DARING BAKER'S CHALLENGE #7

The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard

 This month's challenge was TOTALLY AWESOME.
Chocolate Pavlova with Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse.
Could anything sound more extravagantly lush than THAT?


Since I was too lazy to complete the challenge earlier in the month one of my closest friends, Shekinah, was turning 18 on the 24th, I made the pavlova quite late. I thought that being the stingy-poker that I was since there wouldn't be too many of us celebrating (it was a small dinner celebration at this TO DIE FOR steamboat place) I would make half the recipe. I had it all figured out, I'd make all the components the day before and assemble them in the morning before leaving for her house. The mousse and mascarpone cream didn't give me any trouble, but I probably should have remembered it was my VERY FIRST pavlova, and there were BOUND to be hiccups along the way.
And a hiccup there was.
A BIG one.

THAT my good readers, was what the pavlova looked like the next morning. I could BARELY get it off the baking paper, and the parts that DID peel off cracked and crumbled to bits. Looking  back, I probably should have baked it for longer to allow the pav to dry out more. Truth be told though, I was actually quite happy it didn't turn out. It looked a bit TOO SMALL to be given as a present. So, I scrapped it, and tried again. This time making the full meringue recipe. As for the one above, I didn't want to waste it (It tasted REALLY GOOD) So I crumbled it up even more and made 2 little parfaits.

Quite decent, no? And SO YUMMY MY GAWD!!
Anyways, after quickly putting together the stuff for the 2nd meringue (luckily I still had a decent amount of time on my hands) and baking it for 2 and 1/4 hours, I got a BE-YOU-TI-FUL looking pavlova.

I thought about it, and decided to add the finishing touches at her place. So I packed the mousse and cream into piping bags and took the lot to Kynah's house. We had a good long gossip (haven't seen her since she started college) Had a shower, got dressed and dressed the pavlova so it was ready for dinner.

Doesn't it look ADORABLE? I cheated a bit and bought to sugar roses, so the whole thing was dead easy to put together. Kynah and her parents oohed and ahhed over it, the we packed the pav up and headed to the restaurant.

This is where things got a little messy. The pavlova was sitting next to the HOT steamboat stove for about 15 minutes before we thought of moving it to a chair so it would be away from the heat. AND it was about 2 hours (the steamboat was REALLY GOOD,k?) before we got around to eating it. So by the time the pavlova came out of the box....
Let's just say it tasted a lot better than it looked.

Honestly. However, all said and done Kynah LOVED IT.
She thought it was fantastic (and quite frankly, it bloody was). I'll definitely be making this again. Although, I'll probably not subject it to heat next time!
As usual, if you'd like to try the recipe for yourself, it'll be found on The Daring Kitchen's website
And do try to go through the blogroll to see what other Daring bakers thought of the challenge. Bye!

DARING BAKER'S CHALLENGE #6

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

Hello, it's that time of month again!
I was really really REALLY stoked  when I found out what this months challenge was. Been wanting to make a croquembouche for a couple of YEARS now, but never plucked up the kahoonas to try. Another upside to the Daring Bakers, I guess I'm a wee bit more Gryffindor than I thought I was. ;-)


Alright, for those who are out of the loop, a piece montée, or croquembouche is a tower of creampuffs held together by a glaze, usually chocolate or caramel. People in France traditionally make this instead of the usual wedding cake. A professional one is supposed to look like this :

Ok, so mine didn't quite turn out as a tower.
More like a lopsided molehill really.

I made only half the recipe, because there aren't too many people at home and there was NO WAY a full sized croquembouche  was going to be finished, especially considering that this dessert has to be served ASAP. I filled the cream puffs with a coffee pastry cream and for the glaze I used caramel. It looked really pretty up close, but was really difficult to eat. The caramel made it almost impossible to pick an individual cream puff off without either:
a) ripping it in half, OR
b) ripping its immediate downstairs neighbour in half.
I think my pastry cream was a bit too sweet too, would cut down the sugar next time I do this. The best part about making the piece montée was the caramel strands surrounding the cream puffs. Sure, I got burnt a couple of times (OUCH, by the way) but that didn't stop me from flicking sugar like mad all over the thing.
and on myself.
and the kitchen table.
and the floor.
and maybe a little on my kitchen scale.

