December Daring Bakers

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.

While I enjoyed my first challenge of cannoli, I was looking forward to stepping away from frying oil and to use the oven. To my knowledge, I've never made a gingerbread house from scratch, so I was thrilled by the choice. I chose the recipe from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book, namely because I had all of the ingredients and felt as though it might be more durable:

Y's Recipe:
Scandinavian Gingerbread (Pepparkakstuga)

from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas http://astore.amazon.com/thedarkit-20/detail/0816634963

1 cup butter, room temperature [226g]
1 cup brown sugar, well packed [220g]
2 tablespoons cinnamon
4 teaspoons ground ginger
3 teaspoons ground cloves
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ cup boiling water
5 cups all-purpose flour [875g]

1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until blended. Add the cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Mix the baking soda with the boiling water and add to the dough along with the flour. Mix to make a stiff dough. If necessary add more water, a tablespoon at a time. Chill 2 hours or overnight.

2. Cut patterns for the house, making patterns for the roof, front walls, gabled walls, chimney and door out of cardboard.

3. Roll the dough out on a large, ungreased baking sheet and place the patterns on the dough. Mark off the various pieces with a knife, but leave the pieces in place.

4. [I rolled out the dough on a floured bench, roughly 1/8 inch thick (which allows for fact that the dough puffs a little when baked), cut required shapes and transferred these to the baking sheet. Any scraps I saved and rerolled at the end.]

5. Preheat the oven to 375'F (190'C). Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until the cookie dough feels firm. After baking, again place the pattern on top of the gingerbread and trim the shapes, cutting the edges with a straight-edged knife. Leave to cool on the baking sheet.

Royal Icing:

1 large egg white
3 cups (330g) powdered sugar
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon almond extract

Beat all ingredients until smooth, adding the powdered sugar gradually to get the desired consistency. Pipe on pieces and allow to dry before assembling. If you aren't using it all at once you can keep it in a small bowl, loosely covered with a damp towel for a few hours until ready to use. You may have to beat it slightly to get it an even consistency if the top sets up a bit. Piped on the house, this will set up hard over time.

Simple Syrup:
2 cups (400g) sugar

Place in a small saucepan and heat until just boiling and the sugar dissolves. Dredge or brush the edges of the pieces to glue them together. If the syrup crystallizes, remake it.

I used whole wheat flour and, since I only had 1/2 a cup of butter, I threw in a 1/2 cup of grapeseed oil. The dough, as many have pointed out, was quite dry, but I put it in the fridge and hoped that it would help things out.

When it came to rolling it out, I did end up having to add a bit of water to the dough to keep it from crumbling. It was just eyeballed, but seemed to work out fine. Rolling it out between two pieces of parchment paper made the whole process a lot easier, and we (a friend who was unaware of the challenge) used a template we found online (I don't remember where, unfortunately...) and cut the pieces out of cardboard. Other than some of the smaller bits getting a bit dark, things turned out nicely. Both roof pieces broke during transportation, but we were able to easily patch it up with simple syrup. I was really happy with how it glued things together, and the royal icing worked quite nicely during the decorating process. Plus, it tasted really good. We were both more or less coated in royal icing by the end, but had a really fun time putting our house together.

Daring Bakers

November was my first month as a member of Daring Bakers, and I just completed my first challenge yesterday: cannoli. Frying things isn't usually in my kitchen arsenal, but I guess it was a pretty fun change from the norm. My favorite part of the challenge, I would say, was making the ricotta that was used for the filling (http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/000282.html). I didn't think to save any of it in its unadulterated form - prior to adding the other filling ingredients - which is something that I wish I'd done. I also have large bowls full of whey in my fridge now, and learned that dogs are big fans of the stuff. The filling itself was quite dense, making the consumption of more than one cannoli quite a task. I made a few substitutions to the recipe I used, mainly by using whole wheat flour and sucanut as the sweetener. I am still without a camera (although some pictures were taken with someone else's), so there are currently no visuals to post. This month's challenge was successfully completed.

