Daring Bakers: Nanaimo Bars

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.

This month's Daring Bakers had me very excited as I love Canada and I love bars and I have actually been to (well, through) Nanaimo. I was also excited because the host, Lauren is a coeliac and she asked everyone to try the gluten-free baking path. I spent four years being a gluten-free home cook and it is so awesome to make coeliacs something that they haven't had for ages i.e. croissants.

In the end, I ended up making the glutenful version because I was running out of time and I didn't have enough gluten-free flour in the pantry so I feel a bit like I betrayed Lauren but I was so happy that gluten-free baking was in the spotlight this month.



We had to make the graham crackers first which was a bit thing for me. As an Australian who grew up reading the Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley High and various other trashy books that involved smores and other exotic food. All I gleaned from these books at the time is that graham crackers were involved in some way. When I made these the other day, I ended up making a smore by melting a marshmallow over my gas stove and mushing it the cracker and trying to melt the chocolate using the gas as well. It wasn't super successful but I totally dug the concept. Go, BSC!

Anyway, crackers! I kind of imagined these as being a Marie biscuit or a digestive biscuit but they were much more gingerbready than that. There was also something of a Tiny Teddy (honey, not chocolate) about them too. They were delicious and we still have a whole bunch left, waiting for me to think of something to do with them. I know a bunch of people had an issue with the dough being supersticky but I didn't have this issue at all.



Then I made them into Nanaimo Bars! The bottom layer is essentially like a hedgehog slice - I put graham crackers, chopped almonds, coconut and rice bubbles. Possibly too many additions but I couldn't help myself.

The middle layer is a sort of buttercream with custard powder added. It was super sweet so I added in some lemon juice and a little bit of cream cheese to cut through the sweet.

The top is melted chocolate - something I did too quickly and so it went lumpy. FAIL.

All in all, these were amazing but super-sweet. I enjoyed the challenge but I'm not sure I'd make them again because they were even a bit too much for this sweet tooth household.

Daring Bakers: Gingerbread House

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

I’m beginning to think that my Daring Bakers motto should be “best laid plans” because this was another month of shenanigans. I was very excited when I saw the challenge and started planning a very Aussie Christmas Gingerbread House i.e. backyard cricket, dry grass, tin roof. There were plans and engineering meetings and decoration conferences in the confectionery aisle of the supermarket.

And then . . .

I chose Y’s dough because I had all the ingredients in my cupboard and I liked the spices that were involved but I had a few issues with the dough - it came together easily enough but after chilling overnight, it did not roll, it crumbled. So, I stood there smushing it back together to try and get a flat enough thin to cut my wall out of. Finally, I had all my pieces and they had a cooled and it was time for the simple syrup.

Let's consider this for a moment. Me + molten sugar + pretty decorationing + tiredness = me burning myself with said molten sugar. And then Esther burning herself on the syrup. So I thought "oh well, I won't decorate it as nicely as I wanted to. I mainly just want to put it together!"

So I did. And, holy mackerel, it was ugly. SO UGLY! SO UGLY THERE AREN'T ANY PICTURES!

There's another reason why there aren't any pictures.

I smashed it. With my rolling pin. A lot.

I snapped and had had enough of this ugly gingerbread house - all the time and energy that had gone into the construction for an UGLY outcome was too much for me - it was smashing time.
At first, it wasn't very carthatic but then I hit my smashing stride and I felt a lot better.

The problem, of course, was that now there was no gingerbread house for the challenge at all. Esther to the rescue! We cut some slices off the (ample) excess dough and made some tiny gingerbread houses.

And, if i say so myself, they are about 10000 times cuter than I could have ever imagined. And so adorably cute! They are living on our coffee table and it is pretty funny watching our cats walk next to them as they look like huge panthers attacking the tiny village.

So, all in all, a less than successful challenge but I got to work some anger out. The challenge was certainly there and I'm glad that I had a go! Thanks, Anna and Y!

Daring Bakers: Cannoli

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.



Oh, peeps. Cannoli! One of my loves at Brunneti! One of my loves pretty much anywhere! This month I got to make my own and the results were . . . mixed.

