyed the sugar syrup and cream caramel technique; it was not one I had ever tried before (I have always been a bit scared of sugar syrups as I was worried I would end up with burnt sugar in about three seconds). It was the best caramel I have ever had. EVER. It made me think of my mother, she is a big fan of caramel too.

At this point I decided that yes I did want to have the spiced almonds after all. Unfortunately I had not purchased almonds, deciding they were superfluous, so I had to make spiced pepitas (pumpkin seeds). They were quite successful, and Cameron seemed to like them a lot! I did feel that before they were cooked they had a much spicier flavour than after, and in the future I would put more cayenne in. It tasted like hot cinnamon gum.

The meringue required two goes. For some reason I made it early and left it to sit until I was ready to put the dish together. Note: Meringue does not sit. LFMF. Started over. I grilled the meringue and got a reasonable result. I have to say I loved the technique of warming the egg whites over hot water to dissolve the sugar! It is something I will most likely use whenever making meringue from now on.

Plating up - I did not purchase dutch process cocoa. I figured that I don't know the difference, but I read that it is less acidic than normal cocoa (or something along those lines). So I used normal cocoa with a little icing sugar mixed in, plus some gold dusting powder that I had left over from Emma's wedding cupcakes. Looked nice but not really the be all and end all. The marquise, caramel and to a lesser extent meringue were the heroes.

We ended up with enough of this to have dessert for four nights. I liked that this recipe was not so rich that you could not eat it again and again (always a plus for me and my sweet tooth). I did feel that more could have been made of the hot spices, although I did go a bit soft on the spices in the marquise, using cinnamon instead of cayenne. When making this again I would definitely make it as the recipe says (as far as the spices go). The recipe called for a burnt meringue (as in blow torched) and seeing as I don't have a blow torch and was not prepared to spend $50 buying one for this recipe, I decided that grilled meringue would have to do (turns out I was right).

I made half sizes of the recipes, which was heaps! The full size apparently will make enough for 18 people. I also decided that I did not want to buy tequila just for this recipe, so I used dark rum. Also, used honey again (as in last month's challenge) instead of light corn syrup.

Verdict: four cocoa beans out of five!

The recipe is as follows. Any substitutions I made I have noted in bold

Chocolate Marquise

Servings: 18 2.5"x2.5" cubes

11 large egg yolks at room temperature
4 large whole eggs
2/3 cup (150 grams/ 5.3 oz) sugar
1/3 cup (2⅔ fluid oz/ 80 ml.) water
Chocolate Base, barely warm (recipe follows)
2 cups (16 fluid oz./ 500 ml.) heavy cream
2 cups Dutch process cocoa powder (for rolling) normal cocoa powder

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the egg yolks and whole eggs. Whip on high speed until very thick and pale, about 10 - 15 minutes.

When the eggs are getting close to finishing, make a sugar syrup by combining the sugar and water in a small saucepan. Bring the syrup to a boil and then cook to softball stage (235F/115C). If you have a cake tester with a metal loop for a handle, the right stage for the syrup is reached when you can blow a bubble through the loop.

With the mixer running on low speed, drizzle the sugar syrup into the fluffy eggs, trying to hit that magic spot between the mixing bowl and the whisk.

When all of the syrup has been added (do it fairly quickly), turn the mixer back on high and whip until the bowl is cool to the touch. This will take at least 10 minutes.

In a separate mixing bowl, whip the heavy cream to soft peaks. Set aside.

When the egg mixture has cooled, add the chocolate base to the egg mixture and whisk to combine. Try to get it as consistent as possible without losing all of the air you've whipped into the eggs. We used the stand mixer for this, and it took about 1 minute.

Fold 1/3 of the reserved whipped cream into the chocolate mixture to loosen it, and then fold in the remaining whipped cream.

Pour into the prepared pans and cover with plastic wrap (directly touching the mixture so it doesn't allow in any air).

Freeze until very firm, at least 2 - 4 hours (preferably 6 – 8 hours).

When you're ready to plate, remove the marquise from the freezer at least 15 minutes before serving. While it's still hard, remove it from the pan by pulling on the parchment 'handles' or by flipping it over onto another piece of parchment.

Unmold the frozen marquise

Cut it into cubes and roll the cubes in cocoa powder. These will start to melt almost immediately, so don't do this step until all of your other plating components (meringue, caramel, spiced nuts, cocoa nibs) are ready. The cubes need to sit in the fridge to slowly thaw so plating components can be done during that time. They don’t need to be ready before the cubes are rolled in the cocoa powder.

Plate with the torched meringue and drizzled caramel sauce, and toss spiced almonds and cocoa nibs around for garnish. You want to handle the cubes as little as possible because they get messy quickly and are difficult to move. However, you want to wait to serve them until they've softened completely. The soft pillows of chocolate are what make this dessert so unusual and when combined with the other elements, you'll get creamy and crunchy textures with cool, spicy, salty, bitter, and sweet sensations on your palate.

Chocolate Base

12 oz (340 grams/ 1½ cups) bittersweet chocolate (about 70% cocoa)

12 oz (355 ml/ 1½ cups) heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne (1t cinnamon)
1/4 cup (60 ml/ 2 fluid oz.) tequila (dark rum)
1/4 cup (60 ml/ 2 fluid oz.) light corn syrup (honey)
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup (4 tablespoons/ less than an ounce) cocoa powder (we used extra brut, like Hershey's Special Dark, but any Dutch-processed cocoa would be fine. Do not substitute natural cocoa powder.) (used normal Nestle cocoa)
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 oz unsalted butter (2 tbsps./30 grams), softened (used salted butter and omitted the salt above)

Place the chocolate in a small mixing bowl.