The cake, as it turns out, is delicious. It is a little on the spicy side, to the point where it masks the chocolate flavor, but it is still moist and satisfying.

I currently have an abundance of produce in my possession, including an entire garbage bag full of kale that my dad brought up from our garden at home. There were two sad looking beets that had been in my vegetable drawer for some time, so I decided to make a barley risotto with them. I cooked barley in some mushroom broth, added the chopped beets and 2 bay leaves, salt and pepper, some white wine, and then finished it off with some lemon juice, olive oil, and some cherry tomatoes cut in half. It was in need of some fresh herbs (parsley would have been good), but I didn't have any in the fridge. I have a meal idea in my head for the upcoming days that may end up being disgusting, but I'm looking forward to trying it. It involves ground goat.

Like Water for Chocolate

One of my closest friend recently started a book club. After only two meetings, it has become quite clear that food will play a vital role in our get-togethers. Our Julie and Julia discussion included food directly out of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. After reading Fieldwork, we had a delicious Thai-inspired meal. Today we are gathering to discuss Like Water for Chocolate, and I had yet to decide what my culinary contribution was going to be. It then hit me that I really enjoy the chile/chocolate combination, and I decided to run with it. The inspiration came from http://www.pinkbites.com/2009/04/mexican-chocolate-cake.html, but with a few changes. The flour was replaced with whole wheat pastry flour, sucanat was the sweetener, and grapeseed oil was used instead canola. My glaze was made out of honey, cocoa powder, vanilla, and cinnamon, and then I decorated the finished cake with cinnamon, more cocoa powder, and some chocolate nibs. The meeting begins at 6 tonight, so I've yet to taste it. I know from my chocolate cake eating experience, however, that I tend to prefer flourless cakes, and this one doesn't contain any eggs. I'm pretty certain that the cinnamon/chili combo is something that I will continue to experiment with, but I might try it out with an egg-heavier recipe. But I shouldn't say anything until I actually try it!

After thinking about it for ages, I finally joined the Daring Kitchen. Seeing as having a food blog is more or less a requirement for being a daring baker, I thought that I should finally get my act together and start taking my blog a bit more seriously. It is a bit difficult to feel inspired to post about what I've made when I don't have any sort of camera to document it with, but that will come with time.

I have started going to some of the farmers markets in Seattle, and I love them. It is a really easy way to drop a fair amount of money rather quickly. The University district one is the closest to my apartment, and I already talk about my apple man, my honey man, and so on and so forth with my roommate. Last week's purchases included hazelnuts, fresh cranberries, ground goat meat, and a poppyseed strudel for my dad. I made a quince tarte tatin from my purchases from the week before, and it was delicious. The recipe came from David Lebovitz, although I stewed mine with orange flower water instead of vanilla.

Some brussel sprouts from my parents' garden have been chilling in my fridge, and needed to be used. I sauteed some porcini, added mushroom broth, fresh cranberries, some fingerling potatoes, and a bay leaf or two, and let them simmer for a while. I then adjusted the salt/pepper ratios, added some sucanat to balance the sweetness of the cranberries, and put in the brussel sprouts, which had been sliced in half, steaming them a bit. With some crushed walnuts on top, it ended up being quite tasty. It would be a nice dish for a thanksgiving meal, although perhaps with a bit of tweaking and perhaps a bit of booze in the sauce. A turkey with chestnut stuffing wouldn't hurt much, either.

So it begins

I have been wanting to start a food blog for some time now. The first reason being that I really want to be a Daring Baker, the second reason being that I really want to be a Daring Cook, and the third reason being that, if I'm going to be spending so much time online as it is, I might as well be doing something semi-productive while I'm at it. There are many food blogs that I love visiting, and I'm hoping that having my own will inspire me to branch out a bit more with my cooking. There are so many cookbooks on my shelves that need to see some lovin.

The startup is likely going to be a bit rough. My digital camera recently broke, so there is no option for me to actually document the things that I will be making. I also have now idea how to make a blog look interesting, so don't expect much. With all of these things in mind, let's begin!