January 2010 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. I had been wanting to make these ever since I saw them on foodgawker.com so I was so excited that this was January's challenge! I had also really been wanting to try gluten free baking, but I ended up using regular wheat flour because the ingredient list was already quite long and I needed to be more frugal in my spending this month.

The first part of the challenge was to make your own graham crackers.
For Gluten-Free Graham Wafers
Ingredients
1 cup (138 g) (4.9 ounces) Sweet rice flour (also known as glutinous rice flour)
3/4 cup (100 g) (3.5 ounces) Tapioca Starch/Flour
1/2 cup (65 g) (2.3 ounces) Sorghum Flour
1 cup (200 g) (7.1 ounces) Dark Brown Sugar, Lightly packed
1 teaspoon (5 mL) Baking soda
3/4 teaspoon (4 mL ) Kosher Salt
7 tablespoons (100 g) (3 ½ ounces) Unsalted Butter (Cut into 1-inch cubes and frozen)
1/3 cup (80 mL) Honey, Mild-flavoured such as clover.
5 tablespoons (75 mL) Whole Milk
2 tablespoons (30 mL) Pure Vanilla Extract


The alternate directions for wheat flour called for 2 1/2 cups + 2 T of flour. I also was out of Vanilla Extract so I substituted it for some watered down pure maple syrup. The dough was amazingly sticky and hard to work with. I don't own a rolling pin (I really need to get one) so I use these long narrow cups that I have and I just could not get it thin enough without the dough tearing or sticking to the counter and I did not want to overwork it or add too much flour. So my graham crackers came out a bit thick but they tasted pretty good and totally served their purpose.

Here is the original recipe:
For Nanaimo Bars — Bottom Layer
1/2 cup Unsalted Butter
1/4 cup Granulated Sugar
5 tablespoons Unsweetened Cocoa
1 Large Egg, Beaten
1 1/4 cups Gluten Free Graham Wafer Crumbs
1/2 cup Almonds Finely chopped
1 cup Coconut Shredded
For Nanaimo Bars — Middle Layer
1/2 cup Unsalted Butter
2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons Heavy Cream
2 tablespoons Vanilla Custard Powder
2 cups Icing Sugar
For Nanaimo Bars — Top Layer
4 ounces Semi-sweet chocolate
2 tablespoons Unsalted Butter
It sounds waaaaaaaaaaay heavy, and called for many ingredients I do not have on hand usually, so another Daring Baker was kind enough to post a Weight Watchers recipe that I used instead. I slightly altered this one too.

Bottom layer
1 cup(s) graham cracker crumbs
2 Tbsp chopped walnuts (I used almonds because I like them better)
2 oz milk chocolate chips (I used more)
1/8 cup(s) packaged shredded coconut
3 Tbsp reduced-calorie margarine, melted (I used butter because I had it)

I don't have a food processor so everything was chopped a bit more coarsely than it should have been.

Middle Layer
1 oz fat-free sugar-free instant vanilla pudding mix
1 cup(s) fat-free skim milk (I used whole because I had it)
5 oz lite whipped topping
This Middle layer never really set as much as it was supposed to. I froze it over night before I put the chocolate on top.




Top layer
4 oz semisweet baking chocolate (I used up the rest of the chocolate chips)
1 Tbsp reduced-calorie margarine (butter again)
After it froze overnight I was able to get the chocolate on in the morning. I then put the whole thing in the fridge while I was at work all day.



Here is the first bar I cut! The middle layer was super oozy but man were they good! I will most certainly be making these again.

January 2010 daring cooks satay

I am so late with this but I really wanted to make it!
Also sorry about the poor quality photos! I forgot to borrow my aunts camera so I took these with my cell phone.


This is the raw meat. I used olive oil, lemon juice, soy sauce, cumin, garlic, ginger, a TJ's seasoning blend and some honey to marinate the pork over night


These pieces I pan fried in some olive oil


I also cooked some in the oven.




Here it all is ready to eat. I made a peanut sauce also from peanut butter, coconut milk, cumin, garlic, TJ's seasoning blend. I was not a big fan of the sauce, but my roommate loved it! The satay was super delicious though!

Daring Cooks December salmon en croute

This month I did my first Daring Cooks challenge! Salmon en croute. We had the option to do other things in pastry if we wanted but I wanted to do something I have never done before and I had never ever cooked fish before.

I mean seriously this is the first piece of fish I have ever even touched in its raw form (other than sushi and I just pop that in my mouth ASAP).

