Daring Bakers: Armenian Treats

April 27, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 47 Comments

The Daring Bakers’ April 2012 challenge, hosted by Jason at Daily Candor, were two Armenian standards: nazook and nutmeg cake. Nazook is a layered yeasted dough pastry with a sweet filling, and nutmeg cake is a fragrant, nutty coffee-style cake.

Armenian baking is not something I had ever contemplated before this challenge, which may ring true to many (have you ever contemplated Armenian baking?). However, Nate’s paternal forebears came from Armenia several generations ago, and he has a very Armenian last name, so it does surprise me just a little bit that, me being me, I never looked into it. That’s totally something I would do….

Daring Bakers: Quickbread

February 27, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 43 Comments

The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.

A quickbread is a sweet or savory bread/cake that is made with baking powder or baking soda (and sometimes eggs) rather than yeast, thereby making it “quick” to make, start to finish. Scones, muffins, popovers, Irish soda bread, and loaves like banana bread and tea cakes all fall into this category.

A beautiful, golden brown, airy popover

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Daring Bakers: letting nature do the work…

December 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 21 Comments

Our Daring Bakers Host for December 2011 was Jessica of My Recipe Project and she showed us how fun it is to create Sour Dough bread in our own kitchens! She provided us with Sour Dough recipes from Bread Matters by AndrewWhitley as well as delicious recipes to use our Sour Dough bread in from Tonia George’s Things on Toast and Canteen’s Great British Food!

Well. This was QUITE the exhaustive challenge! Not only making bread, but actually cultivating the natural yeasty-beasties that turn it from flour-and-water-glop to bread, and then creating an edible to showcase said bread. See, exhaustive.

Sourdough bread begins with a “starter”, which is essentially a mixture of flour and water left long enough to get all bubbly and alive. Yes, alive – those little yeasties in the starter are living and need to be fed their own weight in flour and water in order to stay lively enough to make bread rise. When I began this challenge, I thought that making a starter involved catching wild yeast from the air (does that sound crazy?), but it turns out that the yeasts in question are actually on the grains that the flour is made from, and the flour-water mixture just wakes them up to they can do their yeasty thang. For this reason, whole, organic grains are best for making a starter: less processing equals more natural yeast in the flour, which means a more active and effective starter. You can turn a whole grain starter into a white flour starter (which is a little more versatile) by simply feeding it white flour after it has been established.…

Daring Bakers: Filipino Sans Rival Cake

November 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 30 Comments

Catherine of Munchie Musings was our November Daring Bakers’ host and she challenged us to make a traditional Filipino dessert – the delicious Sans Rival cake! And for those of us who wanted to try an additional Filipino dessert, Catherine also gave us a bonus recipe for Bibingka which comes from her friend Jun of Jun-blog.

At first glance, it seems odd that Sans Rival is a traditional Filipino dessert, being that all of its components are decidedly French! This is a cake made of dacquoise discs – meringue mixed with nuts and baked until crisp – layered with French buttercream frosting and decorated with more nuts (traditionally cashews). Apparently, in the 1920s and 30s, many Filipinos went abroad to study and those who ended up in France brought home the French language and pastry chef techniques that originated the Sans Rival. Sans Rival means “without rival”, and it’s a pretty appropriate name: this is a delicious, rich dessert.

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Daring Bakers: Povitica

October 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 30 Comments

The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

My first thought when I saw this month’s challenge was, “What the hell is povitica?”. When I found out that it was a walnut-filled bread, I have to admit that I was not super excited about it – we had just done croissants last month, and I was hankering for something drenched in chocolate. However, once I started seeing some of the beautiful loaves showing up on the Daring Baker’s members’ forum and reading all the various iterations of, “OH MY GOD THIS IS SO GOOD!!!”, I decided to pull up my socks like a big girl and get over my attitude problem. And I’m really glad I did, because this is a beautiful, delicious bread!…

Daring Bakers: Homemade Croissants!

September 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 32 Comments

The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

I have been wanting to try making croissants for a long time, so this was the perfect challenge! It became immediately apparent, however, that croissants can be very finicky. To make then, you encase butter in dough and then roll it out and fold it and let it rest and roll it out and fold it and let it rest and repeat several more times, all the while making sure that the butter in the dough doesn’t get too soft and melt or get too hard and shatter and that you keep it evenly layered, so that in the end you hopefully end up with beautiful, flaky, light crescents of buttery, airy, honeycomb-textured pastry. No wonder croissants are considered daunting by many home bakers!…

Daring Bakers: Chocolate and Candy!

