May 2010 Daring Baker's Challenge

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 is actually my second time making a croquembouche after having attempted it last year after being inspired by Australia's Masterchef. This time I decided to make a dinner party out of it and I organised a french themed pot luck! The choux pastry actually came together quite easily and turned out quite well!

I did not use any egg wash as I thought the colour looked quite good without any eggwash.

I also decided to make some french meringue using the egg whites left over from making the creme patissier.

The french meringues. My first attempt at meringue!

The fully assembled croquembouche! I added some sugar flowers to go along with the french theme.

I really enjoyed making the croquembouch again and eagerly await next month's challenge!

Rum and Raisin Cake with Raisin Syrup

This month's Donna Hay Magazine features a whole chapter on chocolate cakes and all of them look so delicious! I must try out all the recipes! The first one I decided to try was the rum and raisin cake with muscatel syrup. However, I did not manage to find any muscatels and so decided to substitute the muscatels for raisins in the syrup.

Fresh out of the oven!

The cake was rich and moist with flavours of the rum and raisins coming through and I hope those who tried it loved it! Next project, chocolate buttermilk later cake!

The Daring Cooks May 2010 Challenge

Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Food have chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on www.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh.

Wow I've never made mexican food from scratch before and this was certainly an adventure. First, one of the ingredients needed for the salsa was tomatillos which I have never heard of before and uncertain whether it was sold in Australia let alone Adelaide! Out of pure luck, while I was grocery shopping in the Central Market, I came across a shop that sold tomatillos! I immediately bought them and made the enchiladas that very weekend!

I could not find any fresh Anaheim Chillis in Adelaide so I bought canned Anaheim chillis from a specialty Mexican shop which were already roasted and peeled. The process of making the enchiladas was not too difficult and the product was really tasty!

The only thing I noticed was that the salsa was a little runny and I wasn't sure if it was normally this runny as I have not had any experience making this. But on the whole I would say this was a delicious success!

On to the next!