All in all, I had fun with this challenge. It may have seemed overwhelming in the beginning, but once I broke it down, it was a relatively enjoyable task. Albeit a rather long one. It you'd like to try to make this ( and you should. It's one of those things everyone should try before we get sent off to that big bakery in the sky ) then the recipe and instructions are here on the Daring Kitchen website.
Also, try to check out the creations of the other Daring Bakers on the blogroll. There are some that'll blow your mind!
Till next time, Ciao!

DARING BAKER'S CHALLENGE #5

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

Boy am I LATE huh?
*brushes dust off blog*
Sorry bout that folks, I couldn't find my pictures until 2 days ago (they were still in my camera). But all hiccups aside, atleast I'm FINALLY posting, right?

So, let's get started.  Steamed English Pudding. This is going to be quite a short post, cause I don't really have much to say about it. The challenge was easy enough but quite frankly we weren't too nuts about it, infact the pudding was still sitting in the fridge 3 weeks after I made it. It tasted a bit odd really, but then again that's probably the recipes fault. I did like steaming the pudding, it came out nice and moist and a little spongy too. wasn't too hard to do either, but that's probably cause I have an actual steamer. I used chinese bowls to steam the sponges in, so they came out in really cute domes. As for using suet, the only one I could find was made from beef and due to religious issues, that's a bit of a no no for me. I used shortening instead. Also, for the fruit I threw in a little something special. For the past 4 months, I've had a container of fruitsoaking in brandy in my fridge. And when I say soaking, I mean SOAKING. I don't even remember what fruit I have in there anymore, but I do know it smells strong. Funnily enough, the pudding didn't taste very alcohol-ly when it was done. I served the cooked pudding with custard sauce on top. On the whole, a very -meh- tasting challenge. I will do it again, but I'll be wanting a different recipe to use. I have NO IDEA where this one came from ( I was searching and printing out a lot, OK?), Heck, I don't even remember what it's CALLED. So if anyone DOES know, just give me a shout. :-)

                                    
~ 90g self raising flour
~ pinch of salt
~ 90g breadcrumbs
~ 90g shreaded suet (again, I used shortening)
~ 90g raisins
~ 160g currants
~ 30g candied peel
~ 60g brown sugar
~ 1 egg
~ 6tbsp milk

Mix everything together, divide into molds and steam for 1 and a 1/2 - 2 hours. (OMG this has got to be the SHORTEST set of instructions I've EVER written on this blog.)

Please head on down to the Daring Bakers blogroll to check out what the others have done. It'll look pretty damn amazing! => http://thedaringkitchen.com/blogroll/bakers

DARING BAKERS CHALLENGE #4

The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris.

 I learnt something new this month. Thanks to Jennifer, I now know what a 'tian' is. What? Never heard of em'?
You can thank wisegeek.com later :
Well known in some cultures as a prepared dish with layered ingredients, the tian can be thought of as a casserole with a specific arrangement of components. From this perspective, a tian can be a hot or a cold dish.

So, an orange tian.....

Frankly I was a little sceptical. I mean, it looked like a lot of work for whipped cream piled on top of a piece of shortbread then topped with fruit. But I'm glad I made it all the same. It was a very light dessert, and because I reduced the sugar, it wasn't too sweet either. I decided to make it family-sized just to make life easier for me. So, down to business then. There were 5 components to this dessert, as broken up below.


