{double chocolate peppermint cookies}

Over the holidays I went to a friends cookie exchange party and had to come up with something creative to bring along. I found a recipe with the perfect combination of espresso, chocolate and peppermint that didn't look too difficult to put together since. List in hand, I headed to the store knowing that I needed to make 4 dozen cookies. For some crazy reason in my head, I thought all cookie recipes make only ONE dozen. So, naturally, I quadrupled my ingredients. Now, this was not a big deal except in regards to the chocolate chips. The math I did (again in my head) was that I needed to have about 10 bags of chocolate chips. mhm. 10. Wisely, upon returning home, I decided to actually check and see how many this recipe said it yielded...about 50. ehem. Well, I now have enough chocolate to last me the entire year.

Other than my lack of ability to read or do math, this recipe was really easy to do and turned out great! It would be a perfect end to your Valentines Day meal or just to fulfill any chocolate craving you might be having.

You can find the recipe here.

{daring bakers: rustic apple crostatas}

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

This months Daring Bakers challenge was crostatas or tarts. Tarts are made up of a sweet short crust pastry dough and either fruit or pastry cream based fillings. With Thanksgiving coming up I decided to make an apple tart and since I had no tart pan, I went for the rustic look (which I think adds to the homeyness of it all). I adapted my filling recipe from Joy of Baking and used one of the pasta frolla recipes provided.

It was quite an adventure.

I wanted to serve the tarts on turkey day which meant I needed to assemble and bake these babies day of. I planed ahead with the hostess to make sure there would be space for me to work/bake and discovered she had three ovens! Awesome. I prepped my pasta frolla the day before and brought it with me along with the rest of the ingredients. After rolling out my dough, filling my tarts and folding over the rustic edges, I was ready to bake. I went to place my pan in the oven and what do you know, it doesn't fit! Not to worry, I thought, I'll go pre-heat the big oven downstairs and bake it in there. So, I place my tarts back in the fridge so they stay firm and run downstairs. Since there was no light indicator as to whether or not the oven was pre-heated, I decided to give it a half hour to get hot. Once the time had passed, I walked downstairs precariously holding my tarts and placed them in the oven...which wasn't really that hot but I figured it would be okay. Using my trusty iphone timer I set it for 30 minutes and walked back upstairs to mingle. The alarm goes off. I happily hop downstairs to check on the tarts and what do you know, the oven was warm enough to keep a plate warm and make my dough gooey. Fantastic. So along with some help I try to transfer the tarts to a smaller baking pan...let me tell you...gooey dough does not transfer. Thankfully, a fellow daring baker was there to advise me (and help me remain calm!) to place the pan back in the fridge to firm up again before transferring it to a smaller pan. This worked wonderfully and we ended up having the tarts with the late night turkey day snack.

Despite the bumps along the way, everything came out pretty delicious. I really loved the crust and the filling was nice and lite. I will definitely be making these again as I thought the whole process was actually fairly simple. Thank you Simona for a fun challenge!

See more pics and the recipe after the jump.

{daring bakers: donuts}

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

So, I have taken a couple month hiatus from daring bakers/cooks as work has picked up and I just needed a break. I am back and ready to go for this months challenge and was very excited when I saw that we get to make donuts! It is a rare treat for me to have a donut...typically just walking by a Krispy Kreme or Dunkin Donuts and smelling the aroma is enough for me to gain 5lbs. The only mandatory item for this months challenge was that we make donuts; they could be any flavor, filling, topping we wanted. Lori was kind enough to include a recipe for pumpkin donuts in this challenge and well, I'm all about some pumpkin in the fall. Pumpkin beer, pumpkin coffee, pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies...if pumpkin is in the name, I will eat/drink it. I have never had pumpkin donuts, but well, they sound delightful. This is the first challenge that on the day of posting, I had both the time and ingredients to put it all together! Also, John was coming home from a week long business trip and I thought it would be a fun surprise to have them waiting for him.