After my last minute panic baking the last couple of months (which resulted in me not participating or not having time to give things a try if they didn’t work 100%), I scheduled a baking day as soon as we had received the assignment. BEST LAID PLANS. I chose a day towards the middle of November, little knowing that we would have a heat wave. 38C + deepfrying didn’t work for me so I postponed. Then it was Esther’s birthday and I had birthday cake to make. Then I had work, volunteer and social commitments every single day for the rest of the month. Finally, on Sunday night, as I was busy cooking up things for dinner with friends on Monday, Esther suggested making the dough so it would be ready to fry up when I got a chance. Genius woman!

The dough came together very quickly and easily and I started to worry that maybe I’d been a been over the top with my worries about making cannoli. I popped it in the fridge until Tuesday morning when I didn’t start work until ten. So I rolled and cut and fried at 8:30 in the morning. My mine problem was that I wasn’t able to roll the dough to the thinness to ensure that it went all bubbly and cannoli like. Reading through the recipe again, I realise I should have actually let it rest a bit more but I was on a schedule so it was overly thick

I made a rose and vanilla cream to fill them with, melted some chocolate and put it all together. They were delicious and fun and I may make them again one day when I have learnt how to roll dough properly.

Daring Bakers: Macarons

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.




I now officially have a baking nemesis.

Is it a bit melodramatic to turn an entire (delicious) subset of biscuits into your nemesis? I feel after four failed batches that I'm entitled. I love to eat macarons but, boy howdy, do they not want to be baked by me.



I was excited when I saw this month's challenge as I'd made two batches of macarons previously with about half a batch of successful biscuits and I was looking forward to beautiful macarons with well-defined feet. I carefully measured and weighed and ground and folded and heated and baked . . . all to no avail.



So I tried again and had the same results. It's not that they are bad as such. They just aren't macarons.

Reading through the DB forums, I feel like other people had issues with this recipe and I think it was a combination of that, my impatience (even though I tried really really hard!) and our FrankenOven. One day, my precious. One day perfect macarons will be mine. (It doesn't help that the amazing Zumbo macarons are just one post down. Way to sabotage yourself, me!)

My Spiced Chocolate Ganache was DAMN tasty though! Hooray!




Macarons
Equipment required:
• Electric mixer, preferably a stand mixer with a whisk attachment
• Rubber spatula
• Baking sheets
• Parchment paper or nonstick liners
• Pastry bag (can be disposable)
• Plain half-inch pastry bag tip
• Sifter or sieve
• If you don’t have a pastry bag and/or tips, you can use a Ziploc bag with the corner snipped off
• Oven
• Cooling rack
• Thin-bladed spatula for removing the macaroons from the baking sheets
• Food processor or nut grinder, if grinding your own nuts (ouch!)

Ingredients
Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 2 ¼ cups (225 g, 8 oz.)
Almond flour: 2 cups (190 g, 6.7 oz.)
Granulated sugar: 2 tablespoons (25 g , .88 oz.)
Egg whites: 5 (Have at room temperature)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°F (93°C). Combine the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a medium bowl. If grinding your own nuts, combine nuts and a cup of confectioners’ sugar in the bowl of a food processor and grind until nuts are very fine and powdery.
2. Beat the egg whites in the clean dry bowl of a stand mixer until they hold soft peaks. Slowly add the granulated sugar and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks.
3. Sift a third of the almond flour mixture into the meringue and fold gently to combine. If you are planning on adding zest or other flavorings to the batter, now is the time. Sift in the remaining almond flour in two batches. Be gentle! Don’t overfold, but fully incorporate your ingredients.
4. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain half-inch tip (Ateco #806). You can also use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off. It’s easiest to fill your bag if you stand it up in a tall glass and fold the top down before spooning in the batter.
5. Pipe one-inch-sized (2.5 cm) mounds of batter onto baking sheets lined with nonstick liners (or parchment paper).
6. Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375°F (190°C). Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored.
7. Cool on a rack before filling.

Yield: 10 dozen.

A funny thing happened on the way to making a blog post . . .

Hi.

