Daring Bakers August Challenge

The challenge for this month was chosen by MeetaK of and Tony. The chosen recipe was Chocolate Éclairs from Chocolate Desserts By Pierre Hermé.

I made this dessert for a family dinner at my sister's a couple weeks ago. The combination I decided to use was lemon pastry cream (modified from this recipe) with white chocolate glaze. The Pate a choux dough was veryyy sticky but I managed to pipe them pretty well using a ziplock bag. My first sheet I was kinda nervous about and I think I took them out too soon because they deflated pretty quickly. The second batch turned out much better though! The glaze was a little runny, but tasted good! I definitely do get the eggy vibe from the dough, but overall the taste was good. I'm not sure that I would make this recipe again, as I like my cream puff one better, but it was a good experience.

To the pictures! :)

Daring Bakers July Challenge

This month's challenge was Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream from Great Cakes by Carol Walter, and it was hosted by Chris of Mele Cotte. I was a little intimidated when I first saw this recipe, but it turned out pretty well, I think. I did make a few changes. I used pecan meal instead of hazelnuts, due to a few reasons: 1) I could not find hazelnuts locally, and 2) my family currently does not having a working food processor. Because of this, I ended up having to leave the praline paste out of the buttercream. I used Captain Morgans Spiced Rum as the flavoring in the buttercream. And speaking of buttercream, I used Rick's Special Buttercream recipe off Allrecipes.com, with a few changes: 1) I halved the recipe, and used equal amounts of shortening and butter 2) I used rum, instead of vanilla for the flavoring. I used two 9" round pans and did only one layer of buttercream and whipped heavy cream in between. Lastly, I used raspberry perserves for the cake glaze, which I thought complimented the pecans nicely.

The cake turned out beautifully. I was very pleased, visually, with the end product. It was probably the prettiest cake decorating job I've ever done! ^_^ (I know, it probably doesn't look that specical compare to some of the other DB's pictures, but for me, it was quite an accomplishment) This challenge, like last month's, was used as a birthday cake for my father's 58th birthday, which we celebrated as a family on July 12th (actual birthday was the 8th). My absolute favorite part of this cake was the ganache glaze! It was so delicious and sinful! That part, I will definitely be it making again. The cake texture, grainy and slightly dry, I must say was very disappointing to me though. It wasn't over cooked the slightlest bit either, I actually took it out at 22 minutes, because the toothpick came out clean. I should have anticipated the texture, since it did have nut meal in it. This was an interesting experience, and althought I will not remake this cake, I will definitely keep the ganache recipe! (the pecan dipped in my left-over ganache were to die for.. less than half of them made it to the cake as decorations! >_>)

Here are a few pictures of the end product:

Daring Bakers June Challenge

It's been a while since I posted, but oh well. Recently I joined The Daring Bakers and my first challenge, the June challenge, was to make Danish Braid. This was my first experience with laminated dough, and I definitely struggled! My most annoying problem was that the dough kept shrinking up as I tried to roll it out, even after I would give it extra breaks to relax in the fridge. But, I managed to turn out a pretty looking braid, if I do say so myself. It was quite depressing that it took me so long to create this braid only to have it gobbled up in less than 15 minutes! But, I suppose I shouldn't complain that my family liked it. :P I made this for Father's Day, so I decided to use the Apple Filling recipe that came with it because my dad is a big fan of apples.

I'm glad I had something special to make for such a special occasion, however I don't think I'll be making any laminated dough again in the near future as the multiple rolling outs practically killed my arms! >_< It was nice to make something outside of my comfort zone and I really loved reading about everyone else's experiences with the recipe! I'm really happy to be a part of Daring Bakers and I can't wait until next month's challenge!

Here are some pictures from this month's recipe:

It's my birfffday ^-^

I meant to get some pictures posted and work on the layout of my blog some this weekend, but so far I just haven't had any time! After work Friday I went shop (got three amazingly cute sun-dresses and an assortment of other pretties), and then came home and baked Billy's Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes topped with rose flavored buttercream icing. They turned out very well and I was really pleased with the delicate rose taste of the icing (rose water was used in place of vanilla extract).

Today my sister Laura and I spent most of the day clearing out our dirty and cluttered office room and shredding old mail. We also went grocery shopping for my birthday dinner tomorrow night! Yay! I'm really excited about the menu I picked out:

Greek-esque salads (with green olives and feta cheese)
gyro burgers on homemade pitta bread with tzatziki sauce
homemade seasoned fries
deep, dark chocolate cake with orange marmade filling and tangerine-honey cream cheese
frosting
oranges and cream swirl ice cream

Sounds good, yeah?! ^-^ I'm pretty excited! Oh, and we purchased organic wine and minty Mojito's to drink with our meal! I'm definitely going to take some pictures tomorrow of the lovely foodstuff to post!

I blog? :)

After having experienced blog envy for quite some time now, I have decided to create my own, voile! I'm not 100% sure what this blog will end up containing, probably an odd assortment of baking and knitting stories, rants, confessions, ponders, and life events. I'm considering this one (of many) "summer resolutions" (more about that in a future post). As I procrastinate bed time (and in effect, work in the morning) a little while longer, let me clarify my hopes for the outcome of this blog. I hope to make entries and updates for this blog at least a semi-routine event. I'd like to branch out and make some blogging friends, especially ones with similar hobbies or interests. And finally, I'd like for this to be a place to hold my memories and experiences for me to look back on in the future. Wish me luck!