Daring Bakers’ |

27Mar 2013

March Daring Bakers’ Challenge

After a very long break I am posting a Daring Bakers’ Challenge. And even though I am posting for it, I actually took an easy way out and did not dare myself too much with this month’s challenge.

Ruth from Makey-Cakey was our March 2013 Daring Bakers’ challenge host. She encouraged us all to get experimental in the kitchen and sneak some hidden veggies into our baking, with surprising and delicious results!

Initially when I had seen the challenge I had plans to make a beets red velvet cake and try out a black bean brownie recipe I had been eying for a long time. But as you can see those plans did not pan out.

Instead I tried this recipe my mom uses to make whole wheat cupcakes. My sister-in-law loves these cupcakes and always requests my mom to make them. So since she is over I thought would make them for her and that ways I would be able to post for DB as well. Killing two birds with one stone! Pretty smart, aren’t I!

And with Easter this weekend, the recipe did seem apt.

28Oct 2012

October Daring Bakers: Mille Feuilles

Shumaila ⋅ 4 Comments

I am a day late posting this, but the important part is I am posting it.

This month, for the Daring Bakers’, Suz of Serenely Full challenged us to make mille feuilles.

Our October 2012 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Suz of Serenely Full. Suz challenged us to not only tackle buttery and flaky puff pastry, but then take it step further and create a sinfully delicious Mille Feuille dessert with it!

‘Mille-feuille’ is French for ‘a thousand leaves’ (or ‘layers’), which is very apt, as it contains both layers of puff pastry (usually three) and layers within each pastry sheet. It can be filled with layers of jam; mainly raspberry, whipped cream or cheese, and usually topped with powdered sugar, or fondant. It is then usually decorated or garnished with a coat of fondant, with chocolate strings made into a design. It may even contain a filling of pastry cream, as per our challenge recipe.

The challenge required us to make puffy pastry from scratch. Now, I am not a novice to puff pastry- having made it before. Check out my Puff Pastry 101 post here. But I have never tried to make or eaten mille feuilles. So it was something new.

Making puff pastry (or pâte feuilletée) basically involves a simple pastry dough, which is folded around sheet of butter (the beurrage). You then roll out your butter pastry package, fold it, roll it out, fold it, etc. – creating seams of butter that will puff up into distinct crispy layers when baked.

28Jul 2012

July Daring Bakers: Homemade Crackers

Shumaila ⋅ 11 Comments

This post was supposed to go live yesterday on the 27th.

I had everything ready (almost) for this post to go live except a few finishing touches which I thought I would be able to do yesterday in a matter of minutes. But yesterday I got no time to sit on my laptop, instead spent the whole day with my friends drinking, being merry and catching the opening ceremony of the London Olympics 2012.

It was a fun day and night, but am back today to post about the Daring Bakers’ Challenge for July.

P.S: It’s my two year Blog anniversary! I had another post lined for today- one with cake (all celebrations need cake!), but guess that will have to wait till tomorrow. For now let’s talk about crackers!

27Jun 2012

June Daring Bakers’: Battenberg Cake

Shumaila ⋅ 4 Comments

Being Indian I hate wastage. Of any kind. One of the reasons why I gained weight when I came to US (besides, the cliched that I got married) was that I was so used to finish everything on my plate, whenever we went out to eat, I ended up finishing the ridiculously huge portions of food served in restaurants here. Since we stay 4 hours away from all restaurants, doggy pack or to-go was not an option, and since I had the habit of not wasting, I ate everything. That’s why this month’s Daring Bakers’ challenged proved to be double the challenge it was.

Mandy of What The Fruitcake?! came to our rescue last minute to present us with the Battenberg Cake challenge! She highlighted Mary Berry’s techniques and recipes to allow us to create this unique little cake with ease.

I have missed the last two challenges. Although I did a part of the April challenge, I could not get it posted because I was busy with my in-laws visit. Hopefully I should be able to post the recipe soon. ( I seriously have huge backlog!)

Now, I have been eyeing this cake- the Battenberg cake for a while now, ever since I was introduced to the Great British Bake Off cookbook. I don’t have it yet, but amazon’s site has a preview of the book and in that they show pictures of the cake. Since then it’s been on my mind. So when I saw this month’s Daring Bakers challenge, I knew come hay or sunshine, I would make it.

And make I did. Not one but two.

27Mar 2012

March Daring Bakers’: Lions, Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Shumaila ⋅ 15 Comments

May the odds be ever in your favor!

So, I finally got to see The Hunger Games Movie. After waiting out the weekend for my gang of girls to get back from their spring break vacation so that we could all watch it together, we finally went for the movie yesterday.

And well, I am not sure how I want to react to the movie. I liked it. But, as much as the book? No way.