~Pate Sablee
From what I gather this is basically like shortbread....or, atleast it's suppossed to be. I'm not sure where I went wrong but it came out cake-like and VERY crumbly. I made the recipe twice and had the same result both times....any ideas? Not to say it wasn't good though, it was like a cross between a butter cake and shortbread. My dog agrees too, judging from the way she gobbled up the first batch. Very yummy.


~Marmalade
Again, not too much trouble. It came together fine and tasted a little tangy. The one thing I SHOULD have done, was blend the blanched oranges to make it finer, but I didn't want to wash the blender later (SO ANNOYING) so I just minced it all by hand. The resulting marmalade was a little chunky, but I didn't really mind, it still tasted good.


~Orange Sements <3
OMG. I LOVE segmenting oranges!!! It's like......so totally ZEN!! I'm not joking, you could put me in a corner with a bowl of oranges and order me to segment them, and I would be HAPPY. I don't know WHAT it is, but I was having so much fun, it was actually a little dissapointing when all the oranges were done. Anybody in Malaysia need an orange segmented? Pretty please??

~Caramel
Now THIIIISSS..... was a little bit funky. Again, not too sure where  messed up, but it turned out tasting bitter. And the thing is, the caramel was JUST STARTING to colour when I added the orange juice (And boy did that start to sputter. I feared for my life, I kid you not). Didn't think too much of it and just went ahead with the rest of the recipe. Could hardly taste anything bitter in he finished dessert, so YAY!


~Whipped Cream
Listen.
If after 5 years of blowing up stuff in the kitchen I didn't know how to whip cream,
I would just shoot myself.
I really would.
But now I know how to stabilize my cream. All you have to do is whip in a bit of gelatine and the cream won't collapse so fast. However, I really don't like the smell of gelatine, so I'll try out something else. Maybe unflavoured konyaku jelly powder?


So with all the stuff prepared, I was ready to assemble the Tian. And again, I dissobeyed the first rule of Bakingdom. Again. Because I didn't read the instructions, I didn't notice we were supposed to DRAIN the orange slices (That had been sitting in caramel overnight) on paper towels.
Oops no.1
Luckily I wrapped my tin in alluminium foil. If I hadn't, the tin would have leaked wattery orange caramel all over the kitchen.
 Ah well, lesson learnt. I moved on and piled on the whipped cream, then proceeded to place the pate sablee on top. Problem was, the biscuit broke clean into 2.
Oops no.2
Nevermind, I thought to myself. It's at the bottom, no one will notice. So brushing the crumbs off the kitchen table, I set the Tian in the fridge to set for 1/2 an hour.
Oops no.3

I barely had time to drizzle the remainder caramel sauce over it and take a picture.This is what it looked like 5 minutes after taking it out of the fridge:


Not pretty.
I didn't get a chance to take cross section picture, which was a pity cause I bet that would've looked really nice.It's alright though, the shot of the whole thing came out pretty all the same. Next time, I'll just
make individual portions.


 

If you'd like to try this recipe out for yourself, just follow the link and it'll take you to the daring kitchen 'Orange Tian' page. => 
http://thedaringkitchen.com/recipe/orange-tian

Have fun, and happy baking!

Chocolate MOOOOOOOOOOUSSSSEEEE.....

I love that :
1) This recipe is SUPER easy.
2) It has very few ingredients (practically FOUR if you wanna skip the fruit and liquor)
3) It's non-bake ( for those days you just CANNOT set up the oven )
4) It's so ORGASMICLY GOOD. I can't even begin to tell you.

Just make it.
Then eat and weep.

Chocolate Mousse
by Alec Kearns of Glebe Point Diner
~300g dark chocolate, chopped
~9 eggs, seperated
~2tbsp brandy (opt)
~30g castor sugar
  *my addition
*5 tbsp sugar
*8 ripe bananas, sliced



Melt the dark chocolate over a double boiler and whisk in egg yolks and liquor (if using). If mixture become very stiff, add 1 tbsp water to loosen it. Whisk eggs whites to soft peaks, then gradually adding sugar whisk to stiff peaks. Fold egg whites into chocolate mixture in three batches till combined. Divide among 8 X 250ml glasses and refridgerate 3-4 hours till set.

