October Daring Baker's Challenge

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

First off, I must say I absolutely LOVE doughnuts! Eating doughnuts always brings me back to my childhood where I loved the plain sugared doughnuts from the neighbourhood bakery. I have always wanted to try my hand at making doughnuts and this challenge was the perfect oppurtunity! The recipe was pretty straightforward, although the dough turned out quite sticky and hard to handle so I had to work a little bit more flour while kneading it. I was glad to see that they rose like little beauties while resting!

It was quite easy frying them in my trusty wok and they fried up pretty quickly!

The final product! I went with my childhood memories and chose to just dust the doughnuts with sugar and a bit of cinnamon!

They were so soft and fluffy and tasty with a hint of nutmeg, and I absolutely love the little airholes from the yeast!

I brought the doughnuts to a gathering of friends and they were wolfed down in seconds! This is definitely something I will make again!



October Daring Cook's Challenge

Our October 2010 hostess, Lori of Lori’s Lipsmacking Goodness, has challenged The Daring Cooks to stuff grape leaves. Lori chose a recipe from Aromas of Aleppo and a recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

It's good to be back after a brief hiatus! Been so busy with uni lately but am happy that there is only four and a half weeks to go before I am finished with uni!

I will start off by saying that I adore Greek food! Absolutely love dolmades! It wasn't hard to find the ingredients here in Adelaide as there is quite a big Greek community around. I thought they would be quite fiddly to roll but it was actually quite simple!

The rolled up product. It was quite a challenge to make them look uniform because of the different size and shapes of the vine leaves.

Close up of the uncooked vine leaves.

The cooked product!



The interior of the roll.

I am glad to say that the final product was very tasty! It was very juicy and absorbed the flavours of the lemon and tamarind in the cooking liquid with hints of the spices in the meat. Will definitely make more in the future and experiment with different fillings!