Yeah, it's been months and I have eaten delicious things and made delicious things in that time but haven't posted. Why? Who can say? My general laziness? A bunch of real-life non-food related things happening? My ongoing love for puff pastry?

So, consider this a brief round up of the last couple of months, complete with some photos and linking to other people's content!

Daring Bakers
Hasn't happened the last two challenges. You'll all be pleased to know that this month's challenge is in the bag (unless I end up having enough time to have another crack at it) and so there will be more DB content soon. I think I will try both recipes I missed (Dobos Torte & Vol-au-vents) at some stage. Stay tuned.

Enlightened Cuisine
In one of the many non-food related things (but actually quite food related), one of my Perth BFFs, Steph has moved to Melbourne. Steph is pretty much my food-blog-spiration so it is cool to actually be able to go out and eat with her a lot more. So, welcome, S & D - may the vegan noms be nommable.

ANYWAY, S&D organised for a group of Melb Veg bloggers to go out to Enlightened Cuisine for the Moon Festival which was amazing. Unfortunately, D had to go to the UK for work so we were down a person but, plus side, means we have to go again soon.

The photos can be found elsewhere: Steph and Miss T. I highly recommend Miss T's write up as the voting was both delicious and dramatic.

Would I go to Enlightened Cuisine again? In conclusion, yes. Somewhat trashy, yes but also delicious and fun and win.
Best dish: whilst I voted against the five-spice tofu when it was pitted against the mapo tofu, I think it was amazing and fully deserving of its win as OVERLORD OF ALL.

Sydney
The lovely Esther and I went up to Sydney to see my brother and sister-in-law and, frankly, it was all a front to get to Adriano Zumbo. There isn't really much to be added to everthing that's been said. It was lovely and the staff were all super-friendly and helpful and . . . just delicious.



Esther had La Vie En Rose. Never has there been a dish more fitting for a person.



My bro had the special - Croquembouche! YUM!



My sis-in-law had this which I can't remember the name of. (Basic fail. And it's not even on the website.) It was delicious and strange and exciting. Cucumber and chocolate is a surprisingly good combo.



And I had the Miss Marple Deconstructed. Mainly because I love Miss Marple. It was delicious and fresh and they were some good crepes, yo.

Friday night we had dinner at Papaya Thai in Cremorne where I had the best chili and basil tofu of my life. Please excuse the terrible photo - dark restaurant + shaky, tired hands = this.



They were very vego friendly on the surface of things - the menu marked all the vego stuff and noted that nearly everything could be made vego. Hooray. I say on the surface because I didn't ask about fish sauce so that is an unknown. However, A+++.

Saturday morning was breakfast at some cafe in North Avalon. I cannot for the life of my remember the name. (Again, basic fail.) It was pretty tasty but quite pricey - something I noticed about Sydney in general.



Essie's banana pancakes.



My vego breakfast.

In conclusion . . .



Rollerderby.

(There is going to be a post about the cakes and things at the Royal Melbourne Show but this post is ridiculously long as it is.)

Daring Bakers: Mallows

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.
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My first Daring Bakers. *triumphant music plays*

I must admit I was a little bit worried when the challenge was announced because I'd never made marshmallows before and I needed to make them vegetarian. I spent a good half of the month worrying about that and not actually doing any preparation. After hanging around the "Alternative Bakers" forum, I decided to use the marshmallow recipe posted by Tasty Trifles and it was so easy and fun (and delicious) that I am totally going to make home-made vego marshmallows again.



The downside (as always) was my shaping and piping skills. Or, should I say, lack of skills. I attempted to pipe my marshmallows, imaging beautiful mounds (dirrty!) of fluffy white marshmallow and getting something more like silly string. All the while, my marshmallow was becoming more firm.

Inspiration struck. Who said the long hard hours of watching Top Chef wouldn't pay off? I grabbed some spoons and made some really amateurish and not at all the right shape quenelles. And I was pretty darn happy with them.



As you can see, my marshmallows were huge. I didn't mind that at all. "Om nom nom!" said the Greedy S-J voice in my head. I left them to do their thing, went out to dinner with one of my BFFs and her mum and got to brag about making marshmallow from scratch.



