First Challenge Complete

Yay! I'm a daring baker! For those who don't know Daring Baker's are a group of individuals who challenge themselves to a different recipe each month and then post about it on the same day. This month was laminated dough hosted by Kelly of Sass & Veracity, and Ben of What’s Cooking?.

I had an easy enough time making the dough. Although, I thought I'd use the same orange for the zest and the juice and discovered why naval oranges aren't used for juicing. I did't use the cardamom as that was a bit pricey but I have since found some at a decent price at and Indian grocer that I didn't know existed before. So, I will be trying it soon.

So, I made half the braid one day earlier in the month then froze the rest of the dough and made the rest last week. It was interesting and a bit difficult not to get to talk about it before now. I made the apple filling that we were given and then on the later braid and danish I made a cream cheese filling and a peach amaretto filling. I have to say that I was quite proud of myself with my peach filling. I made up the recipe on my own but with the influence of a jam I had tried. Well, I was proud of myself all the way around really for meeting this challenge and being mostly successful at it. I did have issues with the dough rising. I'm not sure what it is with me and yeast breads or could it be the Florida humidity? I don't know, but it tasted good anyway.

Back to simpler things

I just wanted to quickly update on my baking endeavors. Last week I made some white chocolate chip cookies with amaretto soaked cranberries. The recipe calls for brandy soaked berries but I like amaretto and didn't have any brandy. They still turned out pretty tasty though. I also upped the amount of brown sugar and lowered the white sugar. Next time I'll leave out the extra liqueur because they cookies were a bit flat.

This weekend I did my own little taste test experiment with brownies. I have pretty much always stuck with the boxed mixes. They're easy and still taste good to me. But I'm trying to break from my comfort zone and try new things. Brownies are not difficult to make but the recipes I tried did step up the process a little by involving a double boiler. I tried three different recipes and two types of cocoa with one of them for a total of four types of brownies. I made Alice Medrich's Best Cocoa Brownies one with dutch process cocoa and the other with natural cocoa. I also made Alton Brown's cocoa brownies and then Dorie Greenspan's Bittersweet brownies. I meant to keep everything basic and go by the recipe exactly but I found myself not able to resist adding a tad bit of almond extract to Dorie's recipe. OMG, were they good. I still don't have a favorite yet out of the results. I think I need to do more tastings. Dorie's definitely gets most gooey and I liked the natural cocoa over the dutch process which surprised me because the blackness of the latter really appeals to me.

I also barbecued out again this weekend. My neighbor friend came down to eat with me. I made sangria to go with it all and we had a very enjoyable time. I like throwing things on the grill to see what the outcome is. I tried tomatoes, bell peppers, asparagus and mushrooms this time along with pork chops and chicken. I just have to keep watch because flare ups happen quickly on my little grill and cause the food to get charred more than I'd necessarily like.

So, a more basic weekend with no real problems. Just yumminess.

Chocolate overload

I should have posted sooner about the chocolate party I went to last week, but I just hadn't gotten around to it before now. However, it was a lot of fun and I learned some things about using chocolate molds. The party was at a store called Farris and Fosters http://www.farrisandfosters.com/. They sell chocolates by weight but they also host chocolate parties where you get to participate in creating your own chocolate candies. I had done it once before a few years back but didn't get very creative that time and I wanted to do something different this time. I worked with the molds that I didn't attempt before. I had a bit of a heavy hand when filling so I kept overflowing, so my butterflys had some extra edges to them. I made some flat butterflies to be used in decorating future baked goods, but I also filled some other molds with goodies ranging from reeses pieces, to oreos, to rice krispies. They have quite of a selection to choose from. I also made peanut butter cups and completely covered an Oreo with chocolate. Your session gets you a pound of chocolate and if you go over that amount, you get it at a discounted rate.

As far as baking over the weekend...I made two things. I made Dori's Gooey Chocolate Cakes and zucchini bread. My experience for the cakes was much like others who made them for TWD in that my middle wasn't exactly oozing with 13 minutes of bake time. They did still tast fabulous though. If/ when I make again, I will shorten the bake time. I have a little disclaimer that I was on the phone the whole time I was preparing the batter, so I'm just glad they turned out at all.:-)

The zucchini bread was good also. I took the recipe from Allrecipes.com. I did substitute apple sauce for the oil and it still turned out well. Here is the link to the recipe http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Moms-Zucchini-Bread/Detail.aspx I felt like I had to counter balance the fat in the cakes by leaving it out of the bread. That works right?