Daring Baker January 2010 - The World Comes to Canada

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.

Nanaimo Bars have been on my list of recipes to try for about a year now. However, I've never gotten around to making them, so I was excited when they came up as part of the Daring Baker's challenge this month. I was impressed at how easy they came together, and how delicious they were. The recipe is definitely a keeper; however I think I am going to tweak the vanilla filling in my next try at these. I didn't have the Byrd's Custard Powder called for in the recipe, so I tried subsituting 2 tablespoons of cornstarch, 2 teaspoons of sugar and 2 teaspoons of vanilla instead. This made the filling VERY vanilla tasting and super-thick - I was expecting a creamier filling. I'm thinking of trying a strawberry or raspberry flavored filling next time as well. I think that would be good and offset the sweetness and richness of the rest of the bars.

The graham crackers were extremely difficult to make. I did not make them gluten free, for the simple fact that the additional flours needed would have broken my budget month. Also, I had everything else necessary for the bars and graham crackers already in my pantry. I found the dough was very sticky and messy, and I ended up with globs of dough on the nice hardwood floors of my kitchen! However, these homemade graham crackers were the best I have ever had - my husband could not stop eating them! I'm unsure if I will ever attempt to make them again, but I have a feeling that a s'mores on these graham crackers would be pure sin!

Here are some photos from the making of the graham crackers and Nanaimo bars:

The ingredients for the graham crackers: flour, brown sugar, butter, baking soda and vanilla. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the rest of the graham cracker process!


Bottom layer of the Nanaimo Bars: chocolate, coconut, almonds, sugar, butter and the aforementioned graham crackers, crushed.

Middle layer of the Nanaimo Bars: powdered sugar, butter, vanilla, sugar, cornstarch (substituted for custard powder)

Top layer of the Nanaimo Bars: chocolate and butter, melted, cooled and poured on top.

Daring Baker November 2009 - 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.

Better late than never, I guess! Unfortunately, I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off this week and have been unable to blog about my latest Daring Baker challenge. I actually had all good intentions of blogging last night, but we lost power for 3+ hours, so that idea was shot as well.

So, I was really concerned when I heard that the Daring Bakers were making cannoli this month. I have a fear of deep-frying and thought this would be the most difficult challenge ever. To my shock, this was a very easy challenge, and I'm looking forward to making more cannoli. My only problem was that my ricotta cheese filling was a little watery. I could not find any cheesecloth at the grocery store, and thought paper coffee filters would be an acceptable substitute for draining the ricotta cheese. Unfortunately, it didn't work as well as I thought, so I had a yucky watery layer on top of my ricotta filling. I also used less sugar than the ricotta filling recipe called for because I didn't want an overly sweet cannoli. I actually went too far in the other extreme - my cannoli could have been a touch sweeter for my taste.

Here are my pictures:

Here is the cannoli dough prior to kneading. Yes, it's a purpley-red color due to the wine in the dough!

The rolled-out cannoli dough. I think next time I might try to make actual chocolate dough.

Raw cannoli ready to go into the pot of oil.

The cannoli deep-frying. It'd deep-fried dough, what else can you want?

Freshly fried cannoli cooling for a moment.

Pan of cannoli just waiting for a filling!

The ricotta filling all ready to go. It was still delicious despite being a bit watery!

Fresh filled cannoli with a few extra chocolate chips. They were really good, just could have been a bit sweeter!

The Daring Baker - French Macaroons

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

OK, so here is my first attempt at the The Daring Baker challenges. See http://www.thedaringkitchen.com for details - pretty much, you are assigned a recipe for the month, and must make that recipe, take pictures and post a blog about said recipe. This month's recipe was for French macaroons with filling. I decided to do class almond macaroons with a mocha ganache filling.

For full instructions on French macaroons, please see the front page of The Daring Kitchen. I'm just going to highlight my experience with the macaroons.

The first part of the recipe was to whip egg whites and fold in a combination of almond flour and confectioner's sugar. Here is what the batter looked like after doing so:
The batter was then piped onto Silpats and baked in a cool oven for 5 minutes, removed from the oven, and then baked in a hot oven for 7 - 8 minutes. I found that I had to bake my macaroons a little longer than the instructions said in order to get a firm, non-sticky cookie. Since it had been years since I had worked with a pastry bag and tips, I also had a helluva time piping the cookies - it wasn't until my very last batch that I had pretty looking cookies. This is what the cookies looked like going into the oven:


The macaroons after being baked:


After the cookies were baked and cooled, it was time to fill them! I decided to do a mocha ganache because (a) it's super easy and (b) I LOVE ganache. All I did was heat 1 cup heavy whipping cream on the stove until it bubbled around the edges (NOT boiling) and poured it over 8 oz of chopped chocolate and 1 teaspoon espresso powder. I stirred until smooth and chilled in the refrigerator for about two hours. Here is a picture of the completed and filled French macaroons:


The recipe made many more macaroons than this, but there were the ones that I actually got a picture of! The true French macaroon is supposed to have a "foot" at the bottom (see the picture at The Daring Kitchen) however I tried two different techniques to get a foot at the bottom of my cookie and was unsuccessful both times. I look forward to trying this recipe again, possibly adding different flavors to both the macaroon and to the filling.

