Thank you ALL who created the baked goods!!  I have really enjoyed seeing the changes made and the new styling done to the food.  Good ideas!

The questions that I had asked the participants of the challenge, were:

• Why did you chose the dessert?
• What did you and your family think of the flavors?
• If there was something that you changed or added, what was it?

Gettin’ Clever with Tina!

First, we have Tina from “Checkin’ Out the Bovine Situation.”  She chose to make Laugenbrotchen, aka: Pretzel Rolls.  I love the fact that she went outside the box and made some of them sweet!  Good idea Tina!  Here are her responses to my questions that I asked.

1. Why did you chose the dessert? Ha! Because I had the ingredients!
2. What did you and your family think of the flavors? DH (her husband) said they were good and I ate 1.5 rolls at lunch. I think I prefer the salted ones over the cinnamon sugar ones.
3. If there was something that you changed or added, what was it? I didn’t have enough bread flour. I used cinnamon sugar on some of them.

I love her humor through this, and how she handled a dilemma with the shortage of bread flour.  Thank you Tina for you adventure of making the pretzel rolls!

Strawberry Surprise from Kim!

Kim from “a little lunch,” dropped a note to me this weekend stating she was sorry that she missed the challenge, but I didn’t let her get away so quickly!  I was so excited to see another friendly face drop in and create something yummy!  Kim decided to surprise her husband with the simple and yet so delicious treat.  The No-Bake Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake dessert!  Only Kim took it to a new level and created her own chocolate waffles (pretty heart shaped too!) instead of buying the pre-packaged kind.  Way to go Kim!!

Her answers to my questions:

What a great summertime dessert!

I like that you can make it quickly – this would be good for “drop in” company.  Unfortunately chocolate waffles are scarce in our small town, so I ended up making my own (using Alton Brown’s Chocolate Waffle recipe from Food Network.)  But it’s still technically “no bake” – I didn’t use the oven!  (I used real whipping cream, too, but that’s just my preference.)

Thanks for the taste treat — my hubby wasn’t expecting dessert tonight (it’s HOT here) but he sure was tickled when I served this!

Spanish Flavor from Angie

Angie chose to make the Tres Leches cake because she and her husband tasted it once at a restaurant and loved it.  So she wanted to know how to make it out of the home too.  This is such a wonderful dessert in the summertime, as it’s so light and coooooold.  Cold cake on a hot summer day, enough said!  I’m going to put her comments below, as she explains everything much better than I am able to do!  Thanks Angie for choosing a dessert that you have good memories with, and don’t mind sharing them too.(btw…you’re right, more chocolate the better!)

My husband, John and daughter, Mikayla love Hot Milk Cake.  John and I have tried Tres Leche cake only once at a Mexican restaurant and we loved it.  So that is how I decided to make Tres Leche.  We all loved the cake (even the dogs!)  It is the perfect dessert on a hot day since it needs to be refrigerated (I would assume because of the milk).  Part of the cake was eaten before I had a chance to make the whipped topping!

I made the recipe exactly as posted on your blog.  I didn’t add maraschino cherries, but as you can see from the photo I sprinkled (dumped, oops…got a bit too much in the sifter!) some cocoa powder on top on one serving.  I liked the addition of the cocoa since everything is better with the taste of chocolate!  Also, it was super easy to make, which is always a plus in my book. 

To sum up my baking challenge experience – Tres Leche Cake is wonderful!

• Continue yoga practice so that I can finally touch my heels to the ground in downward dog 

This isn’t me, but that’s the goal.

•  Read 1 book a month, this seems fairly achievable, but I need to work on it.  I picked up a few duds that derailed this goal…

• Run 5 miles without stopping, this goal was designed so that I could seriously treat myself to a new pair of shoes, at the time it was the Brian Atwood Maniac Pumps

Brian Atwood Maniac Pumps

•  Bake more and take chances with my baking.  This has been a success, as evidenced here, and here, here, and here.  A large part of this goal was that with baking, more so than cooking, if you make a mistake it’s obvious; there is no denying a deflated souffle, a dry cake or crumbly cookie.  Baking forces you to take a risk with every open and close of the oven door.  