The methods used for cooking the donuts in each recipe Lori gave us was to fry them. Since I'm not a fan of a vat of grease and I wanted to make these as "healthy" as possible so I found some recipes online where people baked the donuts. I made a half batch of the pumpkin donut recipe provided (since it is only the two of us indulging) and found a cinnamon glaze recipe for my topping. Since I had a few chocolate chips left over from making pumpkin chocolate chip cookies I decided to add them to half of my recipe to see how that tasted.

The overall process of making the donuts was incredibly simple. Just keep in mind that you need it to chill for at least 3 hours before baking/frying. My end result...to die for as far as taste goes. I could live off of these babies. They did not however maintain their very puffy rounded shape and turned out to look more like cookies. I blame it on using a cookie sheet instead of with a donut mold. Thanks for a great challenge Lori!

Check out pics after the jump.
To see the full recipes and what others did check out The Daring Kitchen.

{daring bakers: swiss swirl ice cream cake}

The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.

Upon first sight of this months swiss swirl ice cream cake challenge, my thoughts were as follows: I get to make ice cream!!! Wait. I have to make swiss rolls as well? Like those little debbie ones I loved as a kid? And then combine it all?! Okay, a kid HAD to have made this up and then an adult just made it pretty...who else would have come up with combining swiss rolls and ice cream but a kid?

So, yes, that was my thought process pretty much exactly. I was very excited to get started so I began brainstorming my dream combinations of ice cream flavors. Strawberry + lemon, blueberry + lemon, mint + chocolate, mint chocolate + coffee, mint + chocolate cinnamon, chocolate coffee + mint...the list went on. I have determined that I will make all of these flavors at some point or another. For this challenge though, I chose to do a chocolate espresso + mint ice cream along with a mint cream filled swiss roll.

It was quickly evident that I would not be able to make this dessert with entirely locally sourced ingredients so, I did the best I could and at least used my own fresh mint from my container garden. My other challenge was that I am a bit lactose intolerant which is very sad as I LOVE ice cream. I do sometimes indulge in the occasional ben & jerry's just to ya know, "test" my stomach out. I savor every single bite and then about 5 minutes later, immediately regret my decision. Thankfully, a friend of mine has the book The Vegan Scoup on her iPad and was able to send me over a few of the recipes I needed to make my concoction. Let me tell you, ice cream is incredible simple to make without an ice cream maker! You just need to have an entire day that you will be home so you can babysit it. Totally worth it in my opinion.

As this challenge had so many components (the ice cream (two versions!), swiss rolls, hot fudge sauce and then assembly which had several steps of letting it freeze for hours) I had to break it down into a several day process so that my brain wouldn't explode. I started with the chocolate espresso ice cream to make sure it would work. It did. I enjoyed a bowl that evening. The following day I made the mint ice cream. Delicious. The green leaves even turned the ice cream a light mint color! I then took a day of rest to build my courage to create the swiss roll as I'd heard too many horror stories with it not working from other daring bakers.

Took another day to build more courage.

Finally got the courage to try it on the 5th day and was very hopeful. I'd read all sorts of tips from others and felt I was ready to face the challenge. Everything mixed nicely and remained fluffy. It baked beautifully. It even came off of the parchment paper without too much trouble. I was feeling very happy and wondered what all the fuss had been about. I rolled it up nicely in my towel and left it to cool for the two hours recommended. A few minutes before it was ready to be filled I made my mint cream filling and then sat down to do my unrolling. It went okay as I unrolled but I noticed it cracking a bit. I figured it was okay and kept on going. Added the mint filling and began to roll it back up without the towel this time and well...DISASTER. A thin amount stuck to the towel and did not come up which caused the cake to crack even worse. Lets just say at this point, the day before our challenge is due, I just gave up and kept on rolling it. Somehow I got it wrapped in plastic and placed in the freezer hoping it would take some shape and allow me to cut it. Thankfully it did and I was able to slice it up nicely and begin assembling the masterpiece.