The next day I was enthused to finish these suckers off and to reap my marshmallow-y rewards. The biscuit base was very simple and came together very easily. Rolling it out and using my very fancy cutters (i.e. 2 different sized glasses), I cooked my sheets of bases. I was starting to get very impatient while they baked and began getting my glaze ingredients ready.



As I was waiting for the biscuits to cool, I looked at my flat and round marshmallows and I suddenly realised what I was actually making. Wagon Wheels. Cue the epic happy dancing. I almost wept tears of joy when I realised we actually had raspberry jam on hand.

I made the glaze (which, p.s., is totally homemade Ice Magic), spread some jam on the bizcuit, smooshed the marshmallow on there and dipped it in the chocolate. Unfortunately, my chocolate dipping skills are a bit like my piping skills.



Sure, they weren't the prettiest but, by gum, they were delicious. AND HOOF-FREE! YAY!
Next time, I'm going to use the quince jam I bought today.

N.B. - I made half the cookie mixture as I'd read that some people were getting a lot of leftover dough and with my enormo-mallows, it seemed like the way to go.

Mallows(Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies)
Recipe courtesy Gale Gand, from Food Network website
Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies
Prep Time: 10 min
Inactive Prep Time: 5 min
Cook Time: 10 min
Serves: about 2 dozen cookies

• 3 cups (375grams/13.23oz) all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup (112.5grams/3.97oz) white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/8 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 12 tablespoons (170grams/ 6 oz) unsalted butter
• 3 eggs, whisked together
• Homemade marshmallows, recipe follows
• Chocolate glaze, recipe follows

1. In a mixer with the paddle attachment, blend the dry ingredients.
2. On low speed, add the butter and mix until sandy.
3. Add the eggs and mix until combine.
4. Form the dough into a disk, wrap with clingfilm or parchment and refrigerate at least 1 hour and up to 3 days.
5. When ready to bake, grease a cookie sheet or line it with parchment paper or a silicon mat.
6. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
7. Roll out the dough to 1/8-inch thickness, on a lightly floured surface. Use a 1 to 1 1/2 inches cookie cutter to cut out small rounds of dough.
8. Transfer to the prepared pan and bake for 10 minutes or until light golden brown. Let cool to room temperature.
9. Pipe a “kiss” of marshmallow onto each cookie. Let set at room temperature for 2 hours.
10. Line a cookie sheet with parchment or silicon mat.
11. One at a time, gently drop the marshmallow-topped cookies into the hot chocolate glaze.
12. Lift out with a fork and let excess chocolate drip back into the bowl.
13. Place on the prepared pan and let set at room temperature until the coating is firm, about 1 to 2 hours.

Note: if you don’t want to make your own marshmallows, you can cut a large marshmallow in half and place on the cookie base. Heat in a preheated 350-degree oven to slump the marshmallow slightly, it will expand and brown a little. Let cool, then proceed with the chocolate dipping.

Vegetarian Marshmallows (from Tasty Trifles)
Ingredients:
• 60 mL water
• pinch of cream of tartar
• 255 g sugar, granulated
• 255 g light corn syrup
• ½ vanilla bean
• 85 g egg whites (about 3 egg whites)
• 5 g xanthan (0.76%)

Ground xanthan with a tablespoon of sugar. Set aside. Heat water, cream of tartar, remaining sugar, corn syrup and vanilla to 120ºC. Discard vanilla bean. Whisk egg whites for about 2 min until still soft. Continue whipping egg whites at slow speed while adding syrup slowly. Sprinkle xanthan mix while still whipping. Turn speed up and continue mixing for 2-3 min or until meringue pulls away from sides. Sprinkle a pan or baking sheet generously with cornstarch and spread out the meringue. Sprinkle top with cornstarch, cover with plastic and leave to set for 4 hours in a refrigerator. Cut marshmallows into desired shapes and dip cut surfaces in cornstarch.

Chocolate glaze:
• 12 ounces semisweet chocolate
• 2 ounces cocoa butter or vegetable oil

1. Melt the 2 ingredients together in the top of a double boiler or a bowl set over barely simmering water.