So fish is gross. Really, really, really gross. Salmon is pretty much the only kind of fish I can even imagine eating cooked. But skinning it and handling it raw was one of the nastiest things i have done. I have a pretty crappy collection of knives so I was super thankful that the skin came off pretty easy.

I made the shortcust pastry the day be fore using the following measurements
Ingredients:
450 gr (15.8 ounces or 3.2 cups ) of plain all purpose flour
200 gr ( 7 ounce) cold butter
pinch of salt

Sift the flour into a large bowl, add the butter and rub in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. If you have a food processor you can use that as shown in the above video. Stir in the salt, then add 2-3 tbsp of water and mix to a firm dough. Knead the dough briefly and gently on a floured surface. Wrap in cling film and chill while preparing the filling. For best results make sure the butter is very cold. But it was way too floury and I ended up adding like 6 or 7 tablespoons of water and it made a huge amount of pastry.But none of that mattered because when I went to take it out of the fridge the next day I found out that my fridge is dying and is freezing everything so there it is a frozen solid rock of pastry. The pastry was pretty easy to make so I just made another one real quick and I cut the recipe in half (and still had to add more than 3T of water and had more than enough pastry).

I just had super bad luck with the pastry. This was a brand new measuring cut and it snapped right in half when all I was doing was scooping flour. The wine bottle came out after this and everything at least felt like it went a little smoother :)

For the filing I used cream cheese, lemon juice and dill. I love dill! and I had never used it fresh before, it is definitely going to become a staple in my house from now on

Here it is all spread out and ready to bake

I cut fish shaped steam vents.

I had so much leftover pastry that I decided at the last minute to make a mini veggie version with some mushrooms I had hat I needed to use.

Here it all done! It was super delicious.

daring bakers november challenge cannoli

This November's challenged was cannoli. I had never even eaten them before so I was a little nervous. Plus I am not really a huge fan of frying things I feel like I'm wasting oil, and my apartment smelled for days.









Here is the dough right before I rolled it out. It may have been too dry. I'm not sure because I have never made cannoli before.









I thought the dough was really hard to role out. I mean I don't have a rolling pin or anything so I used a cup, but it sprung back like crazy an I don't think a rolling pin would have fixed that.











I used a big mug as a guide to cut the circles out. Since I didn't have any forms I think I cut them too big.










I totally forgot that I was making cannoli when I was at the store so I did not even look for forms or anything that I could use as forms. So I looked all through my kitchen for something I could not only wrap the dough around but that would not melt in the hot oil and I came up with butter knives!








Camera reflection in the hot hot oil












The first one















Before I took them off the knives.











I got blisters! I was so excited to see that my cannoli blistered I was not sure that they would since everything seemed too thick.











All the shells I made.















I filled them with a cinnamon ricotta filling. It was slightly difficult to pipe the filling in because the shells were pretty narrow from using butter knives as forms.

And here I am after consuming the left over wine that went into the shells :)




Overall it was a pretty good experience. I would like to try cannoli prepared by someone else so I can know if I did it right or not. The shells were thicker than I expected, though I think that comes from me cutting them too large for the "forms". I was not a huge fan of them the first night (though my roommate was) but the next day I thought they were pretty good.

I'm a Daring Baker! October challenge French Macaroons

So I have only ever failed at baking somehting I set my mind to twice. The first time I had to have been about 13 or 14 and we were pretty poor at that time but my father wanted a cake. So I attempted to make a white cake from scratch with what we had available, and it turned out like a sponge. A dense cinnamon flavored sponge. To this day I say that I can't make a cake from scratch, but the truth is I've never tried after my first disastrous attempt.
So now I'm a daring Baker, and hopefully it will get my ass in line and get me trying some things I have never done before and also get me to try things I fail at over again.

The first challenge I have participated in was making French macaroons. And boy did I fail the first time I made them. I don't even have pictures of that trial run but it was a runny flat mess let me tell you. The second time I tried I took more time with everything.

Here are the first batch piped out sitting before I put them in at 200 degrees












To the left is what they look like when they
came out of the 200 degree oven. I baked them
for longer than what the recipe called for and
I let them sit for longer while the oven heated to 375 degrees because I wanted some feet!







FEET!!!!!!!!










I was so freaking happy when I pulled
these out of the oven










Look at those bottoms!













I made frosting from powdered sugar, butter and raspberry tea and lemon juice. The raspberry tea turned the frosting a super pretty pale pink. It was super sweet but really delicious.


























So they did not come out as tall and as neat as I would have liked but I got feet and hard shells with a chewy inside! They were super sweet but my roommate, best friend and my mom all liked them and that is what really matters!
I'm super excited for next month.
:)