The assembly process was fairly easy, it just took forever for each layer to freeze. I must say that the end result was absolutely worth the long drawn out saga. The flavors combined delightfully in my mouth and I think I could eat this every day. In the end, I don't know if I'd ever make this entire thing again. I will definitely be making more ice creams, but just not sure about doing the whole thing all over again. Thank you Sunita for an awesome challenge! It was perfect for this ridiculous summer heat we've been having.

Visit the Daring Kitchen for the original recipes and see what others created. Check out more pics and my recipes below the jump!

{local pops}

Summer is here and with that comes the lovely days of 90 and 100º weather. Blech. Thankfully, I found some recipes out there to make fruit popsicles that are both healthy and refreshing. I was inspired by these delicious looking treats and decided to use the raspberries and blueberries I'd picked up at the market to try my own version. You could make these without adding any sweetener but I had some local honey on hand and decided to add in just enough to take out the bite...especially with the raspberries. I highly recommend using molds that have no funky shapes or dips like I did with my raspberry molds...it made it terribly difficult to get out of the glass after it had frozen. My favorite was the blueberry version...perfectly refreshing and scrumptious. The raspberry version ended up not having quite enough honey in it so it had a little bit of a bite. If you make these, just taste them once its all mixed up before putting into the molds to make sure the sweetness factor is to your liking. As we are moving south this week, these will definitely become a staple in our freezer to help us survive the hot summer months.

Recipe and pics after the jump

{june daring bakers: blueberry pavlovas}

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 months challenge was to make chocolate pavlovas and chocolate mascarpone mousse. As I am trying to make each challenge using as local of ingredients as possible, I am happy to say that I only had to go out and buy the heavy cream and mascarpone cheese. Granted, we did make mascarpone cheese in the Tiramisu daring bakers challenge back in February, but I really didn't want to go through the trouble and end up with butter again so I bought it instead. I discovered that yes indeed, I had made it incorrectly during that challenge...oh well. So, getting back to this challenge, at the market last Saturday I discovered that blueberries had come into season. I was so excited that I bought several pints...these have to be the best blueberries I've ever eaten in my life. For the challenge I decided to use them to make a blueberry meringue, blueberry mouse and the mascarpone cream drizzle.

I decided to do a half recipe since it was going to only be John and I eating this. Sadly, we still had too much. My changes to the original recipe were basically doing a straight substitute of the chocolate for the blueberries. To prepare them, I simply pureed them in my tiny food processor so that they would mix well with all of the other ingredients. The nice thing about this dessert was that it was fairly easy to make and put together. The longest portion was waiting on the merengues to cook but let me tell you, crispy blueberry merengues absolutely melt in your mouth. It was like cotton candy in crunch form. I would have been fine just making and eating those! The mouse was also pretty delicious and the blueberys flavor came through nicely. It all combined to make an absolute delight in the mouth. John, who doesn't usually enjoy sugary sweets, LOVED these.

Check out the pics and recipe after the jump

{may daring bakers: piece montée}

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.

This months challenge at first glance was very intimidating. First of all, the title of the recipe was french and then a little googling of what piece montée (aka. croquembouche "crunch in the mouth") looks like revealed these towering masterpieces of puff pastries. The requirements of the challenge were that we had to make our own pate a choux (puff pastry) and crème patissiere (filling). We were allowed to experiment with the flavors of the filling.  Thankfully it was actually a relatively simple process to create the puff pastries and fillings. I say relatively simple because not everything puffed like it was supposed to...I think it had something to do with the humidity in the air today with all the rain we've been having. In the end I was fairly pleased with how everything turned out. I chose to try a few flavors: vanilla, chocolate and rum. My favorite was the chocolate.