• Be published again.  This has been perhaps the most personal goal.  In my former job I had been establishing myself as an expert in the fashion/premium denim field when it came to fits and what celebrities were wearing.  I had been quoted for the AP, In Style, Life & Style and Real Simple – and with every snippet of an article, it was always a thrill. Today I realized that thrill again when I got to write for the DC Ladies blog.  This blog is a community of women in their 20′s-30′s-40′s who write on events, travel, food, fitness and life in general.  I will be writing there every two weeks about food. 

Thank you for being a part of this journey so far, and I’ll keep you updated on that downward dog thing, as I continue…

Things to look forward to this week: The magic of oven dried tomatoes, seriously wow!, homemade pizza party, some more sweet treats, Wedding Wednesday and more!

The fruit is almost creamy, cool, just lightly sweet and refreshing.  Oh and studded through with thousands of addictive crunchy little black seeds.

And it’s a stunner. Sitting there in the market all done up in shades of fuchsia and neon green. It looks like something straight out of Hollywood. It looks what might happen if a street fruit seller in Hong Kong had some sort of nuclear collision with a neon light-up street sign and a dalmatian.

I kid, I kid. Dragon fruit is, however, native to Southern China… as well as parts of Australia, South America, Mexico, Southeast Asia and even Hawaii.  It’s actually a cactus fruit and supposedly helps the body rid itself of heavy metal toxins-something we are all too happy to do here in China.

Besides cubing it and eating it plain, (which is delicious) dragon fruit doesn’t get a lot of other preparation around here, from what I can tell. At an upscale dim sum place our first weekend in town, I had a little piece of dragon fruit stuffed inside a pile of whipped cream and wrapped in mochi. That was sinfully delicious. Like, so wrong, but ohhh so right; like one should never consume that much pure dairy fat in one sitting ever again-delicious.

Anyways, seeing as how no one seems to bake with dragon fruit and seeing as how I’m feeling a little sorry for myself what with a lack of baking supplies, I would like to try and invent a baked good/dessert using dragon fruit.

Now should I make a quick bread? a cookie? a muffin? a sorbet? (the last one might have to wait until our ice cream maker arrives) Should I attempt a pudding or flan like item?

Let me know in the comments section if you have any opinions on the matter OR if you ever made something (ideally delicious) with dragon fruit. I’m eagerly awaiting your responses and until then I’m going to continue my research into the dragon fruit by ermm well, eating a lot of them while they are still around.

Various things have got in the way of baking recently and my bread and cake quota has been way down. I have been heading to the other side of Derby most days to see my Mum in hospital as she had a fall back home whilst we were away in Wales. Finally she was released on Thursday and on Sunday Ed was at a tool show in Harrogate so I had a quiet day at home with George to allow me to mooch around in a dressing gown and start the proving process.

I started off as suggested by making quite a sticky dough, but I think I might have gone a bit too far down the sticky route as I was struggling to get the dough off my fingers, the worktop and even to get the gooey lump out of the bowl. I did the series of quick kneads and short proves then left the dough for the requisite hour hoping for it to double in size. It didn’t. It sat there resolutely at the same size for nearly two hours. At this point I put the central heating on and up it puffed. I am not so sure about the economy of making your own bread sometimes, when you add in your time, ingredients, electricity for the oven and a good dollop of central heating, each loaf probably costs about a tenner! I costed out a batch of brownies recently and with the 70% chocolate and all the other goodies (1/2lb of butter and 3 tons of sugar) it came out at £5.50 for 12.

Anyway – back to my loaf. Here it is after I shaped it and put it in the tin, I really must get a sharper blade for slashing the tops of loaves as this one looks like it was nibbled open by squirrels:

I did the ‘River Cottage’ check as suggested after 10 minutes and it was just starting to brown, so I turned down the oven to 180 for the remainder of the time. It’s a bit dark in my oven:

The light was fading by the time it came out, and by then visitors had arrived so this picture is very grainy as I rushed to take it in the twilight by the window. It gave me chance to have a go with my new noise reduction software.