*caramelized banana topping
Melt 1 tbsp of sugar in heavy bottom saucepan and cook till very light golden colour. Add sliced bananas and stir to coat. Top mousses and refridgerate to set.

The original recipe called for rasberries macerated in balsamic vineger. I opted out and used the caramelized bananas instead and removed the brandy element too. I also made only 1/3 of the recipe, as there weren't too many people at home to eat it ( although, I SUPPOSED I could have FORCED myself to polish off a full recipe on my own. You know, if  ABSOLUTELY had to)

Oh, and don't worry. This is a healthy dessert.
It's got whole eggs in it, that's protein.
And chocolate, so that's your antioxidants.
;-)

*recipe courtesy of Vougue Australia, Entertaining and Travel.

MIB classes, babysteps 1-6

I know I'm bad at updating things, but this is getting ridiculous.
I've had 6 lessons at MIB now.
Each class is about 3.5-4 hours.
Thus I've spent ATLEAST 21 hours there.
21 hours.
21 hours of  learning wonderful things about food and baking.
and I haven't blogged a SINGLE word of it.
Shame on me, really.

Especially considering I have SOOOOO much to share! Well, not really much, just one tip really.
But if you've been making bread without a bread maker in a hot country a.k.a Malaysia (and IF you have, give yourself a pat on the back) this tip will revolutionize your ENTIRE perspective on bread making.
THIS.
WILL.
CHANGE.
YOUR.
LIFE.





Did you know that we're ( 'WE' meaning people in tropical countries with really hot climates) are supposed to make bread with.........get ready for this.......this'll flip your lid........we're supposed to make bread.... with.... COLD water.

I know, I know, boggles the mind doesn't it?
After AAAAAALLLLL the propaganda fed to us by lying, thieving American and British cookbook authors the world over. I'll bet they were thinking, "ok, we can't slow down their economic growth, but we can be sure they'll be making bread WRONG!!! "

Yesyesyes, you can argue that they're actually writing for an American / Europian audience. You can also argue that they're suiting their own temperatures......but I think my theory's more interesting. Not that I don't absolutely ADORE my fellow Caucasian earth dwellers of course!

I've also been learning all this stuff about molding, forming, and shaping bread, as well as getting to know the Science behind making it. It's ALOT of fun, and I look forward to my classes all the time. Although, I have to admit I'm getting a little sick of bread, and it doesn't help I have a freezer FULL off the stuff too. Here's some shots of some of the stuff we've been doing. I'll try to take more pictures, but usually by the time I get home, I'm so tired I can barely LIFT my camera, let alone photograph anything. :-)


Oh, by the way, 5A's and 5B's for SPM. Not too bad huh? :-)

DARING BAKERS CHALLENGE #3

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

Tiramisu this month.

MY GOD, what a bloody headache.

For February it was decided that the Daring Bakers would make a tiramisu completely from scratch. and when I say completely, I mean COMPLETELY. And baby it was a LOOOOOOOOOOOOG process too, make no mistake about that.Well, ok. It wasn't really that long. The length of the instructions scared me. Truth is, it's really quite a straight forward recipe, you just need to do a little advance planning and it comes together fine. So with a deep breath, I hankered down and read the recipe over several times.

Ok, maybe not several.
15 times
10 times
5 tim
once.
but it was a very thorough reading!!

Ok, maybe not.