I do understand that fitting 384 pages in a two hour twenty two minutes movie is a task and while Gary Ross has done a good job bringing Suzanne Collins’ book to the big screen, I somehow feel, had I not read the books I would be a little lost during the movie. Knowing the entire back story was a definite advantage. There were lot of instances, where had I not read the book, I would have been totally confused as to what just happened. Also, I remember rooting for Peeta and Katniss’ love story, but in the movie the chemistry between them left me indifferent to the idea of the two together. If only left to the movie, I would have been on Team Gale for sure.

Since the people I went with had read the books, we knew the back story well, but I would really like to know what the people who haven’t read the book thought about the movie. Do feel free to comment here.

27Feb 2012

February DB Challenge: Healthier Apple & Pear Walnut Loaf

Shumaila ⋅ 10 Comments

Thank god for the Daring Bakers’ monthly challenges. Thanks to them I have been forced out of my no-blogging rut.

It has been more than a week since my last blog post. So what had been keeping me so busy?

Nothing.

Nothing of importance actually.

If you remember, I swore I won’t take any of my cooking pictures till I get my pending posts up (which obviously are still pending). And since I have not been taking pictures, I decided to take a break from blogging. It can be like a full time job sometimes- cooking, composing, photographing, cleaning up, post processing, writing, posting and then spreading the blog love. Blogging can be like a full time job (an unpaid full time job). Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy it. It keeps me busy. It gets good food on the table. And it teaches me so much. And thanks to it, I have met some really, really talented people.

But sometimes, you need a break from your job no matter how much you love it. And I needed a break.

I thought I would get my pending posts up, but for four straight days I did not feel like opening my laptop. And that is unprecedented (I can’t live without my laptop- so not feeling like working on it was a very welcomed feeling). I really needed that break. But, now I am back! Thanks to the Daring Bakers’ !

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.

Quick bread is any bread that is quick to make because it doesn’t require kneading or rising time. That’s because the leavener in such a bread is usually baking powder or baking soda, which, when combined with moisture, starts the rising process immediately. In the case of double-acting baking powder, oven heat causes a second burst of rising power. Eggs can also be used to leaven quick breads. This genre includes most biscuits, muffins, popovers and a wide variety of sweet and savory loaf breads.

29Jan 2012

January Daring Bakers: Biscuits

Shumaila ⋅ 6 Comments

I am two days late.

In posting (before you get the wrong ideas).

I have been slacking with my DB challenges. I was not able to do the last two as I was in India. And this month, even though I could have worked on it, some other things, besides my laziness, kept me busy.

I have been slacking in all my posts and now there is a huge backlog of recipes to be shared. I have resolved this week I am going to try and catch up with some of those pending posts. I will be sharing some seriously good recipes in the coming days. So watch out for this space.

Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host. Audax worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens!

28Oct 2011

October Daring Bakers’: Povitica

Shumaila ⋅ 9 Comments

The past few weeks have been uber-busy.

Traveling, festivals, dinner parties, marriages and relatives have kept both V and me busy.

V leaves tomorrow for US but I am staying in India for another month and half since lot of my close friends are getting married in November and in December I want to be here in India when a very special guest arrives in our family.

I have not cooked a bit since I left US for my 3 months vacation in India. I have a feeling by the time I go back I would have forgotten how to cook. We have hardly stayed at home for me to do anything related to cooking. If I have been home, I use that time to catch up on leftover sleep- since everyday we have been sleeping only after 1am and getting up early in the morning and busy with some work or the other the whole day. Yes, things have been that busy!

Luckily, I was able to finish this month’s challenge before leaving US. Its probably the quickest I have done a challenge. Of course later I had to pull a “me” by not drafting the post before leaving. As a result this post comes in a day late, even though the challenge had been completed in the first week of October.

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!

27Sep 2011

September Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Croissants

Shumaila ⋅ 16 Comments

27Jun 2011

June Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Baklava!

Shumaila ⋅ 7 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.

Like always, I completed this challenge last minute. And since it was last minute, it was hurried, done with zero patience- thanks to the heat, and sans key ingredients that would have made a whole lot of difference to the end result.

By now, I am pretty sure you would have guessed that my challenge outcome wasn’t too great! I goofed up with the syrup as I was too lazy to measure anything for it and just made it with approximations resulting in less syrup to soak all the baklava. Also, I skimped on the butter – which I think resulted in slightly harder and drier sheet layers. The filling did not have pistachios (because I did not have any and forgot to pick them up on my last trip to the store), which I feel, would have definitely added to the flavors in the filling. The phyllo dough though was pretty easy to roll out thin, barring a few sheets that did get tears- but Erica said that’s ok as long as the top layer doesn’t have any holes.

It wasn’t too bad either. But, I don’t think I’ll be trying my hand at Baklava in the near future. This is my second not-so-great attempt at Baklava. The first one was almost a year back but that time I had used store bought phyllo. The Baklava then didn’t turn out too great. This time too the results were just average. Oh! How I crave for the baklavas I had during my Dubai trip!