Now, my boyfriend and I are continuing our efforts to source everything we eat from within a 100 mile radius, as well as, use up any leftover pantry items we might have had before beginning this locavore challenge. For the challenges of daring bakers, I have decided that I will do my very best to continue using local ingredients, but if I must purchase an item or two from the store, well then I must. For this challenge the only things I had to get as extra were the soy milk and chocolate. My boyfriend pointed out after the fact that we did have cocoa powder that I could have used, but I forgot about it and bought semisweet chocolate chips instead. Other than that, the eggs, flour, butter were all local and all other ingredients I had in my pantry.

It took me a while to find a flour mill that was local, but Virginia happens to have a few of them. Wades Mill is a stone ground flour mill that is a little less than an hour away from our home. Its a lovely drive down a skinny road that passes a winery and several other farms all with green rolling hills. I could totally live out there! (after the jump I've shared a few pictures from the mill and the drive) As I pulled up I saw a large water wheel that I learned is a working power source for grinding some of the flour with the rest being electrically powered. The woman I met in the little shop was very passionate informative of all sorts of issues facing the local farmers. Having worked in the farming industry the majority of her life, she had a lot to say about the issues they face with the term organic. I won't go into it here, but it was really a great experience getting to chat with her. I think thats become one of my favorite things about doing the locavore challenge; getting to speak with the farmers themselves. Anyway, I digress, back to the flour. They have a wide variety of flours you can purchase either online or at the store. Since shipping is almost more than the cost of the flour and I was driving that direction anyway, I chose to stop by. I picked up whole wheat bread flour and whole wheat pastry flour which I used for this month's challenge. So far its been very tasty! I'm still learning the proportion of flour to liquid so that what I make doesn't come out too dense, but I can honestly say its pretty freakin delicious.

Recipe and pics after the jump

{strawberry rhubarb pie}

FINALLY!! Strawberries are beginning to appear in our farmers market! I cannot tell you how excited I am about this. For two months of seeing only green items, I am thrilled to have some color on my plate. In honor of our first strawberries, I chose to make a dessert. Rhubarb is also in season right now so at the farmers market we picked up a couple pints of strawberries and a bunch of rhubarb to make a pie.


Recipe and pics after the jump

{march daring bakers: orange tian}

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.

Spring has arrived! What better way to usher in this wonderful season than with this months Daring Bakers challenge: Orange Tian. I had never heard of this dessert before and in hearing that it was a recipe from France didn't help my intimidation level. I was however, thrilled to see that the challenge was a colorful citrus flavored dessert that looked light and perfect for Spring.

Orange Tian is made of several layers including pate sablee (tart crust), orange marmalade, a whipped cream filling topped with orange segments and a caramel sauce. Our requirements for the challenge were that we had to make the pate sablee, whipped cream filling, marmalade, citrus segments and caramel sauce. We were allowed to play with flavoring and different fruits in the citrus family. Immediately after reading the description I wanted to do a variety of toppings merely for the sake of playing with colors. I also decided to try making a strawberry marmelade in addition to the orange.

{february daring bakers: tiramisu}

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.

When I saw that the challenge for this month was tiramisu, I was very intimidated. The amount of steps required to create all of the components of the dessert was a little overwhelming and ended up being the most challenging part. I discovered that the actual assembly of the tiramisu was incredibly simple.

More pics after the jump

{cupakes}

vanilla cupcake recipe source: Joy of Baking
chocolate cupcake recipe source: Joy of Baking
My best friend is getting married! In honor of that special occasion I threw her a party to celebrate with all our friends. She loves chocolate and vanilla cupcakes so I searched online for the perfect recipes. Joy of Baking had some good looking options for a chocolate cupcake and a vanilla cupcake that I decided to use.

More after the jump

{january daring bakers: nanaimo bars}

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.

This is my first time participating in the Daring Bakers challenge and I absolutely loved it! The challenge had two parts to it: 1) bake homemade graham crackers and 2) use the graham crackers you made to create Canadian Nanaimo Bars (pronounced Nah-nye-Moh). We had the option to make this a gluten free recipe but since all-purpose is what I had on hand, I opted for it.

More pics after the jump