In a double-boiler, warm the cream until it is hot to the touch (but is not boiling). Remove from the heat and pour over the chocolate.

Allow it to sit for a minute or two before stirring. Stir until the chocolate is melted completely and is smooth throughout.

Add the remaining ingredients and stir to combine.

Set aside until cooled to room temperature. Do not refrigerate, as the base needs to be soft when added to the marquise mixture. If you make it the day before, you may need to warm it slightly. Whisk it until it is smooth again before using it in the marquise recipe.

Meringue

Servings: Makes about 4 - 5 cups of meringue. If you aren't planning on serving *all* of the marquise at once, you might want to scale this recipe back a bit.

11 large egg whites
1 ¾ cups (395 g) sugar
Splash of apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Combine the egg whites, sugar and vinegar in the bowl of a stand mixer. Using your (clean, washed) hand, reach in the bowl and stir the three together, making sure the sugar is moistened evenly by the egg whites and they make a homogeneous liquid.

Over a saucepan of simmering water, warm the egg white mixture. Use one hand to stir the mixture continuously, feeling for grains of sugar in the egg whites. As the liquid heats up, the sugar will slowly dissolve and the egg whites will thicken. This step is complete when you don't feel any more sugar crystals in the liquid and it is uniformly warm, nearly hot.

Remove the mixing bowl from the saucepan and return it to the stand mixer with the whisk attachment. Whisk until you reach soft peaks. In the last 10 seconds of mixing, add the vanilla to the meringue and mix thoroughly.

When you're ready to plate the dessert, spoon the meringue onto a plate (or use a piping bag) and use a blowtorch to broil.

Tequila Caramel

Servings: Makes about 1 cup of caramel

1 cup (8 oz.) sugar
1/2 cup (4 fluid oz./ 120 ml.) water
1 cup (8 fluid oz./ 240 ml.) heavy cream
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons tequila (dark rum)

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the sugar and water on medium-high heat.

Boil until the water completely evaporates and the sugar caramelizes to a dark mahogany colour.

Working quickly, add the cream to the darkened caramel. It will bubble and pop vigorously, so add only as much cream as you can without overflowing the pot.

Return the pot to the stove on low heat and whisk gently to break up any hardened sugar. Add any remaining cream and continue stirring. Gradually, the hard sugar will dissolve and the caramel sauce will continue to darken. When the caramel has darkened to the point you want it, remove it from the heat. Add the salt and tequila and stir to combine. Set aside until ready to serve.

Spiced Almonds

Servings: Makes about 1 cup of spiced almonds

1/2 cup (4 oz.) sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large egg white
1 cup (145 grams/ 5 oz.) blanched whole almonds (pepitas)

Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper or foil.

In a small bowl, combine the sugar, cinnamon, cayenne, and salt.

In a larger mixing bowl whisk the egg white until it's frothy and thick.

Add the spice mix to the egg white and whisk to combine completely.

Add the nuts to the egg white mixture and toss with a spoon.

Spoon the coated nuts onto the parchment paper-lined baking sheet.

Bake the nuts for 30 minutes, or until they turn light brown. Allow the nuts to cool completely and they will get very crunchy. Set aside until ready to serve.

April 2011 Daring Bakers' Challenge

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

So, my first Daring Bakers' challenge has finally happened!!! The task: to make a maple mousse and serve it in an edible container.

I ran a number of possibilities through my head for the container. Brandy baskets, jaconde imprime cake, hollowed out meringue cups, but finally settled on profiteroles. The flavour of the maple syrup was quite sweet and I did not think that another sweet item would add anything to the flavour, but would in reality probably detract from it, making it all too much. I had never made profiteroles before, so I used this recipe.

They were remarkably easy to make and even though I only had a fluted piping tip they still came out great

So pretty.....

Anyway, the mousse was pretty straightforward. Maple syrup, egg yolks, gelatine and cream. I accidentally left the maple mixture a little long to cool, so it didn't mix smoothly into the cream (there were occasional 'lumps' of mapley goodness) but this didn't detract from the mousse in my opinion.

The finished mousse was piped into the cooled profiteroles.

At this point I felt that the dessert needed something to bring it all together so I found a recipe for chocolate fudge sauce here. I did not have any light corn syrup (this being Australia and all) so I used honey, which, according to Cook's Thesaurus is an appropriate exchange. Wow what a beautiful where have you been all my life sauce this made!! It tasted like liquid toblerones. Yum! (And it set to a hard fudge/toffee consistency which was also great - would make a nice chocolate filling!). This sauce was drizzled over the filled profiteroles.

They tasted as good as they look. Yum yum!!

I am eagerly awaiting next month's challenge!

Variation on a theme....

What would you get if you crossed pepper, condensed milk and last year's Lindt white chocolate bunny?

No not that.
Try delicious chinese five spice chocolate chip cookies! The chocolate chip situation was looking grim, and Cameron's Lindt bunny has been in the fridge for a year now (I couldn't bring myself to eat it) so smashed it was and into the mix it went. Also a good couple of teaspoons of five spice powder (cinnamon, pepper, cloves, star anise and fennel). This was all added to the chocolate chippie recipe as posted previously. I figured it would either be a horrible failure I would learn from, or it would be good. Good it is!!!!