August 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 15 Comments

The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

Did I mention that right now, Nate and I have sworn off refined sugar six days a week? Oh man, this challenge came at the wrong time! But it was also so, so right…

The premise of this month’s challenge was to have all us Daring Bakers learn to temper chocolate, and then use it in our candy creations. To temper chocolate, you heat it, cool it, and heat it again to specific temperatures in order to create small, uniform crystals of cocoa butter in the chocolate so that it stays nice and shiny when it hardens and has a good snap when it breaks. It also gives a thin, even coating to things like dipped candies. Untempered chocolate will have a mottled, dusty look when it hardens, and will crumble rather than snap cleanly when broken. For chocolate making, couverture chocolate is the gold standard – this is chocolate with a high percentage of cocoa butter that, when tempered properly, results in a shinier, snappier, mellower finished chocolate. Lisa and Mandy provided chocolate tempering instructions plus a ton of chocolate and non-chocolate candy recipes, and to be eligible for the Chocoley contest, we had to make two kinds of candy: one chocolate, and one of our choice (chocolate or otherwise).

I started out with a non-chocolate candy: sponge toffee.…

Daring Bakers: Fresh Fraisier

July 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 21 Comments

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

A fraisier is a French pastry consisting of two layers of cake soaked in simple syrup with strawberries and pastry cream sandwiched between. Essentially, it is a free-standing trifle, but the special thing about a fraisier is the exposed fruit around the sides. To make a true fraisier, you have to use strawberries (fraise = strawberry), so I’m not really sure what to call my strawberry-raspberry-blueberry combination – a baies mélanger-ier doesn’t really have the same ring to it. But whatever you want to call it, it was tasty!

I did this challenge while I was in California visiting my aunt and uncle, and it was extra challenging because I was baking in an unfamiliar kitchen and also contending with a wheat and corn allergy. But it turned out beautifully and just proves that you don’t need fancy equipment or lots of space to make a spectacular dessert. …

Daring Bakers: Baklava with Homemade Phyllo Pastry!

June 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 37 Comments

Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.

Did you read that? Homemade phyllo pastry… do you have any idea how thin that stuff is? It’s really really thin!!

Anyway. Baklava! I love it, but I’d never made it myself, so I was excited to give it a try. The challenge this month was in making the dough, and we could be as creative as we wanted with the baklava. I’ve had my eye on a cherry chocolate baklava recipe from Canadian Living for a long time, so I knew I wanted to try that flavour profile.I also wanted to do a more “traditional” one (based on the conversations in the Daring Bakers’ forums, there are many different traditional versions of baklava!), so I followed the suggested recipe and used walnuts, pistachios, and almonds.
And then, of course, I had to get creative with the shape. I did the traditional flavour in the traditional stacked layers, and the cherry chocolate one in a roll.I made a 9″x5″ pan of each kind – turns out that one pan would have been plenty! And after spending 3 HOURS rolling out enough dough for two half batches, it was definitely enough!! This was a fun challenge though, and making something like homemade phyllo is exactly why I joined the Daring Bakers – but be warned: it is very time-consuming! I’m pretty strong and I’m actually quite handy with a rolling pin, so it wasn’t a question of me being wussy or too weak to roll out the dough. The rolling plus the stretching just took forever! And now my hands feel bruised and I won’t need to do any push-ups for a week……

Daring Bakers Challenge: Maple Syrup Mousse in an Edible Container

April 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 11 Comments

I recently joined an online cooking challenge group called the Daring Bakers (their website, the Daring Kitchen, is also home to the Daring Cooks). Every month members are challenged to make a certain recipe, showcasing their creativity and skills to interpret it. The members keep it a secret (no blog posts or online mention of the challenge) until the 27th of the month, when everyone posts a write-up on their blog, recounting their kitchen adventure with that month’s challenge recipe. April was my first Daring Bakers’ Challenge, and it was a good one!

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

I have to admit that I was a teensy bit disappointed because mousse isn’t exactly a challenging baking recipe, and the previous months’ challenges had definitely employed more advanced baking skills (including a Jaconde sponge/entremet and a yeasted meringue coffee cake, both of which I want to try out at some point!). However, the edible container part was intriguing, and gave me a chance to try two things that I have wanted to make for a long time: tuile cookie cups and chocolate cups using water balloons. I got over my initial disappointment pretty fast after that, because I love maple syrup (and coincidentally, I had just bought a litre of it for a relatively good price!) AND because Evelyne suggested incorporating bacon into the edible container – and who doesn’t love bacon? Plus the maple/bacon combination is just so delicious…

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