The next day we used it for sandwiches and beans on toast and it worked out well for both, it slices easily and seems to last quite well too. It’s definitely one to add to my repertoire and I have put Dan Lepard’s book on my Christmas/Birthday list.

Below are the original instructions from the Fresh From The Oven blog:

White Tin Loaf (based on Dan Lepard’s Quick White Loaf, p63 of the Handmade Loaf)

2lb loaf tin greased and floured or lined with baking parchment (no need to line the short ends just oil them). Oven to be pre-heated to its maximum setting (R10/250C) and with a tray of water in the bottom to create steam.

Ingredients:

• 200g semi skimmed milk at room temp (Dan uses whole milk but semi skimmed seems to work fine)
• 150g water at room temp (remember 1g = 1ml but its easier to be accurate weighing fluids)
• 1 tsp fast action yeast (or 2 tsp fresh yeast crumbled)
• 200g plain white flour
• 300g strong white bread flour
• 1 ½ tsp fine sea salt

Method:

Mix the flours and salt together in a bowl. Mix the water and milk together in a separate bowl and whisk in the yeast.

Add the liquid to the flour and mix with the fingers of one hand to a soft sticky rough dough. You may need to add a little more liquid do this a teaspoon at a time until you have a soft sticky dough. You must use oil not flour on the kneading surface and your hands. Something like vegetable oil is good.

The dough must be quite sticky and soft to start with. It will firm up when kneaded and as time progresses.

• Once you have soft sticky dough leave it covered in the bowl for 10 minutes.
• Now oil your kneading surface and hands and tip the dough out.
• Knead for about 12 seconds by folding in the edges to the centre, a bit like shaping a round loaf, rotate the dough as you go.
• Flip the dough over, leave it on the surface and cover with a cloth. Wash out the bowl and then oil it lightly. Put the dough back in the bowl and cover.
• Leave for 10-15 minutes and then do another 12 second knead. You will notice the dough is already less sticky and firmer.
• Leave for 20 -30 mins and repeat the fast knead. You are aiming to have kneaded the dough 3 times in the first hour.
• Leave covered to rise until at least 50% larger but not more than double in size.
• Tip out onto the oil surface and press the air out of the dough using the tips of your fingers so its square-ish in shape. Repeat the fast knead process (or fold in to thirds then rotate through 90, flatten again and fold into 3rds again).
• Shape the dough as required for the particular loaf you are making. Put it in a tin, or supported in a floured cloth in a bowl.
• Leave to rise until at least 50% larger and preferably almost double in size.
• Slash top and bake as per your recipe.

The first rise will probably take about an hour from the last knead.

To shape for a tin loaf, flatten the dough to a square about the same width as your tin. Roll the dough into a cylinder and press the seam firmly, fold under the two short ends and place in the tin seam side down. Allow to rise (covered) to 1 ½ to 2 times volume i.e. to the top of the tin.

Slash the top of the loaf along it length and put it straight into the oven for 10 minutes at maximum temperature. After 10 minutes check how it’s browning and drop the temperature as follows (these baking guidelines are from the River Cottage Bread Book):

• R6/200C if the crust is pale
• R4/180C if crust is noticeably browning
• R3/170C if crust is browning quickly
• And cook for a further 40-50 minutes.

...the birthday boy...

… and in case anyone hasn’t noticed… i like to bake…

… thus, I obviously wanted to concoct some sort of special treat… 

…his request was, “ice cream cake… can you do that?”…

… my response, “i accept the challenge”… 

…i’ve never made one before… but i intend to give it a darn-good-go this weekend… so if any of you have wisdom on this matter… please impart it at this point… 

… i do feel i’ve done a great deal of research… and thought through my plan of attack quite thoroughly… so, that all said… and assistance requested… i’ll report back with what is hopefully a stunning success… but could quite possibly be a hilarious flop…