I started with the cheese first. I read that the recipe required me to use a cheesecloth (and NO, ok? I DID NOT see that alternative cotton handkerchief option) So, wondering where on earth I would find some muslin cloth (a.k.a cheesecloth) I approached my darling mother.
Me: Ma, I need cheesecloth for this month's challenge.
Ma: Cheesecloth?
Me: Cheesecloth.
Ma: But.....why?
Me: My sadistic loving hosts want me to make my own marscapone cheese.
Ma: MAKE YOUR ON CHEESE?????
Me: Make my own cheese.
Ma: Can't we cheat and buy you a tub from Jaya33?
Me: What a splendid idea NO MA. Why don't we go now so we can pick up a pirated version of Avatar too? BAKER'S HONOUR!! I HAVE to do each part of the challenge FROM SCRATCH!!
Ma: *sigh* ok........ *light bulb flashes above head* Why don't you use one of your father's vaeshttis*?

And so it came to be that I would be making cheese with garment which dad usually reserves for going to temple. Gave it a good wash and ripped  cut it into managable pieces.

Of course dad protested. It's just that, we don't listen to him much. ;-) (LOVE YOU DADA!!)
So far so good, it was getting quite exciting now too.
Of course, things are never really straight forward with me, now are they?
In my haste to make the cheese, I ignored the first golden rule of Bakingdom. You know, the one printed in bold and written in CAPITALS that's right 
on top, triple underlined and surrounded by flashing neon coloured arrows?

READ THE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST.

Oh woe is me. Ignorant fool that I am, I lined a BOWL (instead of a sieve) with ONE layer of cheesecloth ( instead of 3). Good thing mum stopped me in time. Otherwise I would've had a mouldy, watery bit of creamy goo. Thankfully, the rest of the cheese making saga went well, And I had a lovely lump of wonderfully smooth marscapone.

After making the cheese I proceeded to promptly fall in love.
With the savoiardi biscuits.
These turned out NOTHING like my first attempt at making them. A little dense and a little moist but fluffy and spongy at the same time too. It had a lovely crunch on the outside, due to the sugar sprinkeled on before baking. They weren't even THAT eggy! I've always been a little afraid anything that smells really eggy since I encountered a raw egg during my early baking days...... but that's a story for another post.

The pastry cream and zabaliogne came together pretty easily. Ok, maybe not so much the pastry cream. I had to make a second batch cause the first came out lumpy ( high heat? BIG NONO). Anyways, I had all my components and proceeded to assemble them the next day. That went off without a glitch too!!

Then again.....not quite.

Inovative sentient being that I was, I thought it'd be cool to  mold the tiramisu in a chocolate dome which I would then cover with gold dust?

Pretty fancy, no? Yeap.
A pretty big pain-in-the-arse, yes? YOOOOOUUUUU BETCHA.

Nothing really went wrong with the tiramisu assembly, just the chocolate shell. I covered my metal bowl with cling wrap thinking it would make geting the tiramisu out easier.
BIG MISTAKE.

The clingwrap helped alright. But the chocolate got stuck in the folds of the plastic making it a PAIN to unmold. And it didn't come off completely too. Some plastic was still stuck in the chocolate shell . Everytime I tried to remove it, the shell started to crack so I had to leave it alone.I still covered it up with the gold and some cocoa powder.... but the plastic threat still lurked at the back of my mind. More so since dad decided to give some away to a friend of his which had 2 young boys in the family. I warned him, and the report that came back the next day only consisted of rave reviews so I suppose He wasn't given the plastic piece. Thank goodness.

All in all, this really was a huge challenge. I still like my tiramisu recipe better than this one ( I thought it was a wee bit too sweet for my liking), but I'm glad I completed it. I never though  would ever MAKE my own marscapone!! And I think i'll keep doing so, it's alot easier on the wallet and I know that it's peservative free. The savoiardi recipe has also become a new friend. I just made another batch and am wondering what to do with them.

And thus, another DB challenge was completed. If you want to try the recipe out for yourself, you can follow this link. =>  http://thedaringkitchen.com/recipe/tiramisu

Happy Baking!!

oh, and p.s- I'VE STARTED CLASSES AT MIB!! ;-D

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veshti#Styles_and_varieties