We're on our way

Alright, I've been an awful blogger, but the month of July was probably the worst month ever for Brax and I. Brax came down with a stomach flu and sinus infection beginning the 4th of July; and he's just now back to normal. He had 5 doctor's visits in the meantime to figure out what it was - the doctor's conclusion was that it wasn't anything bacterial and he just had to give it time. We also had to do a middle of the night emergency room visit week before last when Brax got a kidney stone and there was no pain medication in the house. Add to that our annual vacation to White Lake and a doctor's visit for me when I got the same stomach flu and sinus infection, and we were ready for payday on Thursday!

On the bright side of life, Ken and Eddie began the house on Tuesday! The footings for the foundation have been dug and the concrete's been poured. Since we've had a super-busy week with just being back from vacation, we haven't been out there to see it yet. We're planning on stopping by tomorrow after church and taking pictures and I'll update the blog then to show the progress.

On the WW front...well, there is no WW front. I have gained 7 lbs. since the end of June due to Brax's illness, my illness and vacation. I did jump right back on program this week and am hoping to have those 7 lbs. lost by the end of this month. I got a good lecture from my WW leader as well - which I deserved! She was right, I have gone waaaay too far and lost too much weight to screw it up now. I won't get my 100 lbs. star this year, but by this time next year I'm hoping to be close to my goal weight.

It's been a long week...

Anyhow, I'm sorry I haven't blogged in over a week. Brax and I have been running around, trying to get our house (the one we live in now) straightened up and I've actually had a social life this week. (Surprise, surprise, I know). I went to go see the Sex and the City movie with Julia and Kitty Wednesday night, and had a ball - I hadn't seen Julia since her honeymoon and haven't seen Kitty since Julia's wedding, so it was good to catch up.

On the WW and exercise front, I have not been good at all in the past month. I have had at least one day completely off program every week for the past 4 weeks - that is NOT the WW way, and it's not the way I lost 80 lbs. I have to get my fat butt back in gear - I was doing so well, and I feel as if I've lost my motivation lately. I have been playing Wii Fit a lot lately, and have fallen in love with the running segment. I've downloaded the Couch to 5K podcasts and am hoping that I can start doing those when the weather gets back less hot - even if I have to do them after supper.

Brax and I did work on our lot last weekend, and the pictures are below. We got the lot staked off and you can see where our house will be in comparison to the road. We're still waiting on the Progress Energy folks to get out there so that they can do our power pole so Ken can start on the house; however he said that if they don't get out there soon, he's going to start without them. He wants to have our foundation done before he has to go to Minnesota in the end of July when Jodi's daughter is born.

House pictures:
Here's our driveway!
Billy, Brax, Alex and Tony checking out the lot.
A view of our lot from the cemetery.

Brax driving in the first stake to mark the corners of our house.
The outline of our house!!

WE DID IT!

Brax and I are officially in debt up to our eyeballs - and excited about it. We signed the paperwork to close on our construction loan late Thursday afternoon, and all is a go for starting on our house. Our driveway was installed sometime Thursday as well, and once the contractor can get the people from Progress Energy out there to get our power lines installed, he will dig the foundation.

We're going out to the lot on Sunday after church to do the final decision on the placement of the house. I'm planning on taking pictures and doing a photo journal of our progess as well. I am so excited and definitely cannot wait!

Spontaneity

Yes, Brax and I do have it sometimes. We're closing on the construction loan tomorrow, and found out at lunchtime today that closing costs were going to be about $900 more than we had anticipated. Of course, we both freaked out! After the initial panic subsided, we realized that we were going to be OK, but still, we were both a little tense for the rest of the day.

So, after supper, we were sitting and staring at each other as is normal. I mentioned I had a sweet craving, so Brax suggested we scoot over to McDonald's and get ice cream. After a couple of minutes debate (yes, I had to debate over ice cream) I agreed. So, we drove to McDonald's, went through the drive though, and then took the long way back so we could finish our desserts before we got home. Once we got home, we were both feeling better - less stressed. I think it was a good break for us, and something that we never do. Usually, once we're in for the night, we're not leaving the house for anything. We agreed that we'll have to do it again sometimes. So, we're not the old boring fuddy-duddy married couple that most people think we are. :)